Wrongdoing or evil actions are often masked by good intentions, and sometimes good intentions, when acted upon, may have unforeseen tragic consequences.
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. we believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
FAIR USE NOTICE FAIR USE NOTICE: This page may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This website distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for scientific, research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107.
FAIR USE NOTICE FAIR USE NOTICE: This page may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This website distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for scientific, research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107.
Screw the Democratic Party. There I said it. Now that I have everyone’s attention, please allow further explanation. Yes, I and many other progressives are sick and tired of those who say blue no matter who. That is a supremely ridiculous position to hold, and in fact has led to the issues that many progressives have had with the Democratic Party over the years.
There has been a line of argument against Bernie Sanders and his supporters that he isn’t a “real Democrat” and there is a menagerie of reasons given by his detractors. Aside from Bernie being an Independent in Congress, he is guilty of the heinous crimes of not throwing fundraisers for other Democrats running for Congress. Who cares whether Bernie is or supports “Democrats?” Is Bernie a progressive and does he support progressives for office? That should be the proper question.
First, yes it is true Bernie was an Independent in Congress. It is also true that Bernie caucused with the Democrats, and that he has been involved with the party to a certain extent. It is also true that Bernie has not been a major force in fundraising for a lot of candidates running on Democratic tickets. There are contexts to this, of course.
Bernie has not been embraced by the Democratic Party establishment, and in fact the DNC has done almost everything possible to diminish Bernie’s campaign. When Hillary supporters claim Bernie isn’t supporting “Democrats” in races, they aren’t telling the full truth. Bernie is helping to support candidates, but he is helping progressives in races rather than just “Blue no matter Who.” Neither Bernie nor his supporters are obligated to raise money or support any candidate that doesn’t share their views.
The logic of the Blue no matter Who thinking is severely flawed. No, you shouldn’t just vote for any candidate just because he or she is running as a Democrat. Part of the reason why progressives have been frustrated with the Democratic Party is because they tend to follow a “safe” strategy in which we elect any candidate running as a Democrat, regardless of whether or not that person adheres to core principles that progressives hold. That’s bullshit and needs to change.
Part of the reason Democrats have been ineffective at achieving many progressive goals is because among their ranks are so-called Blue-Dog Democrats who tend to be more centrist and conservative than the rest of the party. These Blue-Dogs have made it hard for progressives to get important bills passed in Congress. Yes, Republican obstructionism is the main reason, but part of the blame belongs to Democrats as well.
Even when Democrats had a sixty seat hold on the Senate and a huge majority in the House, Obama still couldn’t get major progressive laws passed without a huge fight that eventually led to watered down legislation. Obama’s quote “two signature” laws Obamacare and Dodd-Frank were not passed without a huge fight and both laws were extremely neutered from where they first began. Why? Because Blue Dog Democrats sided with Republicans to help obstruct these bills.
The strategy of electing any candidate who runs as a Democrat is a failed one. We need to elect progressives to Congress, whether they’re Democrats or not. Voting should be based on the candidate and their platform, not their party. There have been good Democrats and bad ones. My former Senator Mary Landrieu was a terrible shill for the Oil and Gas industry when in Congress, and was one of the largest obstacles in ending Federal subsidies for the industry and in passing Cap and Trade legislation. This was a Democrat mind you, a supposed liberal! There are many others that fit this model.
Some might say, “oh, well you’re imposing a purity test on the party?” Damn right I am. We have to have the ability to punish Democrats who don’t actually fight for progressive causes. We have to have consequences for faux liberals in the Democratic Party, because that is the nature of the political wind.
The fact is, the age of coalition parties is over. The Republican Party is a pure-blood conservative party, and there is no reason for the Democrats to have half of their ranks held by conservative sympathizers. We need to reshape the Democratic Party back into the FDR mold, and throw off the yolk of the Clinton/Obama model of conservative incrementalism. The time has come for progressives to dominate the party, which is the only way to reign in the Republicans.
Nay-sayers will then say, “well you have to be open to compromise, you won’t get everything you want.” Of course! Anyone who understands politics on a basic level knows this! But it’s how you compromise that counts. You start negotiations from the left, and then negotiate down to the middle. For example, starting from the left position on Healthcare would have been Single Payer. Now, no one thinks we would actually pass Single Payer in its pure form, but if it serves as the starting position, then you can then negotiate down to say a Public Option.
This runs contrary to Obama’s strategy, which was to concede half to Republicans up front which then moved the starting position more to the center, which was then negotiated down more. The same was true for Dodd-Frank. Hillary seems fond of this strategy as well. This has been a failure time and again. This is how politics works. Establishment Democrats fail to grasp this, either purposefully or out of sheer incompetence.
In short, we should vote for real progressives into the Democratic Party, and primary anyone who opposes the core principles of the progressive movement. We should move to elect candidates who will make a difference, rather than blindly following the Party like sheep. We should challenge the Party and push them to have more progressive candidates, rather than have the party push us to vote for whoever they put forward.
The Democratic Party, operating from darkness as is its wont, is still blaming Ralph Nader for their defeat in 2000. A piece at Politico begins “The Clinton campaign has a question for Bernie Sanders: Are you to become “a Ralph Nader and try to destroy the party?”
Where does one begin to expose the deceit in this?
Ralph Nader has more integrity than does the entire Democratic Party, from its corrupt, lying bosses to its many ignorant followers. It would have been a good thing had Nader destroyed the Democratic Party, but it is still functioning to sell out the working class, election after election.
And shame on Bernie Sanders for suggesting that the Democrats should stand for something higher than whale poop. I can see why that would bother Hillary’s disgusting campaign staff, playing as they are with a stacked deck of superdelegates.
Modern Democrats adhere to the premise that no elected Democrat may propose to stand for anything higher than whale poop because the Republicans won’t let them. The smart thing to do, they have convinced their addle-brained minions, is to accept the Republican platform, which is something, as Hillary likes to say “That can be achieved,” unlike that which Sanders is suggesting.
For example, it is achievable to pass Obamacare, because it came from Republicans like Mitch Romney and earlier Richard Nixon. Yes, it gives nearly all the money to giant corporations rather than to actual health care organizations, and the bottom tier insured can’t use it because they can’t afford the deductibles and co-pays, but it may be packaged as an “accomplishment,” with which to fool the Democratic faithful.
Democrats blame Nader for Al Gore’s defeat in 2000, which is ridiculous. Gore should be responsible for Gore’s defeat, since he stood for selling out the working class with NAFTA and defended the horrors of the Clinton regime, where he served as vice president and didn’t raise a peep as Big Media and the Banksters were deregulated to keep the masses ignorant and screwed.
Poor children were thrown into the streets with “Welfare reform,” a smiling Gore cheering it on. Gore himself admitted that he had a horrible environmental voting record when in Congress, defending it by saying the people of Tennessee expected him to vote that way. If so, one wonders why he lost the state of Tennessee in his presidential run, whose victory would have won him the presidency despite the Supreme Court’s awarding Florida to Bush. The people of Tennessee may not be as stupid as Gore suggests– can he also blame Nader for that?
Now we have the shameless Hillary Clinton asking that we vote for her because she has a record which she claims qualifies her, even if that record stinks. First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State Hillary all were disasters for the American people and many now dead abroad. She is very much like Gore in mouthing what the people want to hear while selling them out, but according to Democrats we are to believe that Nader swung the election around to Bush, for some reason.
Voters, by this logic, are not allowed to cast ballots for what they want. They must vote for people who will pretend to be different than Republicans like Bush, while mimicking their actions. The big problems with Bush being elected, we are told, are things like his illegal invasion of Iraq, and his Patriot Act. But Hillary enabled Bush to do this with her Senate votes for the illegal invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act, so where do people find a difference? Democrats are playing the same broken record this election, offering little more than if you vote for Nader, Bush will win, as they have since 2000.
The promises are discarded after the election anyhow, as anyone following the current President may attest. So despite polls showing that the American people want the wars stopped, not one of the major party candidates has suggested they will defer any of the wars and pull in the reins of Empire by shutting down overseas bases, which could free up enough wealth to actually do something meaningful for citizens. Instead, they say if you don’t vote for the Demlicans, the Republocrats will get in as their only reason many say we should vote for them.
I have already voted for Jill Stein in the primaries and hope to have a chance to vote for her in the general election. Unlike the two corporate party candidates, she says she wants to shut down the wars.
What the Democrats are missing by saying the Republicans won’t let them do anything is that the President is the Commander in Chief. If the president orders the troops to come home, they must obey. Nothing in the Constitution says Presidents have to engage in endless war because it might offend the Republicans if we stopped them. Jill Stein knows this, why can’t the Democrats see it, if they truly want to represent the people?
And for those who drone “But Jill Stein can’t win” ask yourself what you are winning by electing Hillary or The Donald? I have watched for many decades as elections come down to voting for perceived lesser evils, and it has now reached a point where the Democrats are at least an equal evil.
Brian HanleyPolitical reporter covering the Bernie Sanders campaign
After sweeping the March 15 primaries, Hillary Clinton transformed the democratic race. She not only solidified her position as the party’s front-runner, but also extended the delegate lead that she needed to pivot towards the general election.
While Bernie Sanders is in it for the long haul, the delegate math is not in his favor. His candidacy after the March 15 primaries could spell trouble for the Democratic Party, which will need to rally behind a single candidate to defeat Donald Trump in November. Clinton’s success in a hypothetical general election will depend on her ability to win over Sanders supporters, which is much easier said than done.
According to the most recent Wall Street Journal poll, 33% of Bernie Sanders supporters wouldn’t vote for Clinton. Sanders supporters have trust issues with Clinton and in particular, her Wall Street ties. Going forward, Clinton will need to carefully balance the fight against Sanders with the fight for his backers’ support.
The only viable way Clinton can redeem herself with team Sanders is to release herWall Street transcripts once and for all, thereby shaking out the remaining skeletons in her closet. If, however, Clinton refuses to come clean, we may very well be looking at a divided Democratic Party in the fall and a Republican President in the winter.
What always disappointed me the most about President Obama was how he never even tried to change the language of politics that had been established in the eight years of the Bush presidency.
From immigration (on which he never articulated a different rhetoric than the punitive law-and-order one put into effect by his predecessor) to civil liberties to war crimes to inequality to health care to race relations to trade, he has kept to the establishment line on all substantive policy issues.
And that’s where Bernie Sanders has succeeded so brilliantly. Sanders has managed to draw level with Hillary Clinton in the national polls, and seriously threatens to upset the carefully balanced apple cart if he can pull out a win in New York. As a result, he has pushed the establishment to acknowledge, at least rhetorically, the grievances of the powerless. That is no mean accomplishment, and he and his supporters should feel proud for having come this far.
I do not of course mean this in the dismissive way deployed by Clinton and the rest of the “establishment” (the term Sanders repeatedly uses to describe her and which irks her so much), to pat Sanders and his followers on the back, as if to say, Job well done, now go home and let the adults take over, you’ve had your chance at saying what you needed to say but now we need to get on with the job we were doing before. Indeed, toward the end of the debate tonight, as Clinton became increasingly nervous—her shrill bluster and bravado seemed to have collapsed by the end, as Sanders only seemed to gain in confidence and grit—that is precisely the rhetorical tactic Clinton used against him.
No, it’s not going to work now, things have changed, we have moved past the likes of Debbie Wasserman Schultz pushing the debates to ungodly weekend hours, pretending that there was never a split among liberals as severe as that among conservatives.
This debate was a sign of the distance Sanders has traveled in confidence and maturity, the way he handled all of her maddening lies—particularly about misusing his congressional voting record in the absurd way of political commercials—by insisting on the facts. The facts are all we need, but we have not been hearing them on such a visible platform in a long time, President Obama also being firmly in the mode of equivocating establishment-speak, which fuzzes up clear-cut issues of unequal treatment and distracts attention to pragmatism and “competence” (of course the neoliberal banker in a politician’s suit is the only one who’s competent).
It was a joy to witness the establishment standing denuded tonight. There were actually two other dignitaries—Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—who stood behind Hillary Clinton, on this night when the hypocrisies of the powerful stood exposed on the national stage. Using the kind of hardcore logic and rationality that went out of style after Walter Mondale’s unsuccessful deployment of the same against warm fuzzy Ronald Reagan, but which made a brief appearance when Joe Biden went head to head against Paul Ryan, Sanders didn’t let Clinton get away with her prevarication on a single point. And of course she equivocated and feinted right and left and diverted attention and raised false alarms in response to every single question.
Again and again, Clinton attempted to subdue every sharp query that came her way by speaking in praise of the incremental measures she intends to take toward what she has now taken to calling her own “bold” ideas, such as raising the minimum wage in steps by way of getting to the progressive goal of $15 an hour. She mocked the idea of free college by offering her father’s homely wisdom that one should “read the fine print” when something is offered for free. But Sanders never let her get away, and neither did the moderators, to their credit. In contrast to previous debates, certainly in recent election cycles, the debate remained firmly grounded in facts rather than distractions, fears, and absurd hypotheticals, which by itself is a notable shift in consciousness.
As the debate wore on, the contradictions in Clinton’s attempt to square the circle became more and more evident. Sanders had worn her down so greatly, with the gentlemanly demeanor she so clearly despises, that he had to do less and less work to expose her lies. He would simply shake his head, roll his eyes in disbelief, while Clinton seemed to dig ever deeper holes for herself.
In the name of incrementalist competence, she refused to answer whether she would support a tax on Wall Street speculative transactions (a pretty orthodox economic idea that has been around for a long time), couldn’t excuse her way out of support for fracking technology all over the world, refused to grant that Israel had used “disproportionate response” in response to any attacks, and couldn’t find a way to escape from her advocacy of escalated military responses in Libya and Syria.
She often fell back on 9/11 and her “response” to it, as a savior of New York. The adults are here to protect us, what does a wide-eyed socialist like Sanders, beholden to European values, even know about managing the economy? Dodd-Frank, that parody of a neoliberal law to save us from the next financial collapse, was Clinton’s only resort as the manager who pursues goals strictly through established law. Meanwhile, her absurd charges that Sanders is somehow a supporter of assault weapons or a lover of swaps and derivatives or a threat to Israel fell completely flat.
This has been the diversionary recourse for conservative Democrats for a long time now, but it is not going to work this time, regardless of the outcome of the Democratic nomination and the general election. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Sanders’s campaign—unlike, say, Jerry Brown’s humanist unorthodoxy in 1992—has gone on too long and scored too many points that have hurt the establishment deeply and irrevocably. This is what I gathered from this debate, where the energy—despite Clinton’s claims to New York as home turf—was ecstatically on Sanders’s side, particularly in his rousing closing statement.
Sanders has stayed on message, a simple one, the only one that matters, of economic inequality and specific unequivocal ways to address that. Like her predecessors, Clinton has sought to keep the debate focused on the culture wars; she did it again in her closing statement tonight, almost seeming to glide by economic inequality and instead talking about cultural “barriers” to opportunity, the distracting dance that neoliberals like to do at every opportunity. She would never have brought up a single substantive issue during this campaign, following the release of her vacuous self-affirmative opening campaign commercial, had Sanders not forced the issue. She is trying her damnedest to speak the progressive lingo for now, until Sanders is put away by the superdelegates or other shenanigans of machine politics at which both Clintons excel, but it doesn’t suit her and tonight it was glaringly obvious.
Neoliberalism, from this point on, will not have the cover it did before the Sanders campaign. Future progressive movements will have a firmer foothold to stand on. The fantasy that only neoliberal stalwarts have the competence to handle money and defense has been shattered. Just think, late last year, the question was how—and if—Sanders could get minorities to come over to his side. We are now talking about palpable shifts on every possible measure, and perhaps even the possibility of making his case at the convention. Even if he should fall short of that, the key idea progressives should take from his winning campaign is that the first and most important thing to do is to change the terms of discourse, because to speak in the other side’s language is to concede defeat.
It is not a coincidence that it often tends to be people of much earlier generations—like Ralph Nader and now Sanders—who bring out the youthfulness in the young. The facts, spoken by the mature and wise, have a way of rousing the listless. The facts, about our distorted policies, are back on the table. In response to why Sanders, at the Apollo theater, called out Bill Clinton for defending his wife against the use of the term “superpredators” in the 1990s, Sanders simply said, “Because it was a racist term, and everybody knew it was a racist term.” That is the kind of clear shift in discourse we’ve needed all along.
Anis Shivani’s most recent books are Karachi Raj: A Novel, Whatever Speaks on Behalf of Hashish: Poems, and Soraya: Sonnets (forthcoming June 2016). Both Sides of the Divide: Observing the Sublime and the Mundane in Contemporary American Writing will be out later this year.
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (L) listens to Sen. Bernie Sanders speak during a Democratic debate at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York April 14, 2016.
Bernie Sanders went on offense during Thursday’s Democratic primary debate, criticizing Hillary Clinton for “barely mentioning” the Palestinian people during her speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the nation’s most powerful pro-Israel group, last month.
Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, and Clinton, the former secretary of state, largely agree about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They both believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state and that the Palestinian people should have a state of their own.
On Thursday, Sanders doubled down on his past argument that Israel’s invasion of Gaza in 2014 in response to rocket attacks was “disproportionate,” said the U.S. and Israel need “to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity” and argued that the U.S. “cannot continue to be one-sided.” While each of these comments is a bold thing to say on a Democratic primary debate stage, the real historic moment was the exchange between the two candidates over how Clinton talks about Palestinians and whether the U.S. grovels to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu too frequently.
“I read Secretary Clinton’s speech before AIPAC. I heard virtually no discussion at all about the needs of the Palestinian people,” Sanders said. “Of course Israel has a right to defend itself, but long-term, there will never be peace in that region, unless the United States plays an even-handed role, trying to bring people together and recognizing the serious problems that exist among the Palestinian people ... There comes a time when, if we pursue justice and peace, we are going to have to say that Netanyahu is not right all of the time.”
Hillary Clinton speaks during the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 2016 Policy Conference at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., March 21, 2016.
Clinton told AIPAC in March that “Palestinians should be able to govern themselves in their own state, in peace and dignity,” and that “Everyone has to do their part by avoiding damaging actions, including with respect to settlements.” But she used the vast majority of her time to talk about defending Israel’s security, strengthening the U.S.-Israel alliance and holding Iran accountable. Sanders passed on speaking to AIPAC in person and instead gave his speech at a high school in Utah. He talked about Palestinian unemployment and poverty, dedicated more than a sentence to condemning Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and criticized groups like AIPAC for trying to torpedo the nuclear deal with Iran.
Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told The Huffington Post that the debate about how the U.S. should resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict was “unprecedented.”
“It wasn’t only that he highlighted the need to address the Palestinian issue and Palestinian rights, it is that he turned it into an asset — rather than be on defense he put Hillary Clinton on the defensive for not bringing it up in her AIPAC speech,” he said.
Telhami, who served as a senior advisor to George Mitchell, Obama’s special envoy for Middle East peace, said that there is a gap between how Democratic politicians talk about the conflict and what the party’s grassroots believes. Sanders capitalized on that disconnect.
Somebody was bound to come along who is far more reflective of grassroots politics than Democratic candidates have been.Shibley Telhami
“When Sanders gave the non-AIPAC AIPAC speech, we saw that it didn’t hurt him in the next series of primaries and caucuses where he won overwhelmingly and generated a lot of enthusiasm,” he said. “This is new, but I think it’s an inevitable consequence of the public opinion transformation — somebody was bound to come along who is far more reflective of grassroots politics than Democratic candidates have been.”
Sanders is reticent to discuss foreign policy instead of his core issues of income inequality and political corruption, and tends to do so only to criticize Clinton for her Iraq War vote or for the intervention in Libya. (He got into a shouting match with critical constituents of his during a town hall in 2014, yelling that he was sorry he didn’t “have the magic answer” to the conflict because “this is a very depressing and difficult issue.”)
Progressive supporters of Sanders have voiced frustration with the senator in the past for not condemning Israel more forcefully — and they’re more furious after his campaign suspended its new Jewish outreach director for her past critical comments accurately describing Netanyahu’s personality. His debate performance may partially ameliorate those feelings.
GEORGE FREY/GETTY IMAGES
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spoke at a campaign rally at West High School on March 21, 2016 in Salt Lake City, Utah, instead of at AIPAC.
“Last night was an important moment for many of us who would like to see a more reality-based discussion of U.S. Middle East policy,” said Matthew Duss, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. “Posing that equality [between Israeli security and Palestinian security] is something that’s new — it’s something a lot of Americans believe but we haven’t heard a candidate articulate it as strongly as that before.”
Duss suggested that the Clinton-Sanders exchange happened because today, unlike in previous campaigns, there’s a counterweight to AIPAC in the American Jewish community. Advocacy groups like J Street emphasize that it’s possible to be a supporter of Israel and criticize the Israeli government’s actions.
“Political constituencies that organize well and make their concerns heard get responded to. For a long time, a very conservative, hawkish pro-Israel constituency has been much better organized, but that’s changing,” Duss said. “People who support peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians equally have become much better organized. Seeing the security of both peoples as tied together and not in tension is much more in keeping with American liberal values.”
People who support peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians equally have become much better organized.Matthew Duss
Some foreign policy experts active on Twitter — like Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic’s national correspondent — have argued in response to pieces in The New Yorkerand Vox that Sanders’ comments on Palestinian dignity during the debate weren’t that revolutionary or new. His statements, they showed, reflect the same sentiments as words spoken by Obama and former presidents Bill Clinton andGeorge W. Bush. But it’s different for a presidential candidate to talk about Palestinian rights. Candidate Obama was much more cautious and conservative on this issue than President Obama has been, for instance.
The dynamics of the conflict have shifted. Former presidential candidate and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (a Clinton supporter) was excoriated by then-Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and other Democrats during the 2004 primary when Dean said the U.S. should be “even-handed,” that “it’s not our place to take sides” and that “enormous” numbers of Israeli settlements in the territories would have to be dismantled to achieve peace.
Twelve years later, a different situation is at hand. During Thursday’s debate, the insurgent candidate in the race was able to push the front-runner to say that “Nobody is saying that any individual leader is always right.”
Jews, who will make up a significant share of New York’s Democratic primary electorate on Tuesday, aren’t used to hearing either explicit or implicit criticisms of Netanyahu as their votes are sought.
Bernie Sanders didn’t really say anything extraordinary about the Palestinians, but his statements at the Democratic debate on Thursday were historic nonetheless, at least for them … The true novelty in Sanders’ words was that they violated accepted norms. Presidential candidates usually swear on an Israeli bible before they get elected into office and discover Palestinian suffering only after they have moved into the White House: this is the road travelled by Jimmy Carter in 1976 and by Barack Obama in 2008.
If there were any doubts that Hillary Clinton favors a neoconservative foreign policy, her performance at Thursday's debate should have laid them to rest. In every meaningful sense, she is a neocon and -- if she becomes President -- Americans should expect more global tensions and conflicts in pursuit of the neocons' signature goal of "regime change" in countries that get in their way.
Beyond sharing this neocon "regime change" obsession, former Secretary of State Clinton also talks like a neocon. One of their trademark skills is to use propaganda or "perception management" to demonize their targets and to romanticize their allies, what is called "gluing white hats" on their side and "gluing black hats" on the other.
So, in defending her role in the Libyan "regime change," Clinton called the slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi "genocidal" though that is a gross exaggeration of Gaddafi's efforts to beat back Islamic militants in 2011. But her approach fits with what the neocons do. They realize that almost no one will dare challenge such a characterization because to do so opens you to accusations of being a "Gaddafi apologist."
Similarly, before the Iraq War, the neocons knew that they could level pretty much any charge against Saddam Hussein no matter how false or absurd, knowing that it would go uncontested in mainstream political and media circles. No one wanted to be a "Saddam apologist."
Clinton, like the neocons, also shows selective humanitarian outrage. For instance, she laments the suffering of Israelis under crude (almost never lethal) rocket fire from Gaza but shows next to no sympathy for Palestinians being slaughtered by sophisticated (highly lethal) Israeli missiles and bombs.
She talks about the need for "safe zones" or "no-fly zones" for Syrians opposed to another demonized enemy, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, but not for the people of Gaza who face the wrath of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"Yes, I do still support a no-fly zone [in Syria] because I think we need to put in safe havens for those poor Syrians who are fleeing both Assad and ISIS and have some place that they can be safe," Clinton said. But she showed no such empathy for Palestinians defenseless against Israel's "mowing the grass" operations against men, women and children trapped in Gaza.
In Clinton's (and the neocons') worldview, the Israelis are the aggrieved victims and the Palestinians the heartless aggressors. Referring to the Gaza rocket fire, she said: "I can tell you right now I have been there with Israeli officials going back more than 25 years that they do not seek this kind of attacks. They do not invite the rockets raining down on their towns and villages. They do not believe that there should be a constant incitement by Hamas aided and abetted by Iran against Israel. ...
"So, I don't know how you run a country when you are under constant threat, terrorist attack, rockets coming at you. You have a right to defend yourself."
Ignoring History
Clinton ignored the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which dates back to the 1940s when Israeli terrorist organizations engaged in massacres to drive Palestinians from their ancestral lands and murdered British officials who were responsible for governing the territory. Israeli encroachment on Palestinian lands has continued to the present day.
But Clinton framed the conflict entirely along the propaganda lines of the Israeli government: "Remember, Israel left Gaza. They took out all the Israelis. They turned the keys over to the Palestinian people. And what happened? Hamas took over Gaza. So instead of having a thriving economy with the kind of opportunities that the children of the Palestinians deserve, we have a terrorist haven that is getting more and more rockets shipped in from Iran and elsewhere."
So, Clinton made clear -- both at the debate and in her recent AIPAC speech -- that she is fully in line with the neocon reverence for Israel and eager to take out any government or group that Israel puts on its enemies list. While waxing rhapsodic about the U.S.-Israeli relationship -- promising to take it "to the next level" -- Clinton vows to challenge Syria, Iran, Russia and other countries that have resisted or obstructed the neocon/Israeli "wish list" for "regime change."
In response to Clinton's Israel-pandering, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who once worked on an Israeli kibbutz as a young man, did the unthinkable in American politics. He called out Clinton for her double standards on Israel-Palestine and suggested that Netanyahu may not be the greatest man on earth.
"You gave a major speech to AIPAC," Sanders said, "and you barely mentioned the Palestinians. " All that I am saying is we cannot continue to be one-sided. There are two sides to the issue. " There comes a time when if we pursue justice and peace, we are going to have to say that Netanyahu is not right all of the time."
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders. (image by (NBC photo)) DMCA
But in Hillary Clinton's mind, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is essentially one-sided. During her speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last month, she depicted Israel as entirely an innocent victim in the Mideast conflicts.
"As we gather here, three evolving threats -- Iran's continued aggression, a rising tide of extremism across a wide arc of instability, and the growing effort to de-legitimize Israel on the world stage -- are converging to make the U.S.-Israel alliance more indispensable than ever," she declared.
"The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever and more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries and to advance our shared values. ... This is especially true at a time when Israel faces brutal terrorist stabbings, shootings and vehicle attacks at home. Parents worry about letting their children walk down the street. Families live in fear."
Yet, Clinton made no reference to Palestinian parents who worry about their children walking down the street or playing on a beach and facing the possibility of sudden death from an Israeli drone or warplane. Instead, she scolded Palestinian adults. "Palestinian leaders need to stop inciting violence, stop celebrating terrorists as martyrs and stop paying rewards to their families," she said.
Then, Clinton promised to put her future administration at the service of the Israeli government. Clinton said, "One of the first things I'll do in office is invite the Israeli prime minister to visit the White House. And I will send a delegation from the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs to Israel for early consultations. Let's also expand our collaboration beyond security."
Pleasing Phrases
In selling her neocon policies to the American public, Clinton puts the military aspects in pleasing phrases, like "safe zones" and "no-fly zones." Yet, what she means by that is that as President she will invade Syria and push "regime change," following much the same course that she used to persuade a reluctant President Obama to invade Libya in 2011.
The Libyan operation was sold as a "humanitarian" mission to protect innocent civilians though Gaddafi was targeting Islamic militants much as he claimed at the time and was not engaging in any mass slaughter of civilians. Clinton also knew that the European allies, such as France, had less than noble motives in wanting to take out Gaddafi.
As Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal explained to her, the French were concerned that Gaddafi was working to develop a pan-African currency which would have given Francophone African countries greater freedom from their former colonial master and would undermine French economic dominance of those ex-colonies.
In an April 2, 2011 email, Blumenthal informed Clinton that sources close to one of Gaddafi sons reported that Gaddafi's government had accumulated 143 tons of gold and a similar amount of silver that "was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency" that would be an alternative to the French franc.
Blumenthal added that "this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to commit France to the attack on Libya." Sarkozy also wanted a greater share of Libya's oil production and to increase French influence in North Africa, Blumenthal wrote.
But few Americans would rally to a war fought to keep North Africa under France's thumb. So, the winning approach was to demonize Gaddafi with salacious rumors about him giving Viagra to his troops so they could rape more, a ludicrous allegation that was raised by then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who also claimed that Gaddafi's snipers were intentionally shooting children.
With Americans fed a steady diet of such crude propaganda, there was little serious debate about the wisdom of Clinton's Libyan "regime change." Meanwhile, other emails show that Clinton's advisers were contemplating how to exploit Gaddafi's overthrow as the dramatic moment to declare a "Clinton Doctrine" built on using "smart power."
On Oct. 20, 2011, when U.S.-backed rebels captured Gaddafi, sodomized him with a knife and then murdered him, Secretary of State Clinton couldn't contain her glee. Paraphrasing a famous Julius Caesar quote, she declared about Gaddafi, "we came, we saw, he died."
But this U.S.-organized "regime change" quickly turned sour as old tribal rivalries, which Gaddafi had contained, were unleashed. Plus, it turned out that Gaddafi's warnings that many of the rebels were Islamic militants turned out to be true. On Sept. 11, 2012, one extremist militia overran the U.S. consulate in Benghazi killing U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton honor the four victims of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, at the Transfer of Remains Ceremony held at Andrews Air Force Base, Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on (image by [State Department photo)) DMCA
Soon, Libya slid into anarchy and Western nations abandoned their embassies in Tripoli. President Obama now terms the Libyan fiasco the biggest mistake of his presidency. But Clinton refuses to be chastened by the debacle, much as she appeared to learn nothing from her support for the Iraq invasion in 2003.
The Libyan Mirage
During Thursday's debate -- instead of joining Obama in recognition of the Libyan failure -- Clinton acted as if she had overseen some glowing success:"Well, let me say I think we did a great deal to help the Libyan people after Gaddafi's demise. ... We helped them hold two successful elections, something that is not easy, which they did very well because they had a pent-up desire to try to chart their own future after 42 years of dictatorship. I was very proud of that. ...
"We also worked to help them set up their government. We sent a lot of American experts there. We offered to help them secure their borders, to train a new military. They, at the end, when it came to security issues... did not want troops from any other country, not just us, European or other countries, in Libya.
"And so we were caught in a very difficult position. They could not provide security on their own, which we could see and we told them that, but they didn't want to have others helping to provide that security. And the result has been a clash between different parts of the country, terrorists taking up some locations in the country."
But that is exactly the point. Like the earlier neocon-driven "regime change" in Iraq, the "regime change" obsession blinds the neocons from recognizing that not only are these operations violations of basic international law regarding sovereignty of other nations but the invasions unleash powerful internal rivalries that neocons, who know little about the inner workings of these countries, soon find they can't control.
Yet, America's neocons are so arrogant and so influential that they simply move from one catastrophe to the next like a swarm of locust spreading chaos and death around the globe. They also adapt readily to changes in the political climate.
That's why some savvy neocons, such as the Brookings Institution's Robert Kagan, have endorsed Clinton, who The New York Times reported has become "the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes."
Kagan told the Times, "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else."
Now with Clinton's election seemingly within reach, the neocons are even more excited about how they can get back to work achieving Syrian "regime change," overturning Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, and -- what is becoming their ultimate goal -- destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia and seeking "regime change" in Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, following his address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (image by (UN Photo)) DMCA
After all, by helping Assad bring some stability to Syria and assisting Obama in securing the Iranian nuclear deal, Russian President Vladimir Putin has become what the neocons view as the linchpin of resistance to their "regime change" goals. Pull Putin down, the thinking goes, and the neocons can resume checking off their to-do list of Israel's adversaries: Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.
And what could possibly go wrong by destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia and forcing some disruptive "regime change"?
By making Russia's economy scream and instigating a Maidan-style revolt in Moscow's Red Square, the neocons see their geopolitical path being cleared, but what they don't take into account is that the likely successor to Putin would not be some malleable drunk like the late Russian President Boris Yeltsin but, far more likely, a hardline nationalist who might be a lot more careless with the nuclear codes than Putin.
But, hey, when has a neocon "regime change" scheme veered off into a dangerous and unanticipated direction?
A Neocon True-Believer
In Thursday's debate, Hillary Clinton showed how much she has become a neocon true-believer. Despite the catastrophic "regime changes" in Iraq and Libya, she vowed to invade Syria, although she dresses up that reality in pretty phrases like "safe zones" and "no-fly zones." She also revived the idea of increasing the flow of weapons to "moderate" rebels although they, in reality, mostly fight under the command umbrella of Al Qaeda's Nusra Front.
Clinton also suggested that the Syria mess can be blamed on President Obama's rejection of her recommendations in 2011 to authorize a more direct U.S. military intervention. "Nobody stood up to Assad and removed him," Clinton said, "and we have had a far greater disaster in Syria than we are currently dealing with right now in Libya."
In other words, Clinton still harbors the "regime change" goal in Syria. But the problem always was that the anti-Assad forces were penetrated by Al Qaeda and what is now called the Islamic State. The more likely result from Clinton's goal of removing Assad would be the collapse of the Syrian security forces and a victory for Al Qaeda's Nusra Front and/or the Islamic State.
If that were to happen, the horrific situation in Syria would become cataclysmic. Millions of Syrians -- Alawites, Shiites, Christians, secularists and other "infidels" -- would have to flee the beheading swords of these terror groups. That might well force a full-scale U.S. and European invasion of Syria with the bloody outcome probably similar to the disastrous Iraq War.
The only reasonable hope for Syria is for the Assad regime and the less radical Sunni oppositionists to work out some power-sharing agreement, stabilize most of the country, neutralize to some degree the jihadists, and then hold elections, letting the Syrian people decide whether "Assad must go!" -- not the U.S. government. But that's not what Clinton wants.
Perhaps even more dangerous, Clinton's bellicose rhetoric suggests that she would eagerly move into a dangerous Cold War confrontation with Russia under the upside-down propaganda theme blaming tensions in Eastern Europe on "Russian aggression," not NATO's expansion up to Russia's borders and the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014 which ousted an elected president and touched off a civil war.
That coup, which followed neocon fury at Putin for his helping Obama avert U.S. bombing campaigns against Syria and Iran, was largely orchestrated by neocons associated with the U.S. government, including Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland (Robert Kagan's wife), Sen. John McCain and National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman.
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland during a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, on Feb. 7, 2014. (image by (U.S. State Department photo)) DMCA
After the violent coup, when the people of Crimea voted by 96 percent to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, the U.S. government and Western media deemed that a "Russian invasion" and when ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine rose up in resistance to the new authorities in Kiev that became "Russian aggression."
NATO on the Move
Though President Obama should know better -- and I'm told that he does know better -- he has succumbed this time to pressure to go along with what he calls the Washington "playbook" of saber-rattling and militarism. NATO is moving more and more combat troops up to the Russian border while Washington has organized punishing economic sanctions aimed at disrupting the Russian economy.
Hillary Clinton appears fully onboard with the neocon goal of grabbing the Big Enchilada, "regime change" in Moscow. Rather than seeing the world as it is, she continues to look through the wrong end of the telescope in line with all the anti-Russian propaganda and the demonization of Putin, whom Clinton has compared to Hitler.
Supporting NATO's military buildup on Russia's border, Clinton said, "With Russia being more aggressive, making all kinds of intimidating moves toward the Baltic countries, we've seen what they've done in eastern Ukraine, we know how they want to rewrite the map of Europe, it is not in our interests [to reduce U.S. support for NATO]. Think of how much it would cost if Russia's aggression were not deterred because NATO was there on the front lines making it clear they could not move forward."
Though Clinton's anti-Russian delusions are shared by many powerful people in Official Washington, they are no more accurate than the other claims about Iraq's WMD, Gaddafi passing out Viagra to his troops, the humanitarian need to invade Syria, the craziness about Iran being the principal source of terrorism (when it is the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks and other Sunni powers that have bred Al Qaeda and the Islamic State), and the notion that the Palestinians are the ones picking on the Israelis, not the other way around.
However, Clinton's buying into the neocon propaganda about Russia may be the most dangerous -- arguably existential -- threat that a Clinton presidency would present to the world. Yes, she may launch U.S. military strikes against the Syrian government (which could open the gates of Damascus to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State); yes, she might push Iran into renouncing the nuclear agreement (and putting the Israeli/neocon goal to bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran back on the table); yes, she might make Obama's progressive critics long for his more temperate presidency.
But Clinton's potential escalation of the new Cold War with Russia could be both the most costly and conceivably the most suicidal feature of a Clinton-45 presidency. Unlike her times as Secretary of State, when Obama could block her militaristic schemes, there will be no one to stop her if she is elected President, surrounded by likeminded neocon advisers.
http://www.consortiumnews.com
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq,can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at (more...)
