Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine
02/05/2016 12:25 pm ET | Updated Feb 05, 2016
. Jeffrey SachsDirector, Earth Institute at Columbia University
JEWEL SAMAD VIA GETTY IMAGES
There's no doubt that Hillary is the candidate of Wall Street. Even more
dangerous, though, is that she is the candidate of the military-industrial
complex. The idea that she is bad on the corporate issues but good on
national security has it wrong. Her so-called foreign policy "experience"
has been to support every war demanded by the US deep security state run by
the military and the CIA.
Hillary and Bill Clinton's close relations with Wall Street helped to stoke
two financial bubbles (1999-2000 and 2005-8) and the Great Recession that
followed Lehman's collapse. In the 1990s they pushed financial deregulation
for their campaign backers that in turn let loose the worst demons of
financial manipulation, toxic assets, financial fraud, and eventually
collapse. In the process they won elections and got mighty rich.
Yet Hillary's connections with the military-industrial complex are also
alarming. It is often believed that the Republicans are the neocons and the
Democrats act as restraints on the warmongering. This is not correct. Both
parties are divided between neocon hawks and cautious realists who don't
want the US in unending war. Hillary is a staunch neocon whose record of
favoring American war adventures explains much of our current security
danger.
Just as the last Clinton presidency set the stage for financial collapse, it
also set the stage for unending war. On October 31, 1998 President Clinton
signed the Iraq Liberation Act that made it official US policy to support
"regime change" in Iraq.
It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove
the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the
emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.
Thus were laid the foundations for the Iraq War in 2003.
Of course, by 2003, Hillary was a Senator and a staunch supporter of the
Iraq War, which has cost the US trillions of dollars, thousands of lives,
and done more to create ISIS and Middle East instability than any other
single decision of modern foreign policy. In defending her vote, Hillary
parroted the phony propaganda of the CIA:
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that
Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons
stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also
given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda
members... "
After the Iraq Liberation Act came the 1999 Kosovo War, in which Bill
Clinton called in NATO to bomb Belgrade, in the heart of Europe, and
unleashing another decade of unrest in the Balkans. Hillary, traveling in
Africa, called Bill: "I urged him to bomb," she told reporter Lucinda Frank.
Hillary's record as Secretary of State is among the most militaristic, and
disastrous, of modern US history. Some experience. Hilary was a staunch
defender of the military-industrial-intelligence complex at every turn,
helping to spread the Iraq mayhem over a swath of violence that now
stretches from Mali to Afghanistan. Two disasters loom largest: Libya and
Syria.
Hillary has been much attacked for the deaths of US diplomats in Benghazi,
but her tireless promotion of the overthrow Muammar Qaddafi by NATO bombing
is the far graver disaster. Hillary strongly promoted NATO-led regime change
in Libya, not only in violation of international law but counter to the most
basic good judgment. After the NATO bombing, Libya descended into civil war
while the paramilitaries and unsecured arms stashes in Libya quickly spread
west across the African Sahel and east to Syria. The Libyan disaster has
spawned war in Mali, fed weapons to Boko Haram in Nigeria, and fueled ISIS
in Syria and Iraq. In the meantime, Hillary found it hilarious to declare of
Qaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died."
Perhaps the crowning disaster of this long list of disasters has been
Hillary's relentless promotion of CIA-led regime change in Syria. Once again
Hillary bought into the CIA propaganda that regime change to remove Bashir
al-Assad would be quick, costless, and surely successful. In August 2011,
Hillary led the US into disaster with her declaration Assad must "get out of
the way," backed by secret CIA operations.
Five years later, no place on the planet is more ravaged by unending war,
and no place poses a great threat to US security. More than 10 million
Syrians are displaced, and the refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean or
undermining the political stability of Greece, Turkey, and the European
Union. Into the chaos created by the secret CIA-Saudi operations to
overthrow Assad, ISIS has filled the vacuum, and has used Syria as the base
for worldwide terrorist attacks.
The list of her incompetence and warmongering goes on. Hillary's support at
every turn for NATO expansion, including even into Ukraine and Georgia
against all common sense, was a trip wire that violated the post-Cold War
settlement in Europe in 1991 and that led to Russia's violent
counter-reactions in both Georgia and Ukraine. As Senator in 2008, Hilary
co-sponsored 2008-SR439, to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. As
Secretary of State, she then presided over the restart of the Cold War with
Russia.
It is hard to know the roots of this record of disaster. Is it chronically
bad judgment? Is it her preternatural faith in the lying machine of the CIA?
Is it a repeated attempt to show that as a Democrat she would be more
hawkish than the Republicans? Is it to satisfy her hardline campaign
financiers? Who knows? Maybe it's all of the above. But whatever the
reasons, hers is a record of disaster. Perhaps more than any other person,
Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the violence that stretches from West
Africa to Central Asia and that threatens US security.
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THE BLOG
Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine
02/05/2016 12:25 pm ET | Updated Feb 05, 2016
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. Jeffrey SachsDirector, Earth Institute at Columbia University
http://twitter.com/JeffDSachs
JEWEL SAMAD via Getty Images
There's no doubt that Hillary is the candidate of Wall Street. Even more
dangerous, though, is that she is the candidate of the military-industrial
complex. The idea that she is bad on the corporate issues but good on
national security has it wrong. Her so-called foreign policy "experience"
has been to support every war demanded by the US deep security state run by
the military and the CIA.
Hillary and Bill Clinton's close relations with Wall Street helped to stoke
two financial bubbles (1999-2000 and 2005-8) and the Great Recession that
followed Lehman's collapse. In the 1990s they pushed financial deregulation
for their campaign backers that in turn let loose the worst demons of
financial manipulation, toxic assets, financial fraud, and eventually
collapse. In the process they won elections and got mighty rich.
Yet Hillary's connections with the military-industrial complex are also
alarming. It is often believed that the Republicans are the neocons and the
Democrats act as restraints on the warmongering. This is not correct. Both
parties are divided between neocon hawks and cautious realists who don't
want the US in unending war. Hillary is a staunch neocon whose record of
favoring American war adventures explains much of our current security
danger.
Just as the last Clinton presidency set the stage for financial collapse, it
also set the stage for unending war. On October 31, 1998 President Clinton
signed the Iraq Liberation Act that made it official US policy to support
"regime change" in Iraq.
It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove
the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the
emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.
Thus were laid the foundations for the Iraq War in 2003.
Of course, by 2003, Hillary was a Senator and a staunch supporter of the
Iraq War, which has cost the US trillions of dollars, thousands of lives,
and done more to create ISIS and Middle East instability than any other
single decision of modern foreign policy. In defending her vote, Hillary
parroted the phony propaganda of the CIA:
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that
Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons
stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also
given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda
members... "
After the Iraq Liberation Act came the 1999 Kosovo War, in which Bill
Clinton called in NATO to bomb Belgrade, in the heart of Europe, and
unleashing another decade of unrest in the Balkans. Hillary, traveling in
Africa, called Bill: "I urged him to bomb," she told reporter Lucinda Frank.
Hillary's record as Secretary of State is among the most militaristic, and
disastrous, of modern US history. Some experience. Hilary was a staunch
defender of the military-industrial-intelligence complex at every turn,
helping to spread the Iraq mayhem over a swath of violence that now
stretches from Mali to Afghanistan. Two disasters loom largest: Libya and
Syria.
Hillary has been much attacked for the deaths of US diplomats in Benghazi,
but her tireless promotion of the overthrow Muammar Qaddafi by NATO bombing
is the far graver disaster. Hillary strongly promoted NATO-led regime change
in Libya, not only in violation of international law but counter to the most
basic good judgment. After the NATO bombing, Libya descended into civil war
while the paramilitaries and unsecured arms stashes in Libya quickly spread
west across the African Sahel and east to Syria. The Libyan disaster has
spawned war in Mali, fed weapons to Boko Haram in Nigeria, and fueled ISIS
in Syria and Iraq. In the meantime, Hillary found it hilarious to declare of
Qaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died."
Perhaps the crowning disaster of this long list of disasters has been
Hillary's relentless promotion of CIA-led regime change in Syria. Once again
Hillary bought into the CIA propaganda that regime change to remove Bashir
al-Assad would be quick, costless, and surely successful. In August 2011,
Hillary led the US into disaster with her declaration Assad must "get out of
the way," backed by secret CIA operations.
Five years later, no place on the planet is more ravaged by unending war,
and no place poses a great threat to US security. More than 10 million
Syrians are displaced, and the refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean or
undermining the political stability of Greece, Turkey, and the European
Union. Into the chaos created by the secret CIA-Saudi operations to
overthrow Assad, ISIS has filled the vacuum, and has used Syria as the base
for worldwide terrorist attacks.
The list of her incompetence and warmongering goes on. Hillary's support at
every turn for NATO expansion, including even into Ukraine and Georgia
against all common sense, was a trip wire that violated the post-Cold War
settlement in Europe in 1991 and that led to Russia's violent
counter-reactions in both Georgia and Ukraine. As Senator in 2008, Hilary
co-sponsored 2008-SR439, to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. As
Secretary of State, she then presided over the restart of the Cold War with
Russia.
It is hard to know the roots of this record of disaster. Is it chronically
bad judgment? Is it her preternatural faith in the lying machine of the CIA?
Is it a repeated attempt to show that as a Democrat she would be more
hawkish than the Republicans? Is it to satisfy her hardline campaign
financiers? Who knows? Maybe it's all of the above. But whatever the
reasons, hers is a record of disaster. Perhaps more than any other person,
Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the violence that stretches from West
Africa to Central Asia and that threatens US security.
