Hillary Is Trying to Drive Dems into a Dead End on Foreign Policy

Hillary Is Trying to Drive Dems into a Dead End on Foreign Policy

By Guy T. Saperstein, AlterNet. Posted February 25, 2008.

Is following public opinion the type of leadership that "experience" produces? If it is, maybe we need less of it.


In recent weeks, Hillary Clinton has increased her attack on Barack Obama, arguing that foreign policy experience is essential to "being ready on Day One." Clinton thinks this argument will bring her closer to the presidency, but she is actually painting herself, and Democrats, into a corner in the general election, for, whatever one may think about her or Senator Obama's foreign policy credentials, they certainly are less than John McCain's.

Democrats cannot run the general election campaign on the question of who has more foreign policy experience, or experience, in general, because the answer to those questions will be John McCain, even though most of his foreign experience is military. The Democratic campaign will have to be about which candidate has demonstrated the best judgment in foreign affairs, not who has the most experience. Which one endorsed and supported the greatest foreign policy fiasco in modern American history? Which continued to support this war long after every possible justification for it had collapsed? Whose belligerent statements would increase the chance of war with Iran? In answering these questions -- the questions Democrats will have to emphasize in a campaign against McCain -- Hillary Clinton doesn't fare so well.

First of all, it is not clear where Hillary derives the foreign policy "experience" advantage she claims, if not her eight years in the White House as First Lady. But when did the American Presidency become a monarchy? When did the First Lady role morph into the Queen? No First Lady, including Hillary, has been tasked with foreign policy assignments. As First Lady, the main purpose of her foreign travel was to engage in ceremonial events. There was nothing wrong with that, of course, but being hostess or guest at dinner parties is not "Commander-in-Chief" experience any more than Senator Obama's experience living abroad is foreign policy experience. In fact, it can plausibly be argued that living in a foreign country, which Senator Obama has done, provides a deeper understanding of how the rest of the world thinks than bopping into a country for a day or two to schmooze with a Saudi oligarch. If her foreign policy role was more than that, why has she refused to release her White House papers so voters could see evidence of what her "experience" claims are based on?

Whatever her actual level of "experience," since entering the U.S. Senate, Senator Clinton has been one of the most hawkish of Democrats, including, of course, her vote for the October 2002 Iraq Resolution which led to war with Iraq. She and Bill have tried to explain that vote on the grounds that President Bush's true intentions, and the debacle Iraq would soon become, were "unknown and unknowable." These claims cannot withstand scrutiny, however. Long before October 2002, there were abundant reasons not to trust anything Bush/Cheney said about Iraq.

Long before October 2002, there existed a large body of scholarship that detailed the regional and religious conflicts that would erupt in Iraq if Saddam were removed. Two of the best predictors of the fiasco that Iraq would become, were President George H.W. Bush and his National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, both of whom had written well-known articles and memoirs about why Baghdad should not be invaded -- in the case of Scowcroft, in a New York Times Op-Ed shortly before the vote on the Iraq Resolution. And these warnings were not lost on the large majority of Democrats in Congress; in fact, 148 Democrats in Congress (125 in the House and 23 in the Senate) saw through the smoke and mirrors, accurately perceived that Bush/Cheney would use the resolution to invade Iraq, and voted against the resolution.

Hillary Clinton missed all the clues, took the Republican bait, and made one of the worst foreign policy decisions in modern American history. As recently as December 2005, Senator Clinton wrote a letter to her constituents defending her war vote. While she now favors troop withdrawals, her turn against the war followed the opinion of a majority of Democratic voters by more than two years. Is following public opinion the type of leadership that "experience" produces? If it is, maybe we need less of it.

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http://www.alternet.org/election08/77691/?page=entire

If she was the unelected secretary of state, national security adviser or sec. of defense, no one would be questioning it. Instead she was a closer adviser to Bill Clinton than any of them, but since she was just his wife, she doesn't count.

and been to more countries than they could find on a globe. They hate her for that...

Most of the crowd Clinton hung out with are history now, retired, canned or dead.

If Hillary actually had the experience of say secretary of state, national security adviser or sec. of defense then no one would be questioning her ability to understand foriegn policy decisions.

The problem though is that she does not have those qualifications. By the way, how on earth does the fact that those positions are not elected even remotely effect the level of expertise that someone in those positions would need to have to effectively carry out thier role?

All that the rest of us are trying to say is that Hillary does not have the experience that she is claiming to have. Being a host or hostess at the White House, or traveling abroad to go to some Gala in another country does not count as foriegn policy experience.

Please do not try to suggest that we are all just sexist for saying she doesn't have the experience that she is trying to suggest she has. Please stop playing the "sex card". It does a discredit to both feminism and your argument.

Why do the experieces of all those other advisers count, but not Hillary's? It's because merely being someone's wife is meaningless. A wife is a non person whose public presence can only exist vicariously through her husband. She can't have contributed. She wasn't an expert. She is just a wife. Except that she was a closer advisor than any of them.

A lot of the young people who support that empty suit from IL take equality for granted. You don't appreciate that 100 years ago a woman could go to jail for voting, that 50 years ago, she could be a teacher, housewife, nurse, secretary or nun. You've never run into the glass ceiling in practice.

Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee/Subcommittee on Europe - hasn't gone to Europe and hasn't called a single policy hering?"



http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/12/29/obama_europe/

But, Hill will. :nuke:

If she did have White House experience she would have known that Saddam was not a threat to us. Even Bush's cronies said that in the summer of 2001. Besides the Hillary camp has another snake up it's sleeve.

http://www.jabberwonk.com/flinker.cfm?cliid=13rk9n

Who hasn't even SHOWN up to do his committee thing?

Let me guess -- someone gave him a paper with the room number and he LOST it? :rofl:

Wonk all you want - Obama is an empty suit - a sandwichboard looking for a body. We're going to need someone who shows UP to even begin cleaning up the bush mess.

~PEACE~