Those of us who watched the Democratic debate last Thursday saw a sharp exchange between Clinton and Sanders. I felt that, on foreign policy, Hillary Clinton put herself well to the “right” of President Obama, and I’ll take that up in a moment.
I do want, first, to take up the “gun issue” where I think Bernie got damaged but where he has a point, and where I felt Hillary was using the tragic death of the children (and teachers) as political fodder.
I believe the Supreme Court has been as wrong on how it interpreted the Second Amendment, as it was, in another century, in the Dred Scott decision. At the time the Constitution was written, most colonists in settled areas didn’t own guns – they were expensive and not needed. Nor were they very easy to use – a musket could fire only one shot before it had to be reloaded. There were no revolvers (they didn’t come in until the 19th century). There were just the single-shot muskets, handy for hunting and, for defense.
The killings of children and teachers in Newtown was horrific. I’m sorry that Hillary spoke as if Bernie didn’t share that sense of horror. Hillary has a special “vocal level” where genuine human feeling seems lost and political correctness has taken over. If Hillary had, only once, just once, at any time in recent years, expressed some sense of personal pain over the ten of thousands of dead in Iraq, the multitude of veterans returning holding their sanity and their lives very carefully for fear they would break beyond repair, if just once she had suggested she had learned something from her vote to authorized that war, then I would be more inclined to think she really gave a tinker’s dam about Newtown.
There is a point to what Bernie Sanders has said about guns – it is important we hear it. Precisely because Vermont is a “gun state”, with few restrictions, and because Bernie Sanders has a D- rating from the NRA (which organization, I’d note, is the real enemy), he is in a position to work out a consensus on the gun issue, which would be accepted in Montana and Wyoming as well as in New York. I remember, decades ago as a child, rushing to the fireworks shops where we could buy packages of firecrackers, rockets, pinwheels, sparklers, and still more firecrackers.
But, in the end, most cities and states outlawed such displays and sales, just as gun shows need to be closed down and serious restrictions imposed on who can buy guns. (Or as a wonderful British comic suggested, don’t outlaw guns – just outlaw ammunition, since it isn’t guns that kill people, it is bullets).
One other point before taking apart Hillary’s foreign policy points. We are all in a very serious position this November. In 2008 it was possible to bring the backers of Clinton and Obama together after the election because the Clinton folks were the party establishment and had nowhere else to go. But perhaps serious thought should be given to Hillary dropping out now. It is not at all certain, if, with the super-delegates, she wins the nomination, the youthful Sanders’ voters will rush to embrace her. The country is in the mood for serious change, and Hillary does not represent that. If there is any Democrat that Donald Trump or Ted Cruz might have a slim chance of beating, it is Clinton, not Sanders. And the Clinton folks are absolutely correct, the Republicans must be defeated in November – the Democrats may just need Sanders more than they realize.
Now to shift to my problems with Hillary Clinton and her foreign policy points. It has been said that Clinton is essentially running for Obama’s third term, that she is embracing Obama’s record. Except she isn’t. Obama has been generally cautious in foreign policy. His major mistake was getting trapped in Afghanistan, but, on Libya as the New York Times pointed out in a major article, the balance between going into Libya and staying out was 51 to 49 and it was Hillary Clinton who made it the 51 for intervention. In the debate in Brooklyn she was simply dishonest on the Libya question, arguing (correctly) that the Senate had vote unanimously to support democracy for Libya but then, she suggested, that Congress had also voted to intervene, which was not true. And even the vote to intervene by NATO was very limited to providing protection for civilians. That was immediately overlooked, with NATO air strikes widely used against Libyan forces, resulting in the death of Qaddafi, something Reagan had tried and Hillary Clinton finally achieved. Hillary Clinton, in that debate, seemed to have ignored Obama’s own statement, in an interview, that the one deep regret he had was failing to realize what the overthrow of Qaddafi would unleash,
Hillary Clinton compounded her error when, in discussing the Syrian tragedy, she regretted that the US had not imposed a no-fly zone, and had failed to provide the Syrian rebel forces with enough weapons to press the fight against Assad. Had she forgotten that the US had tried to create a military force of “progressive rebels” to fight ISIS and had to give that up when it turned out the “progressive rebels” didn’t want to fight ISIS, but wanted to fight Assad?
Obama had opposed a no fly zone, and had opposed making the overthrow of Assad the top priority – feeling that had to be ISIS. Clinton, however, was working from the goals of the US – going back long before the Syrian crisis erupted – which had been to topple Assad.
It is this risky business of regime change (see also her role in Honduras) which Obama has generally tried to avoid, and which Hillary Clinton has embraced. Even with the troubles in Eastern Ukraine, which are much better handled by the Europeans than by the Americans, Hillary Clinton has been trapped by the world view advanced by some of those in the Bush Administration, a world view which, as the Soviet Union collapsed, argued for such massive US military power that no nation would dare challenge us – a kind of “Pax Americana” (which had, in fact, been something of a political reality after the end of World War II). But such a view is impossible to uphold over a period of time, both imposing prohibitive economic costs on the US, and also spurring other nations to build up nuclear arsenals of their own as the only possible defense (think of North Korea).
I am not writing as a partisan of Assad, Putin, or Qaddafi, much less of the late Saddam Hussein. In fact, I oppose such regimes, just as I oppose the military interventionist doctrines of which Hillary Clinton in so fond.
I think Hillary Clinton was a terrible choice for Secretary of State, and wonder what possessed Obama to appoint her. In the Middle East, a continuing and lethal tinderbox, she is very unlikely to challenge either Saudi Arabia or Israel. She has not shown any willingness to recognize that Iran is, inevitably, a regional force with which the Saudis need to make their peace.
A final point on Hillary Clinton’s efforts to impose a “Pax Americana” on the Middle East, is that where Obama has been sharply critical of the Israeli efforts to expand their territory, and their lack of candor, (not to mention their open efforts to undermine him as he sought to reach a deal with Iran), Hillary Clinton, in her remarks at AIPAC, made it clear she would, upon election, hasten to visit Israel and meet with Netanyahu.
One must contrast Hillary Clinton’s record with that of John Kerry, who has achieved at least a temporary ceasefire in Syria, and made a serious, prolonged effort to achieve a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, blocked primarily by Netanyahu.
Hillary Clinton would be a war candidate and if at all possible she must be defeated.
David McReynolds was on the staff of War Resisters League for 39 years, served a term as Chair of War Resisters Interational, and has been active in the socialist movement in the US. He is retired, lives on the Lower East side, sharing his apartment with a feline. He can be reached at: [email protected].
(Since I have dared to judge Hillary Clinton as a weak Secretary of State and a danger if elected President, let me just list my own international contacts over the past thirty or forty years – they do not qualify me as competent, I have no idea how to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, or end the Syrian war, but these are my points of experience: in the course of my work for War Resisters League and War Resisters International, I have been in Canada, every Nordic country from Iceland to Finland, Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland,Belgium, Netherlands, West and East Germany (including meeting with dissidents in East Berlin),Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia (including Prague during the Soviet invasion of 1968), the Soviet Union before Gorbachev (taking part in a disarmament demonstration in Red Square) and in 1987 (meeting with dissidents), Japan on several occasions, Saigon and Hanoi both during and after the war, Cambodia at a time when the US was supporting Pol Pot, Cuba before the current thaw, Malta, Libya under Qaddafi, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein).
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