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The Case Against Hillary Clinton - Ryan Cooper/TheWeek
The case against Hillary ClintonRyan Cooper - TheWeek
February 1, 2016
REUTERS/Faith Ninivaggi
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Much of the argument in the Democratic Party primary has hinged on who is more electable. Hillary Clinton, as the more moderate candidate, has a somewhat more plausible case on this score — though at the moment she does a bit worse than her opponent Bernie Sanders in head-to-head polling matchups.
But consider a separate question: Would Clinton actually be a good president? No, argues Doug Henwood in his book My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency. As Daniel Davies observes, it provides a brief, reasonable survey of the case against returning Clinton to the presidency, free of the right-wing dreck clogging up the internet. The whole book is worth reading, but the main argument can be grouped under three headings.
1. Clinton is far too aggressive with the use of military force. Because the American president has a nearly free hand when it comes to foreign policy, this is the most important part of the anti-Clinton brief. Her history suggests she would be more aggressive than President Obama (who hasn't been much of a dove himself).
Most notoriously, she voted for the war in Iraq — even endorsing the Bush administration's false accusation that Saddam Hussein had given "aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members" — but it's been a consistent theme even after that gruesome catastrophe. As secretary of state, she supported escalation in Afghanistan, pushed hard for the Libyan intervention, and lobbied for a continued military presence in Iraq. She was on the hawkish edge of internal Obama administration debates on Syria, plotting with then-CIA Director David Petraeus to arm rebels there (though the plan was rejected by the president).
She also worked to prevent the return of leftist Manuel Zelaya to the presidency of Honduras after a military coup in 2009, proposing to send longtime Clinton hack Lanny Davis as a back channel to the new regime. At the time, Davis was working as a U.S. lobbyist for a pro-regime Honduran business group. She also recently praised Plan Colombia, a drug war military effort whose export around Latin America has been utterly disastrous.
Yet even though she lost the 2008 primary by a hair largely because of her vote for the Iraq war, Clinton has continued to attack Sanders from the right on foreign policy. A few days ago, she tore into him for suggesting that the U.S. ought to consider gradually normalizing relations with Iran, as it has with Cuba. It suggests real ideological commitment — and in a bad way.
Finally, while Clinton touts her experience on foreign policy, it doesn't seem to have produced many results when it counted. While Clinton's own list of accomplishments at the State Department is rather thin (remember the "pivot to Asia"?), her immediate successor John Kerry has hit a succession of diplomatic home runs: helping get chemical weapons out of Syria, re-opening relations with Cuba after half a century of rupture, pushing through a nuclear deal with Iran, in addition to a host of smaller victories.
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More: http://theweek.com/articles/601909/case-against-hillary-clinton?google_editors_picks=true
23 replies
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"... with factual girdings of steel."
