Earlier on another thread there was an exchange revolving around what Hillary Clinton had actually accomplished over her long public career. I suggested that the list was too long to memorize or put in a comment. When Porcupine suggested she only needed a couple to be satisfied I said I was working on a diary to go up later today. Turns out that one website pretty much has done this work already, so why reinvent the wheel? Yes, the site is openly pro-Hillary, but the wealth of well-cited information and praise heaped on her cannot be ignored. A look at her entire record will reveal that she is neither the hawk nor corporate shill her leftist critics make her out to be, pursuing peace and economic justice at every possible opportunity. There is also a page of responses to myths and attacks leveled against her, mostly from the Right, but sometimes magnified by the media or event the Left. I encourage you to follow the links, many of which link to subpages about specific issues. Once again, there is a lot of misinformation out there about HRC, corrections for which do not take long to find for anyone open-minded enough to look.
Yes, including this post!
I completely agree that there is a lot of bullshit information out there about HRC. And the myths created by the right are mostly complete bullshit. Citing the site of a terrible propagandist whose job is to get HRC elected, however, is not objective nor that constructive here.
This statement, especially on her record as a hawk, in particular strikes me as willful ignorance:
Here’s just a few pieces countering this (none from the right):
http://www.thenation.com/article/left-ought-worry-about-hillary-clinton-hawk-and-militarist-2016/
http://www.salon.com/2015/09/10/what_hillary_clinton_wants_you_to_forget_her_disastrous_record_as_a_war_hawk/
http://www.thenation.com/article/hawk-named-hillary/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-iran-foreign-policy_us_55f05c2ae4b002d5c07786b2
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/11/the-warmongering-record-of-hillary-clinton/
I’m all for “correcting the record” but some reality would be nice.
…that HRC has a threshold for willingness to use force, but as this site and others have shown, she’s more than willing to pursue peace as well (see Iran). Do you have specific evidence that an argument from the website is inaccurate? There is a specific section about war and peace. You’re right – you’re links aren’t from the right; they are from the left which is exactly the problem in this context.
The right is wrong, and the left is wrong, so we should trust her PAC?
Yes, I just shared it.
The criticism from the left may be a problem for someone looking for a centrist, but this is BMG. Clinton is a hawk. That is clear. That may not be an issue for many voters, but for many progressives it is. Arguing that she is not hawkish among Dems won’t get you far on this site.
Yes, she’s going to be too hawkish for some (not me), but the point of this diary wasn’t to burnish her progressive bonafides anyway. I have already done that and stand by it. This post was to push back on the idea that she has no accomplishments, which is just not true and shame on anyone on the left who buys into the rightwing meme in that regard.
Pushing back on the silly lack of accomplishments meme is fine, but you stated that she has pursued peace “at every possible opportunity” and that is simply not true. I won’t engage in any more back and forth on that because it’s a waste of time.
Those are clearly opinion columns, but they are criticism from the left pointing out her specific actions that have been hawkish, so they are not at all evidence-free, and are honestly more reliable than a PAC site.
She has many impressive accomplishments, but she’s still a hawk, and arguing otherwise is foolish.
While Sanders has a lot of strengths, foreign policy is not one of them. Politifact on recent comments.
He does not have much experience, but he’s not a hawk. HRC has a lot of experience, but she’s a hawk. I don’t have a problem boosting her experience or deeper knowledge in the area, I have a problem with arguing that she’s always been on the side of peace because it is simply not true.
She was the architect of much Obama’s foreign policy as his Secretary of State, she supported the Iran deal, she is arguably to his left on the issue of world trade (and has been in both primaries), and she will likely continue the strategies we are pursuing militarily.
Here is another newsflash-so would President Sanders and so would nearly every President Republican once they got into office. There is just no real appetite for a third full scale ground invasion of Iraq in as many decades, short of that, the strategy against ISIL will involve a sustained bombing effort and special forces. No President has the luxury of pulling out completely since there is a risk of a terror attack happening on their watch, no President will have the support of the American public to wage a full scale ground invasion. So we will get something in the middle, it’ll just be in what shades and variations.
Between the Democrats I am far more comfortable with the detailed plan that Hillary laid out to get more hawkish than Obama on internet recruitment, cutting off funding, and bringing in more special forces and support for friendlies like the Kurds. By contrast, Sanders thought ISIL was in Afghanistan and the Taliban was in Iraq at the last debate. A level of ignorance we would never tolerate and openly mock in a Republican. And we don’t even need to dignify their lunacy with a response.
On the diplomatic front there is a lot of damage a Republican can do, from shredding the Iran agreement to the international accord on climate change to pulling out of human rights conventions. Not to mention doubling down on failed strategies like torture and extraordinary renditions. Cruz is completely amoral when it comes to questions of Middle Eastern human rights, which, so am I when it comes to enforcing our values via the sword but it would be nice if we stopped funding the Saudi’s who do nothing for us in the region and are the cause of most of it’s instability, let alone are terrible pariahs whose brazen disregard for women and the rule of law would make an Ayatollah blush with envy. Time to stop underwriting their armed forces and buying their bullshit. Bernie actually thinks they will beat ISIL for us, with the King of Jordan, another autocrat he is praising. Not with Iranian troops on the ground they won’t, both of those powers benefit from the quagmire in Iraq and Syria since it bogs down Iran.
The days of American hegemony are over, and it’s unlikely that Hillary can pursue the drive by bombing humanitarian hawkishness of her husband nor the saber rattling world altering crusade of the second Bush administration. I strongly believe out of all the candidates she is the only one who has the depth of experience and the key contacts with existing world leaders to quickly spring into action and sail the ship of state through these perilous times. There are still lapses of judgment that persist and associations that concern me (the Kagans, Kenneth Pollack, and other Iraq architects), but at the end of the day Bernie isn’t even bothering to present us with an alternative.
One of the great experts on economics and foreign policy of our lifetime, Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, weighed in this week on HRC and her foreign policy. It ain’t pretty
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/hillary-is-the-candidate_b_9168938.html
I’ve met him on two occasions and had the privilege of hearing him speak back when he was toying with the idea of a presidential run in 2008. He choose instead to support Barack Obama. I share many of his criticisms of Hillary Clinton and her record, and pointed out that I am still troubled by her continued association with several liberal hawks and neoconservatives.
What I was arguing is that there are not nearly as many options available to the next President as there were to the last two when they came into office. The window of American hegemony is closing, and it is unlikely that any action from any President could prop it back open. Nor would such a propping necessarily be in the national interest. Far better to narrow our commitments to the areas where they are most needed rather than continue to be the world’s policemen. I totally agree with that.
What troubles me is that Bernie is making rookie mistakes on foreign policy we rightly mocked Herman Cain for making, and he doesn’t seem to have any desire to rectify this glaring weakness. It is not enough to simply be against the things Hillary was for, he needs to show us a comprehensive and workable alternative for how he plans to handle the policy area he could most impact as President.
Sachs and I worked together on the MDGs. Your reinterpretation of his directly written words are un-needed. He spoke for himself. He does not need your reinterpretation. In your and my life, we will never be as cogent as he is.
Plus I don’t see jconway reinterpreting Sachs, but just responding to him.
It’s a pretty cool project Sachs was put in charge of under the auspices of the UN. That’s primarily what he lectured about in 2008 when he came to speak at Chicago, though he also was an early critic of tame Wall Street regulations and is a pre-crash figure who seemed worried we’d have a crash. The main critique I heard about him was from socialist friends who thought shock therapy in the former Soviet Union imposed neoliberalism on socialist states.
I’ll defer to TBD if I got any of these specifics wrong, but I respect Sachs. His analysis is entirely accurate, it would be nice if Bernie or his surrogates made similar substantive be criticisms of the overall conduct of foreign policy and not just beating the drum about the AUMF vote from 15 years ago. It’s not the be all end all, though obviously we’d be in better shape had it not happened.
Because Hillary will win the nomination no matter how I vote, so I might as well vote for somebody who’s integrity, character, and consistency I admire. Who’s domestic positions inspire me to demand more of our government and our people, and who is clearly unbought and unpaid for by special interests.
But God help us if he is our nominee or President if he doesn’t begin to value foreign policy as much as he values economics. He ought to study the issues and sign up some key advisers. Andrew Bacevich comes to mind, so does Jim Webb if he really wants to have an influence this cycle.