Hillary Clinton’s support for regime change in countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria and Honduras is seldom recalled when comparing her foreign policy to Donald Trump’s. (photo: David J. Marshall/US Army)
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a much-anticipated “foreign policy” speech (6/2/16) in which she took presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump to task for what she called his “dangerously incoherent” foreign policy stances. The speech was widely met with praise from the pundit class:
- Hillary Clinton Rolled Out the Anti-Trump Argument That Could Deliver a Landslide: Vox
- Hillary Clinton Just Kicked Trump in the Shins: And Showed That She’s Certainly Tough Enough for the Long Haul: Slate
- Hillary Clinton Just Proved She Is Very Good at Taunting Donald Trump: Washington Post
- Hillary Clinton Eviscerates Donald Trump in Her Best Speech Yet: Huffington Post
- Clinton Targets the ‘Blame America First’ Republicans: Bloomberg View
Almost all of the praise was premised on two assumptions: A) Trump presents a horrific risk to the planet and B) Clinton is the antidote to this, a “steady hand” in a dangerous world.
Point A, it’s worth emphasizing, is true. Trump’s Muslim immigration ban and his claim that climate change is an “expensive hoax” that was “created by and for the Chinese” are certifiable and racist. His plan to seize the natural resources of other countries reverts us back to outright 19th century colonialism. His violent and inciting rhetoric presents a clear danger to immigrants, women and people of color.
But B, the idea that Clinton is, by contrast, a prudent foreign policy moderate, is an establishment media assertion with little or no supporting evidence.
Clinton has a long, objectively verifiable track record of acting recklessly on matters of foreign policy that seems to have slipped into a memory hole as the prospect of a Trump presidency looms overhead. While one would expect this rewriting of history to come from Clinton surrogates, it’s increasingly bizarre coming from nominally independent media pundits.
Matthew Yglesias in Vox (6/2/16): “You can at least be sure that a Clinton presidency won’t lead to some enormous unforeseen cataclysm.”
Over at Vox, Matt Yglesias has positioned Clinton as the sensible, reliable choice on foreign policy and, in doing so, failed to mention Iraq, Libya, Syria, Honduras or any other of the list of nations that Clinton has helped to make, in some capacity or another, much worse off. When comparing the high stakes of statecraft, Yglesias even laid out this ahistorical comparison:
But at the end of the day, even though real estate is a game for risk takers, it’s also a game where the downside risk is very limited. At the absolute worst, you can’t repay your debts and it becomes a bit harder to get a loan the next time.
Running a country isn’t like that. If you make a big mistake, you can’t just go to court and have the slate wiped clean. A casino bankruptcy hurts the bottom line of a few banks. A sovereign default of the United States — something Trump has floated — would destroy the global economy.
But “wiping the slate clean” is exactly what Iraq War boosters have done. Bush and Rumsfeld are currently playing golf, while those who supported the war, like Clinton, continue to hold positions of power. Clinton issued a belated and perfunctory apology—and that was it. And that’s just the one “mistake” she’s been called to answer for. Clinton’s support of a right-wing coup in Honduras, or the disastrous regime change in Libya, are seldom brought up, much less apologized for.
Perhaps Yglesias is referencing the material consequences to the world, rather than to the politician, but if this is the case, then why not address the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis resulting from the war Clinton pushed? Why not bring up the disastrous government she forced upon Haiti? Yglesias is right: The stakes are high, and, time and time again, Clinton has made decisions that resulted in material harm.
Slate’s Fred Kaplan and Bloomberg View’s Eli Lake also neglected to mention the Iraq War when recapping Clinton’s “experience.” It could be because they, like Yglesias, also pushed for that particular disaster. Indeed, as we’ve seen before, to indemnify Clinton for her past “bad judgments,” is to do the same for most of the pundit class who also followed Bush off the cliff. Her rebranding is their rebranding. This may serve immediate political interests—especially if one views Trump as existentially dangerous—but it doesn’t serve history, and it certainly doesn’t serve readers.
The media has a duty to vet the foreign policy record and plans of the respective candidates. As such, the pundits are right to pinpoint some of Trump’s more dangerous plans. Where they’ve consistently fallen short—and this was on full display in response to Thursday’s speech—is also contextualizing and harshly critiquing Clinton’s brand of measured, polite recklessness.
On this we have some pretty stark examples. The right-wing coup Clinton backed in Honduras in 2009 eventually led to the assassination of indigenous leaders and displacement of thousands of Hondurans as they fled right-wing violence.
One email from her aide Sid Blumenthal in March 2011 informed then–Secretary Clinton that a Libyan rebel commander told him that “his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting.” (“Foreign mercenaries” being code for black Africans loyal to Gaddafi). In response, the State Department continued to support the rebels without any clear concern for their war crimes. A BBC report that December detailed how 30,000 black Libyans were ethnically cleansed from the town of Misrata. A report the following year in the New York Times detailed how US arms “fell into the hands of jihadis” in an effort to overthrow Gaddafi.
Clinton’s eagerness to back dubious groups in the interest of regime change wouldn’t stop there. For years, the State Department watched Qatar and Saudi Arabia arm jihadists in Syria while pledging millions to overthrow the Syrian government themselves. Time and time again, Clinton’s desire to overthrow unfriendly governments resulted in arms “ending up in the hands” of designated terrorist organizations.
As for the former Secretary’s famous “wonkishness,” there’s evidence, as Peter Beinart noted in The Atlantic in 2014, that Clinton didn’t even review the NIE report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before voting to authorize the war in October 2002.
Unlike Trump’s rhetoric, these were actual reckless decisions that affected real people. Of course, media should critique Trump’s outlandish, ofttimes cartoonish campaign promises. But they don’t have to whitewash Clinton’s foreign policy record to do so.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. He’s on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
Thank you for publishing this. I’ve been pulling my hair out trying to talk to everyone about the last 48 hours of silly media.
I’m surprised that, at the beginning of your Hate Hillary blather, which is so trendy and obligatory at FAIR, you said that insofar as her “hawkishness,” is concerned there was ” …’LITTLE’ or no evidence…” against the idea of her militarism. Even as you fall for all the cheap narratives against her, you acknowledge that there is “little” evidence. There’s a lot more than little evidence. Are media pro or anti-Hillary. Well it depends, you say. No, it doesn’t. Tell me why “an establishment” candidate like Hillary, could be so despised by that same establishment, as to be uniformly hated in establishment media. Can you think of an institution more establishment than media?
The notion of Hillary’s hawkishness, is moronic. Where does this fascination with her militarism comes from. Well, it comes from the rightwing. The same rightwing that controls media. It’s about as accurate an assessment as that she’s “dishonest.” This is another stupid and indefensible slander. Where did this idea come from? Could it be right-wing media again? Where are “you” getting the nonsense about Hillary?
Could it be from those same media. Those same right-wing controlled media? There are about 100 oft seen pundits, news show hosts, news commentators and news ‘experts,” on the TV news media. Aside from a handful of pre-described, pro-Clinton spokes-people, what of the other 90 or so news professionals? I’m not talking about a few newspeople that will give Hillary a hearing, I’m talking about “pro”-Hillary people. Where are they? Who are they. Why are so many establishment news professionals, Hillary haters? It’s not true, that they’re Hillary haters? If you believe this nonsense, you either ignore and avoid mass market TV news, or you’re a brainless idiot. I don’t say your perspective on Hillary is entirely wrong, only that its intensity, its frenzy is based on right wing establishment media. What has media been doing? Behghazi? E-mails? It’s the same with “untrustworthy,” “dishonest,” “hawkish.” Hillary is not this caricature you create for FAIR readers. She is no more dishonest than Sanders. She is no more in favor of militarism than Sanders. She is no more or less authentic than Sanders. This is theater. Do you really believe that Hillary is the same person she was a year ago? That she can’t or won’t change in that time, that she’s not becoming more progressive with each month?
Is she borrowing so much from Sanders leftish views, or is she just another republican masquerading as a democrat? Both views are held by a majority of Sanders’ supporters
Do you really believe that she voted to allow Bush to attack Iraq. Or did she authorize Bush to do what he thought best in Iraq, after he gave every impression of using all diplomatic efforts. Did she say “…my vote should not be construed as a vote for war.”
I can see the untrustworthy, the dishonest, the hawkishness narratives swirling around in your brain.
The Hillbots are running rabid! LOL!
Hillary’s numbers are dropping like a rock against both Bernie and The Donald.
No amount of lying and cognitive dissonance will change the facts of this article.
Hillary should do what is right for the Democratic Party and quit now.
Otherwise, she is going to get embarrassed by the super delegates who nominate Bernie over her.
@john polifronio: “Hillary [is] so despised by that same establishment, as to be uniformly hated in establishment media.”
The current presidential campaign has produced utterances plumbing new depths of falsehood, but yours is easily the most *bizarre* falsehood I’ve heard yet. (Congratulations on your upcoming bonus from “Correct the Record”[1].) Establishment media (notably NPR and NYT) overwhelmingly love Hillary.
@john polifronio: “Where does this fascination with [Hillary’s] militarism comes from.”
Bodycount. To paraphrase the band name, Hillary is known by her trail of dead. She is pointed out by the accusing finger of the ghost of Berta Cáceres[2].
@john polifronio: “Do you really believe that Hillary is the same person she was a year ago? That she can’t or won’t change in that time, that she’s not becoming more progressive with each month?”
Hillary’s rhetoric has obviously become more progressive: she’s now against Keystone XL and TPP, and for the 15 $/hr minimum wage. But that’s only because Bernie forced her into those positions. If installed in the presidency, she will once again regress to her personal mean (and that’s very, very mean :-) of supporting corporate imperialism. Which is probably what she told (or dogwhistled to) Goldman Sachs, which is why she won’t release those speech transcripts. But if you’d like to thank Goldman Sachs for what they’ve done for the US[3], vote Hillary.
[1]: http://www.wnyc.org/story/hillary-and-trolls/
[2]: http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/11/before_her_assassination_berta_caceres_singled archived @ http://web.archive.org/web/20160603010333/http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/11/before_her_assassination_berta_caceres_singled
[3]: https://theintercept.com/2016/02/19/hillary-clinton-goldman-sachs-transcripts/
About Hillary dark side
http://nypost.com/2016/01/17/after-pardoning-criminal-marc-rich-clintons-made-millions-off-friends/
Donation to Clinton charity foundation.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-vs-sanders-1452194667
Clinton charity arranged $2M pledge to firm owned by Bill’s ‘friend’
http://nypost.com/2016/05/13/clinton-charity-arranged-2m-pledge-to-company-owned-by-bills-friend/
Hillary’s Latest Scandal: She And Bill Siphoned $100 Mil From Mideast Leaders
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/hillarys-latest-scandal-she-and-bill-siphoned-100-mil-from-persian-gulf-leaders/
Clinton Email Scandal: Now A Key Witness’ Emails Have Mysteriously Vanished
http://www.investors.com/politics/capital-hill/clinton-email-scandal-now-a-key-witness-emails-have-mysteriously-vanished/
Be nice to Hillary Clinton online — or risk a confrontation with her super PAC
http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/news/media-coverage/los-angeles-times-be-nice-hillary-clinton-online-or-risk-confrontation-her-super
Lies, hypocrite speeches and contradict statements:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/thank-you-cnbc-1446510099« less
Now you know why people who know call her Killary!
@Adam Johnson: while covering HRC’s past transgressions relatively well (absent Haiti, which was mostly absent from your piece), you missed the most important, most dangerous part of Hillary’s current foreign/military policy. Obama, with Clinton’s active support both in and out of DoS and on this campaign, is pushing toward war with both China and Russia. Aside from being a breathtakingly stupid imperial overreach (comparable to Hitler declaring war on both the US and the Soviet Union), Hillary (and the Democratic establishment that loves her) flirts with a nuclear WW3.
Worse and Worser….how will you vote this fall?
82 % of Bernie supporters want him to run as 3rd party. 47% of Americans open to 3rd party candidacy, 6 out of 10 Americans terrified by the Hillary vs. Donald choice. In a recent 3 way match up poll Bernie would win over Tump by 3 points and over and Hillary by 6 points
Perhaps the solution is to convince Bernie to run 3rd party.
That math only works if Hlilary drops out, unfortunately.
WITH EACH NEW PRESIDENT — COMES DOUBLE THE HORROR
Bill Clinton made us a slave to High Finance and forced the poor into absolute desecration, but that was only half the horror that came after him.
For then came Bush W. to make us a slave to Saudi Arabia by invading Iraq just so that the Saudi monarch could be king of the Middle-East, but that was not half the moral and financial horror that came after him.
For then came Obama to give $13 trillion to Wall Street and high stakes bankers, in effect giving them a permanent key to U.S. Treasury; to give our medical industry a for-profit health insurance plan that increased our nation’s healthcare costs by $1 trillion yearly; to increase the use of killer drones and CIA coups giving him the all-time record for wasting world leaders and to create a new cold war with both Russia and China.
But, all that has gone down before her, surely it is not even half of the global horror that Hillary Clinton has scheduled for her first term in office.
So true, John. I’m voting for Bernie.
How can anyone call it “hate hillary blather” and “trendy?” Doesn’t that sort of downplay the importance of these things? How is her record not important? How is ‘we came we saw he died’ for a Presidential candidate not alarming as hell? How is it not important that with all her “experience” and “connections”, she still made the “mistake” of going to war in Iraq? Doesn’t that kind of indicate that either she’s stone cold stupid, or expedient to the point that she will go along with the rest of the mob as they set about killing large numbers of innocent people, and sending our promising young soldiers off to lose their lives, limbs, sanity, and sobriety?
Trendy. Oh, my god, my ass.