Bill Clinton tells Iowans that Hillary was a co-president, the most trusted adviser he had in the White House. Okay.... When evaluating Hillary's claims of foreign policy experience, it would be reasonable to take a look at Clinton's policies across the global stage. One key characteristic of Clintonian foreign policy is that it is often presented as one thing, while in reality it has a darker and more sinister purpose. For example, the Clintons bombed Iraq for nearly 8 years on the pretext that they were responding to attacks by Iraq on American planes patrolling Iraq's no-fly zones.
The truth of the matter is that the UN never sanctioned the American no-fly zones. Not only that, shortly after the 2003 fall of Baghdad, the Pentagon admitted that the no-fly zones were a pretext for softening Iraq's defenses prior to an expected US invasion, an invasion supported by key elements of the Republican and Democratic Party. In a rare display of extreme candor, the Pentagon said that US pilots had been instructed to provoke the Iraqis, and once the Iraqis responded by firing guns or missiles at our planes, a series of air strikes would be carried out to destroy as many Iraqi military facilities as possible.
That was Iraq. In Haiti, Clinton had intervened on the pretext of restoring a democratically elected president, but in fact, the strange twists and turns of what Clinton did in Iraq would eventually lead to Bush having US troops overthrowing Aristide.
Iraq and Haiti are not the only examples in which Clintonian foreign policy goals would be in bizarre sync with Bushes' policies.
Published in the March 22, 2004 issue of The Nation
Coup in Haiti
by Amy Wilentz
The groundwork for this coup was laid during the months when Aristide was first re-establishing his government. When the Clinton Administration reinstated Aristide, it too brought in the Marines, ostensibly for nation-building but also to make sure the reinstalled president didn't get up to any populist shenanigans: Clinton knew he was bringing Aristide back against the will of the Haitian elite, and the US President feared both another coup by the elite against Aristide, and then revenge by Aristide's supporters. So the Marines secured the transition back to Aristide and then remained for about a year and a half, during which time they did not disarm the Haitian army or the remainder of the Duvaliers' feared Tontons Macoutes. It was clear at the time that the Americans wanted to make sure there would be arms floating around that could be used against the Haitian government if need be.
One should be clear about the opposition in Haiti right now: although it includes some very good people, it is largely a group of malcontent career politicians, wealthy businessmen and ambitious power-seekers. It is exactly the kind of "civil society" opposition the United States encouraged and financed when it was attempting to remove Manuel Noriega in Panama. The Haitian opposition, too, was financed and organized during the Aristide years by US-funded groups like USAID's Democracy Enhancement Project and the International Republican Institute, an organization established in 1983 "to advance democracy worldwide." These have played a central and critical role in keeping an unpopular Haitian opposition alive and obstructionist. At every turn, the US-backed opposition tried to bring political life under Aristide to a halt.
It would be nice if Aristide were a saint. It's comfortable to take the side of a saint. But he isn't one. Many people died under his government who shouldn't have, and very few indeed are those who have been brought to justice for those crimes. But he didn't start out to be a brutal dictator: History and events and the international community and his own flawed character conspired against him. He does not deserve to suffer the same fate as Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier, who was also nudged out by the United States and replaced by a military-civilian junta.
When push came to shove this time around, the Bush Administration, which paid lip service to the continuation in office of the democratically elected president, refused to send in the Marines until the president was bundled off and safely stowed away in the heart of Africa, under virtual house arrest. It's not surprising, after this long, sad history, that there are people who believe Aristide when he says he was "kidnapped." He was kidnapped, in effect. So was his presidency, and so was Haiti's attempt at democracy.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0305-09.htm 
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