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Hillary Clinton Praises a Guy With Lots of Blood on His HandsBy David Corn
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/hillary-clinton-henry-kissinger-world-order
Hillary Clinton often plays the hawk card: She voted for the Iraq war, dissed President Barack Obama for not being tough enough on Syria, and compared Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler. This is to be expected from a politician who has angled for a certain title: the first female president of the United States. Whether her muscular views are sincerely held or not, a conventional political calculation would lead her to assume it may be difficult for many voters to elect as commander-in-chief a woman who did not project an aggressive and assertive stance on foreign policy. So her tough talk might be charitably evaluated in such a (somewhat) forgiving context. Yet what remains more puzzling and alarming is the big wet kiss she planted (rhetorically) on former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger this week, with a fawning review of his latest book, World Order.
(snip)
Kissinger reminds us that America succeeds by standing up for its values? Did she inhale?
Kissinger, who served as secretary of state for President Richard Nixon and then President Gerald Ford, is a symbol of the worst of US foreign policy. Though he guided the United States through détente with the Soviet Union and initiated the historic opening to China, he engaged in underhanded and covert diplomacy that led to massacres around the globe, as he pursued his version of foreign policy realism. This is no secret.
Chile: Nixon and Kissinger plotted to thwart the democratic election of a socialist president. The eventual outcome: a military coup and a military dictatorship that killed thousands of Chileans.
Argentina: Kissinger gave a "green light" to the military junta's dirty war against political opponents that led to the deaths of an estimated 30,000.
East Timor: Another "green light" from Kissinger, this one for the Indonesian military dictatorship's bloody invasion of East Timor that yielded up to 200,000 deaths.
Cambodia: The secret bombing there during the Nixon phase of the Vietnam War killed between 150,000 and 500,000 civilians.
Bangladesh: Kissinger and Nixon turned a blind eye toarguably, they tacitly approvedPakistan's genocidal slaughter of 300,000 Bengalis, most of them Hindus.
Clinton's latest praise for warmonger and war criminal Kissinger makes me dislike her even more than I thought possible. We Americans deserve better than her on the candidate's stage, much less the White House.
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blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)"You don't need no stinkin' choices!"
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)Yes, when the presumptive Democratic candidate praises a Republican War criminal, then we really have no choices. We are being told that we will continue to overspend on a bloated military, cede power and wealth to corporate entities via disingenuously-named 'free trade agreements,' and erode the power of the citizen.
Hillary Clinton is hardly better than her 'pal' Henry Kissinger.
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Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)appal_jack
(3,813 posts)We have elected Democrats in my lifetime (which covers Carter, Clinton, and Obama) that were not warmongers and had little to prove about their toughness. Of course, they were male. The consensus seems to be that Hillary needs to prove her toughness by being a warmonger. I disagree. I think that a woman could be elected president based upon her intelligence, charisma, resolve, and progressive ideas. If and when a crisis arose, she certainly would have to react with strategic and coherent force if warranted, but I don't understand Hillary's insistence on taking the most warlike stances possible and coddling war criminals like Kissinger. These choices make her seem less intelligent and charismatic.
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Louisiana1976
(3,962 posts)Argentinian prison.