Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Is Hillary Clinton a Warmonger?

The last twig that libertarian fans of Donald Trump seem to grasp onto in supporting Trump over Hillary is the idea that Hillary Clinton would get us into a major war. That she is an over the top warmonger, a neocon on steroids.

How they hold this claim is hard to understand when she seems to spend most of her day reading Sydney Blumenthal emails.

James Warren at Vanity Fair informs on Blumenthal emails to Hillary:
Judging from his e-mails, Blumenthal has been a sort of 24-7 mini-mart of ideas for Clinton. He has been a two-legged LexisNexis who plies her with articles she must read...Blumenthhal...derided former House Speaker John Boehner as “louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle,”; and labeled The New Republic a shill for “the highest level Likud/neocon propaganda.”
Blumenthal, who it could be argued is perhaps her closest confidant after Huma, sent her this kind of comment about neocons in a private email that was never expected to see the light of day. She is not a neocon if Blumenthal feels comfortable sending her emails like that.

That said, as I believe Donald Trump would show as president, you don't need to be a neocon to want to go to war. Trump doesn't want to be a nation builder but he does want to be a tough guy enemy destroyer----and he sees lots of Islamic enemies that need to be destroyed. I would expect US troops on the ground in the Middle East within weeks of a Trump Administration. Not so with Hillary.

Hillary too, of course, could get us into all kinds of wars.

 Although Blumenthal sends her anti-neocon emails, she is surrounded by many warmonger hardcore neocons. The saving grace may be that foreign policy has really never been Hillary's shtick.

She is mostly a domestic policy nutjob.

Michael Brenner, Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, took a careful look at Hillary's foreign policy development in an article, Is Hillary Clinton a Warmonger? and reached the fascinating speculative conclusion that Bill Clinton may be the influence that keeps Hillary from taking the war route.

This, indeed, may be what it has come down to. On the one side, we have a destroy our enemies presidential candidate in Trump and on the other side a confused, blundering Hillary surrounded by warmongering neocons but in her most private emails from the closest of close confidants she gets emails warning about neocons. And then the ultimate wild card, we have Slick Willy, who has never had a serious taste for war, which if he stays alive during a Hillary administration could whisper anti-big war advice in her ear.

I hasten to add that I don't see a real promising choice in either Trump or Clinton. They would both be terrible. It is a mistake for libertarians to support either Trump over Clinton. They are both serious statists with little in redeeming presidential qualities--and either could get us into more war.

My fear of a Trump presidency is slightly greater, however, because he has that strong mass of enthusiastic supporters and I always fear a leader with enthusiastic supporters if that leader does not have a strong libertarian bent.

A Hillary presidency with an obstructionist (slightly) Republican congress is probably the best we can hope for.

-RW

4 comments:

  1. The whole argument of Trump-a-tarians is simply just boiling down to "He's not Hillary" at this point and nothing else.

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  2. She voted for the Iraq invasion as a senator. She was co-president when Bubba waged war on Serbia, including bombing the Chinese embassy. She was a prime mover behind the Obama regimes war against Libya. She is on record calling for massive intervention in the Syrian civil war. Is that warmongery enough for you Wenzel? I'm starting to think that you actually support Hillary for President. This is what happens to people who spend too much time in Sodom By The Sea.

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  3. Who cares who emails Hillary? If Blumenthal is an advisor that us advocating anti war stances, then Hillary hasn't been listening. We already have Hillary's record in the Senate and as Secretary of State. No need to speculate.

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  4. 'She's a domestic policy nut job.'

    Robert, there's the rub. The domestic policy nut jobs turn to 'busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels' when they run the economy into the ground. Unleashing Hillary on the domestic economy means more 'We came, we saw, he died' trouble for the Middle East and the Ukraine.

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