[blind-democracy] Re: Hillary the Hawk

From: Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2016 09:15:08 -0500

It's interesting that the NYT had a very long article in Sunday's edition,
outlining some of her negatives in terms of electability, even though they
had supported her over Bernie. I read the article and it wasn't
complimentary. I'm not sure that Hillary can win if nominated. Neither are
several people whose articles I've read. The establishment may like her, but
I haven't met any real people who do.

Miriam

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, February 29, 2016 11:06 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Hillary the Hawk

No surprises here. In fact it might be said to confirm why Clinton
could win the presidency, with the support of main-line Republicans.
She is a known commodity, easy to work with and with a Hawkish foreign
policy. She has already signaled that when elected, she can assure
Americans that there will be no great changes in domestic policies.
While that is a better posture than that of any of the Republican
clowns, it is not good news for the Working Class. Is the best hope
of the majority of Americans a promise of hope deferred?
Carl Jarvis

On 2/29/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hillary the Hawk
Monday, 29 February 2016 00:00 By Stephen Zunes, The Cairo Review of

Global

Affairs | News Analysis
Hillary Clinton, a Democratic presidential hopeful, speaks during a rally
at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, February
26, 2016. (Doug Mills / The New York Times)
Despite being an icon for many liberals and an anathema to the Republican
right, former US Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's

positions

on the Middle East have more closely resembled those of the latter than

the

former. Her hawkish views go well beyond her strident support for the US
invasion of Iraq in 2003 and subsequent occupation and counter-insurgency
war. From Afghanistan to Western Sahara, she has advocated for military
solutions to complex political problems, backed authoritarian allies and
occupying armies, dismissed war crimes, and opposed political involvement
by
the United Nations and its agencies. TIME magazine's Michael Crowley aptly
summed up her State Department record in 2014:
As Secretary of State, Clinton backed a bold escalation of the Afghanistan
war. She pressed Obama to arm the Syrian rebels, and later endorsed
airstrikes against the Assad regime. She backed intervention in Libya, and
her State Department helped enable Obama's expansion of lethal drone
strikes. In fact, Clinton may have been the administration's most reliable
advocate for military action. On at least three crucial issues -
Afghanistan, Libya, and the bin Laden raid - Clinton took a more

aggressive

line than [Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates, a Bush-appointed

Republican.

Her even more hawkish record during her eight years in the Senate, when

she

was not constrained by President Barack Obama's more cautious foreign
policy, led to strong criticism from progressive Democrats and played a
major role in her unexpected defeat in the 2008 Democratic presidential
primaries.
After stepping down from the helm of the State Department in early 2013,
she
made a concerted effort to distance herself from Obama's Middle East
policies, which - despite including the bombing of no less than seven
countries in the greater region - she argues have not been aggressive
enough. It is not surprising, therefore, that the prominent

neoconservative

Robert Kagan, in examining the prospects of her becoming
commander-in-chief,
exclaimed to the New York Times in 2014, "I feel comfortable with her on
foreign policy." He elaborated by noting that "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

call it something else." The same New York Times article noted how
neoconservatives are "aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and
her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver's seat
of American foreign policy."
If Clinton wins the American presidency in 2016, she will be confronted
with
the same momentous regional issues she handled without distinction as
Obama's first secretary of state: among them, the civil war and regional
proxy war in Syria; the Syrian conflict's massive refugee crisis; civil
conflict in Yemen and Libya; political fragility in Iraq and Afghanistan;
Iran's regional ambitions; the Israel-Palestine conflict; and

deteriorating

relations with longstanding allies Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. There
are disagreements as to whether Clinton truly embraces a neoconservative

other strong ideological commitment to hardline policies or whether it is
part of a political calculation to protect herself from criticism from
Republicans who hold positions even further to the right. But considering
that the Democratic Party base is shifting more to the left, that she
represented the relatively liberal state of New York in the Senate, and
that
her 2008 presidential hopes were derailed in large part by her support for
the Iraq war, it would probably be a mistake to assume her positions have
been based primarily on political expediency. Regardless of her
motivations,
however, a look at the positions she has taken on a number of the key
Middle
East policy issues suggest that her presidency would shift America to a
still more militaristic and interventionist policy that further
marginalizes
concerns for human rights or international law.
Voting for War in Iraq
Hillary Clinton was among the minority of congressional Democrats who
supported Republican President George W. Bush's request for authorization
to
invade and occupy Iraq, a vote she says she cast "with conviction."As arms
control specialists, former United Nations weapons inspectors,
investigative
journalists, and others began raising questions regarding the Bush
administration's claims about Iraq having reconstituted its chemical,
biological, and nuclear weapons programs and its chemical and biological
weapons arsenals, Clinton sought to discredit those questioning the
administration's alarmist rhetoric by insisting that Iraq's possession of
such weapons and weapons programs were not in doubt. She said that "if

left

unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage
biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear
weapons." She insisted that there was a risk that, despite the absence of
the necessary delivery systems, Saddam Hussein would somehow, according to
the 2002 resolution, "employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack
against the United States," which therefore justifies "action by the

United

States to defend itself" through invading and occupying the country.
As a number of prominent arms control analysts had informed her

beforehand,

absolutely none of those charges were true. The pattern continued when
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in a widely ridiculed speech told the
United Nations that Iraq had close ties with Al-Qaeda, still had major
stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and active nuclear,
chemical,
and biological weapons programs. Powell himself later admitted his speech
was misleading and filled with errors, yet Clinton insisted that it was
nevertheless "compelling."
In an apparent effort to convince her New York constituents, still stung

the September 11 attack thirteen months earlier, of the necessity of war,
she was the only Democratic US senator who made the false claim that

Saddam

Hussein had "given aid, comfort, and sanctuary" to Al-Qaeda, an accusation
that even many fervent supporters of the invasion recognized as ludicrous.
Indeed, top strategic analysts had informed her that there were no

apparent

links between Saddam Hussein's secular nationalist regime and the radical
jihadist Al-Qaeda. Indeed, doubts over such claims appeared in the US
National Intelligence Estimates made available to her and in a definitive
report by the Department of Defense after the invasion. These reports not
only confirmed that no such link existed, but that no such link could have
been reasonably suggested based upon the evidence available at that time.
Clinton's defenders insist she was misled by faulty intelligence. She
admitted that she did not review the National Intelligence Estimate that
was
made available to members of Congress prior to the vote that was far more
nuanced in their assessments than the Bush administration claimed. (She
claimed that the authors of the report, including officials from the State
Department, Central Intelligence Agency, and Department of Defense, had
briefed her: "I felt very well briefed.") She also apparently ignored the
plethora of information provided by academics, independent strategic
analysts, former UN inspectors, and others, which challenged the Bush
administration's claims and correctly noted that Iraq had likely achieved
at
least qualitative disarmament. Furthermore, even if Iraq had been one of
the
dozens of countries in the world that still had stockpiles of chemical
and/or biological weapons and/or a nuclear program, the invasion was still
illegal under the UN Charter, according to a consensus of international

law

experts as well as then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; it was also
arguably unnecessary, given the deterrence capability of the United States
and well-armed Middle Eastern states.
Despite wording in the Congressional resolution providing Bush with an
open-ended authority to invade Iraq, Clinton later insisted that she voted
for the resolution simply because "we needed to put inspectors in." In
reality, at the time of vote, the Iraqis had already agreed in principle

a return of the weapons inspectors and were negotiating with the United
Nations Monitoring and Verification Commission on the details which were
formally institutionalized a few weeks later. (Indeed, it would have

likely

been resolved earlier had the United States not repeatedly postponed the

Security Council resolution in the hopes of inserting language which would
have allowed the United States to unilaterally interpret the level of
compliance.) In addition, she voted against the substitute amendment by
Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, which would have also granted
President Bush authority to use force, but only if Iraq defied subsequent
UN
demands regarding the inspections process. Instead, Clinton voted for the
Republican-sponsored resolution to give President Bush the authority to
invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own choosing regardless

whether inspectors returned. Unfettered large-scale weapons inspections

had

been going on in Iraq for nearly four months with no signs of any
proscribed
weapons or weapons facilities at the time the Bush administration launched
the March 2003 attack, yet she still argued that the invasion was

necessary

and lawful. Despite warnings by scholars, retired diplomats, and others
familiar with the region that a US invasion of Iraq would prove harmful to
the United States, she insisted that at US-led takeover of Iraq was "in

the

best interests of our nation."
Rather than being a misguided overreaction to the 9/11 tragedy driven by
the
trauma that America had experienced, Clinton's militaristic stance on Iraq
predated her support for Bush's invasion. For example, in defending her
husband President Bill Clinton's four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in
December 1998, she claimed that "the so-called presidential palaces in
reality were huge compounds well suited to hold weapons labs, stocks, and
records which Saddam Hussein was required by the UN to turn over. When
Saddam blocked the inspection process, the inspectors left." In reality,
there were no weapons labs, stocks of weapons, or missing records in these
presidential palaces. In addition, Saddam was still allowing for virtually
all inspections to go forward. The inspectors were ordered to depart by

her

husband a couple days beforehand to avoid being harmed in the incipient
bombings. Ironically, in justifying her support for invading Iraq years
later, she would claim that it was Saddam who had "thrown out" the UN
inspectors. She also bragged that it was during her husband's
administration
that the United States "changed its underlying policy toward Iraq from
containment to regime change."
What distinguishes Clinton from some of the other Democrats who crossed

the

aisle to support the Republican administration's war plans is that she
continued to defend her vote even when the rationales behind it had been
disproven. For example, in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in
New York in December 2003, in which she underscored her support for a
"tough-minded, muscular foreign and defense policy," she declared, "I was
one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to

use

force against Saddam Hussein. I believe that that was the right vote" and
was one that "I stand by." Similarly, in an interview on CNN's "Larry King
Live" in April 2004, when asked about her vote in favor of war
authorization, she said, "I don't regret giving the president authority."
As it became increasingly apparent that her rationales for supporting the
war were false, US casualties mounted, the United States was dragged into

long counter-insurgency war, and the ongoing US military presence was
exacerbating sectarian violence and the threat from extremists rather than
curbing it, Clinton came under increasing pressure from her constituents

call for a withdrawal of US forces. She initially rejected these demands,
however, insisting US troops were needed to keep fighting in order to
suppress the insurgency, terrorism, and sectarian divisions the invasion
had
spawned, urging "patience" and expressing her concern about the lack of
will
among some Americans "to stay the course." She insisted that "failure is
not
an option" in Iraq, so therefore, "We have no option but to stay involved
and committed." In 2005, she insisted that it "would be a mistake" to
withdraw US troops soon or simply set a timetable for withdrawal. She
argued
that the prospects for a "failed state" made possible by the invasion she
supported made it in the "national security interest" of the United States
to remain fighting in that country. When Democratic Congressman John

Murtha

of Pennsylvania made his first call for the withdrawal of US forces from
Iraq in November of that year, she denounced his effort, calling it a "a
big
mistake" and declared, "I reject a rigid timetable that the terrorists can
exploit." Using a similar rationale as was used in the latter years of the
Vietnam War, she declared, "My bottom line is that I don't want their sons
to die in vain," insisting that, "I don't think it's the right time to
withdraw" and that, "I don't believe it's smart to set a date for
withdrawal." In 2006, when Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts
(her eventual successor as secretary of state) sponsored an amendment that
would have required the redeployment of US forces from Iraq by the middle
of
2007 in order to advance a political solution to the growing sectarian
strife, she voted against it. Similarly, on "Meet the Press" in 2005, she
emphasized, "We don't want to send a signal to insurgents, to the
terrorists, that we are going to be out of here at some, you know, date
certain."
Two years after the invasion, as the consensus was growing that the
situation in Iraq was rapidly deteriorating, Clinton still defended the

war

effort. When she visited Iraq in February 2005 as a US senator, the
security
situation had gotten so bad that the four-lane divided highway on flat

open

terrain connecting the airport with the capital could not be secured at

the

time of her arrival, requiring a helicopter to transport her to the Green
Zone, but she nevertheless insisted that the US occupation was

"functioning

quite well." When fifty-five Iraqis and one American soldier were killed
during her twenty-four-hour visit, she insisted that the rise in suicide
bombings was somehow evidence that the insurgency was failing. As the

chaos

worsened in subsequent months, she continued to defend the invasion,
insisting, "We have given the Iraqis the precious gift of freedom,"
claiming
that whatever problems they were subsequently experiencing was their

fault,

since, "The Iraqis have not stepped up and taken responsibility, as we had
hoped."
Clinton finally began calling for the withdrawal of US troops when she
became a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, but

she

was critical of her rival Barack Obama's longstanding antiwar stance. Even
though Obama in 2002 (then a state senator in Illinois) had explicitly
supported the ongoing international strategy of enforcing sanctions,
maintaining an international force as a military deterrent, and returning
UN
inspectors to Iraq, Clinton charged in a nationally televised interview on
"Meet the Press" on January 14, 2008, that "his judgment was that, at the
time in 2002, we didn't need to make any efforts" to deal with the alleged
Iraqi "threat" - essentially repeating President Bush's argument that
anything short of supporting an invasion meant acquiescence to Saddam's
regime. She also criticized Obama's withdrawal plan.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates writes in his book Duty: Memoirs
of
a Secretary at War that Clinton stated in his presence that her opposition
to President Bush's decision in 2007 to reject the bipartisan call of the
Iraq Study Group to begin a osased withdrawal of US troops and to instead
escalate the number of American combat forces was largely political, given
the growing opposition to the war among Democratic voters. Indeed, long
before President Bush announced his "surge," Clinton had called for the
United States to send more troops.
Unlike former US Senators John Kerry, Tom Harkin, John Edwards, and other
Democratic supporters of the Iraq war resolution, Clinton has never
apologized for her vote to authorize force. She has, however, said that

she

now "regrets" her vote, which she refers to as a "mistake." Yet, arguments
against the Iraq war authorization, virtually all of which have turned out
to have been accurate, had been clearly articulated for months leading up
to
the congressional vote. She and her staff met with knowledgeable people

who

made a strong case against supporting President Bush's request, including
its illegality under the United Nations Charter, providing her with
extensive documentation challenging the administration's arguments, and
warning her of the likely repercussions of a US invasion and occupation.
"All Options on the Table"
Saddam's Iraq is not the only oil-rich country towards which Clinton has
threatened war over its alleged ties to terrorists and Weapons of Mass
Destruction. She long insisted that the United States should keep "all
options on the table" - clearly an implied threat of unilateral military
force - in response to Iran's nuclear program despite the illegality under
the UN Charter of launching such a unilateral attack. Her hawkish stance
toward Iran, which is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) and has disavowed any intention of developing nuclear weapons,

stands

in contrast with her attitude toward countries such as Israel, Pakistan,
and
India which are not NPT signatories and have already constructed nuclear
weapons. She has shown little regard for the danger of the proliferation

countries allied with the United States, opposing the enforcement of UN
Security Council resolutions challenging the programs of Israel, Pakistan,
and India, supporting the delivery of nuclear-capable missiles and jet
fighters to these countries, and voting to end restrictions on US nuclear
cooperation with countries that have not signed on to the NPT.
Clinton has nonetheless insisted that the prospect of Iran developing
nuclear weapons "must be unacceptable to the entire world" - challenging
the
nuclear monopoly of the United States and its allies in the region would
somehow "shake the foundation of global security to its very core," in her
view. In 2006, she accused the Bush administration of failing to take the
threat of a nuclear Iran seriously enough, criticized the administration
for
allowing European nations to lead diplomatic efforts, and insisted that

the

United States should make it clear that military options were still being
actively considered. Similarly, during the 2008 presidential campaign, she
accused Obama of being "naïve" and "irresponsible" for wanting to engage
with Iran diplomatically. Not only did she promise to "obliterate" Iran if
it used its nonexistent nuclear weapons to attack Israel, she refused to
rule out a US nuclear first strike on that country, saying, "I don't
believe
that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the
use or non-use of nuclear weapons."
As with Iraq, she has made a number of alarmist statements regarding Iran,
such as falsely claiming in 2007 that Iran had a nuclear weapons program,
even though International Atomic Energy Agency and independent arms

control

specialists, as well as a subsequent National Intelligence Estimate,
indicated that Iran's nuclear program at that time had no military
component. Clinton supported the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment calling on
President Bush to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist
group, which the Bush administration correctly recognized as an
irresponsibly sweeping characterization of an organization that also
controls major civilian administration, business, and educational
institutions. The amendment declared that "it should be the policy of the
United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and
destabilizing influence of the Government of the Islamic Republic of
Iran," language which many feared could be used as a de facto

authorization

for war.
Her hawkish stance towards Iran continued after she became Obama's first
secretary of state in 2009. In Michael Crowley's 2014 story in TIME, Obama
administration officials noted how she was "skeptical of diplomacy with
Iran, and firmly opposed to talk of a 'containment' policy that would be

alternative to military action should negotiations with Tehran fail."
Clinton disapproved of the opposition expressed by Pentagon officials
regarding a possible US attack on Iran because she insisted "the Iranians
had to believe we would use force if diplomacy failed." In an August 2014
interview with the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, when she was no longer in
the administration, she took a much harder line on Iranian nuclear
enrichment than the United States and its negotiating partners recognized
was realistic, leading some to suspect she was actually pushing for
military
intervention.
Clinton, by then an announced candidate for the Democratic presidential
nomination, did end up endorsing the 2015 nuclear agreement. Opposing a
major foreign policy initiative of a sitting Democratic president,
especially one with strong Democratic support, would have been politically
untenable. Yet, Clinton's hardline views toward the Islamic Republic

remain

palpable. For example, in a speech in September 2015 at the Brookings
Institution, she claimed that Iran's leaders "talk about wiping Israel off
the face of the map" - a gross distortion routinely parroted by hardliners
in Washington. The original statement was uttered by revolutionary leader
Ayatollah Khomeini a quarter century earlier and quoted in 2005 by
then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who left office in 2013). Moreover,
there is no such idiom in Farsi for "wiping off the map." Khomeini's
statement was in a passive tense and asserted his belief that Israel

should

no longer be a Jewish nation state, not that the country's inhabitants
should be annihilated. Yet, during her speech, Clinton kept repeating for
emphasis, "They vowed to destroy Israel. And that's worth saying again.
They
vowed to destroy Israel."
Clinton often seems oblivious to the contradictions in her views and
rhetoric. For example, to challenge Iran, an authoritarian theocratic
regime
which backs extremist Islamist groups, she has pledged to "sustain a

robust

military presence in the region" and "increase security cooperation with
our
Gulf allies" - namely, other authoritarian theocratic regimes like Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, which also back extremist
Islamist groups.
She has also repeated neoconservative talking points on alleged Iranian
interference in various Middle Eastern conflicts. For example, she has
decried Iran's "involvement in and influence over Iraq," an ironic
complaint
for someone who voted to authorize the overthrow of the anti-Iranian
secular
government of Saddam Hussein despite his widely predicted replacement by
pro-Iranian Shiite fundamentalist parties. As a US senator, she went on
record repeating a whole series of false, exaggerated, and unproven

charges

by Bush administration officials regarding Iranian support for the Iraqi
insurgency, even though the vast majority of foreign support for the
insurgency was coming from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries and that
the majority of the insurgents attacking US occupation forces were
fanatically anti-Iranian and anti-Shiite.
She has also gone on record holding "Iran responsible for the acts of
aggression carried out by Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel." Presumably
since she realizes that relations between Iran and Hamas - who are
supporting opposing sides in the Syrian civil war - are actually quite
limited, she has not called for specific actions regarding this alleged
link. But she has pledged to make it a priority as president to cut off
Iran's ability to fund and arm Hezbollah, including calling on US allies

somehow block Iranian planes from entering Syria. In addition,
notwithstanding the provisions in the nuclear agreement to drop sanctions
against Iran, she has called on Congress to "close any gaps" in the
existing
sanctions on non-nuclear issues.
When Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, her principal rival for the
Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, suggested taking steps to
eventually normalize diplomatic relations with Iran, the Clinton campaign
attacked him as being irresponsible and naïve. Despite the fact that the
vast majority of US allies already have diplomatic relations with the
Islamic Republic, a campaign spokesperson insisted it would somehow "cause
very real consternation among our allies and partners."
Dictators and Democrats
Though bringing democracy to Iraq was one of the rationales Hillary

Clinton

gave for supporting the invasion of that country, she has not been as
supportive of democratic movements struggling against American allies.
During the first two weeks of protests in Tunisia against the dictatorial
regime of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali in December 2010, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton expressed her concern over the impact of the "unrest and
instability" on the "very positive aspects of our relationship with
Tunisia." She insisted that the United States was "not taking sides" in

the

struggle between the corrupt authoritarian government and the

pro-democracy

demonstrators, and that she would "wait and see" before communicating
directly with Ben Ali or his ministers. Nearly four weeks after the
outbreak
of protests, she finally acknowledged some of the grievances of the
demonstrators, saying "one of my biggest concerns in this entire region

are

the many young people without economic opportunities in their home
countries." Rather than calling for a more democratic and accountable
government in Tunisia, however, her suggestion for resolving the crisis

was

calling for the economies of Tunisia and other North African states "to be
more open." Ironically, Tunisia under the Ben Ali regime - more than

almost

any country in the region - had been following the dictates of Washington
and the International Monetary Fund in instituting "structural adjustment
programs" privatizing much of its economy and allowing for an

unprecedented

level of "free trade."
Just two days after the interview in which she appeared to back the Ben

Ali

regime, as the protests escalated further, Clinton took a more proactive
stance at a meeting in Qatar, where she noted that "people have grown

tired

of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order" and called for
"political reforms that will create the space young people are demanding,
to
participate in public affairs and have a meaningful role in the decisions
that shape their lives." By this point, however, Tunisians were making
clear
they were not interested in simply "political reforms" but the downfall of
the regime, which took place the following day.
Clinton took a similarly cautious approach regarding the Egyptian

uprising,

which began a week and a half later on January 25. In the initial days of
the protests, despite the government's brutal crackdown, she refused to do
more than encourage the regime to allow for peaceable assembly. Despite
appearances to the contrary, Clinton insisted that "the country was

stable"

and that the Mubarak government was "looking for ways to respond to the
legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people," despite the

failure

of the regime in its nearly thirty years in power to do so. As protests
continued, she issued a statement simply calling on the regime to reform
from within rather than supporting the movement's demand for the downfall
of
the dictatorship.
After two weeks of protests, Clinton pressed vigorously for restraint by
security forces and finally called for an "orderly, peaceful transition"

a "real democracy" in Egypt, but still refused to demand that Mubarak had
to
step down, insisting that "it's not a question of who retains power. That
should not be the issue. It's how are we going to respond to the

legitimate

needs and grievances expressed by the Egyptian people and chart a new
path."
On the one hand, she recognized that whether Mubarak would remain in power
"is going to be up to the Egyptian people." On the other hand, she
continued
to speak in terms of reforms coming from within the regime, stating that

policy was to "help clear the air so that those who remain in power,
starting with President Mubarak, with his new vice president, with the new
prime minister, will begin a process of reaching out, of creating a
dialogue
that will bring in peaceful activists and representatives of civil society
to plan a way forward that will meet the legitimate grievances of the
Egyptian people." As the repression continued to worsen and demands for
suspending US military assistance to the regime increased, she insisted
"there is no discussion of cutting off aid." As late as February 6, when
Mubarak's fall appeared imminent, Clinton was publicly advocating a
leadership role for Mubarak's newly named vice president. That was General
Omar Suleiman, the longtime head of Egypt's feared general intelligence
agency, who among other things had played a key role in the Central
Intelligence Agency's covert rendition program under which suspected
terrorists were handed over to third-party governments to be interrogated
and in some cases were tortured. In discussions within the Obama
administration, she pushed for the idea of encouraging Mubarak to initiate
a
gradual transition of power, disagreeing with Obama's eventual recognition
that the US-backed dictator had to step down immediately. In her book Hard
Choices, a memoir of her tenure as secretary of state written three years
later, Clinton noted, "I was concerned that we not be seen as pushing a
longtime partner out the door."
After Saudi Arabian forces joined those of the Bahraini monarchy in
brutally
repressing nonviolent pro-democracy demonstrators the following month, the
Wall Street Journal reported that Clinton had emerged as one of the
"leading
voices inside the administration urging greater US support for the

Bahraini

king." In Yemen, while she eventually called for authoritarian President
Ali
Abdullah Saleh to step down, she backed the Saudi initiative to have him
replaced by his vice president, General Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, rather
than
support the demands of the pro-democracy movement to allow a broad
coalition
of opposition activists to form a transition government and prepare for
democratic multiparty elections.
Clinton proved an enthusiastic supporter of regime change when it came to
dictatorships opposed by the United States, however. While there has been
debate regarding the appropriateness and extent of US intervention in

Libya

and Syria, she consistently allied herself with those advocating US
military
involvement. She pushed hard and eventually successfully for US
intervention
in support for rebel forces in Libya, over the objections of key Obama
administration officials, including the normally hawkish Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates. While the Arab League had requested and the United
Nations had authorized the enforcement of a no-fly zone to protect
civilians
from attack by the forces of dictator Muammar Gadhafi, North Atlantic
Treaty
Organization (NATO) forces - with Clinton's encouragement - dramatically
expanded their role to essentially become the air force of the rebels.
Following the extra-judicial killing of Gadhafi by rebel soldiers, she
joked, "We came, we saw, he died," which some took as an effective
endorsement of crimes committed by armed allies against designated enemy
leaders.
During the Benghazi hearings in October 2015, when she was asked about

that

comment, she said it "was an expression of relief that the military

mission

undertaken by NATO and our other partners had achieved its end." However,
in
justifying US military intervention, the Obama administration initially
insisted that the goal was "to protect the Libyan people from immediate
danger, and to establish a no-fly zone," not regime change or
assassination,
underscoring Clinton's apparent role in dramatically expanding the mission
of US forces. The chaos that resulted from the seizure of power by a

number

of armed militia groups, including Islamist extremists, created a

situation

where militiamen numbered nearly a quarter million in a country of some

six

million people. While there appears to be little merit in the Republican
accusations against Clinton in regard to her conduct regarding the killing
of the US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in
Benghazi by Islamist extremists in September 2012, her role in helping to
create the situation that gave rise to such extremists raises more serious
questions.
As a US senator, and well before the 2011 uprising in Syria, Clinton was a
strong supporter of Republican-led efforts to punish and isolate the

Bashar

Al-Assad regime. She was a co-sponsor of the 2004 Syrian Accountability
Act,
demanding that - under threat of tough economic sanctions - Syria
unilaterally disarm various weapons systems (similar to those possessed by
hostile neighbors), abide by a UN Security Council resolution calling for
the withdrawal of foreign troops from Lebanon (which had also been

occupied

by Israel for twenty-two years without US objection), and return to peace
talks with Israel (despite Israel's categorical refusal to withdraw from
the
occupied Golan Heights). Her resolution also claimed that the Syrian
government was responsible for the deaths of Americans in Iraq and
threatened to hold Syria accountable in language that other senators

feared

could be used by the Bush administration for military strikes.
Not long after the initially nonviolent uprising in Syria turned into a
bloody civil war with heavy foreign intervention, the New York Times
reported that Clinton pushed hard for the Obama administration to become
directly involved militarily in support for Syrian rebels. Irritated that
NATO had gone well beyond its mandate in Libya, Russia and China blocked

action on Syria. Obama eventually agreed with Clinton to begin training

and

arming some rebels, but despite the half billion dollars invested in the
project, only a few dozen rebels made it into the field and they were
quickly overrun by rival Islamist rebels of the Al-Nusra Front. Clinton

has

subsequently insisted that the disorganized and factious nature of the
armed
secular Syrian opposition notwithstanding, the failure to topple the

Syrian

regime or contain the rise of Islamist extremists was that the United
States
did not arm the rebels earlier and more heavily. Indeed, she has
essentially
blamed Obama for the dramatic rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,
saying his failure "to help build up a credible fighting force left a

big

vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled." She has also expressed
disappointment that the Obama administration backed down from its threats
in
2013 to bomb Syria following the Al-Assad regime's launch of a deadly

sarin

gas attack on residential areas near Damascus, even after the government
agreed to disarm its chemical weapons.
"Friend" of Israel
During and after her term as a US senator, Hillary Clinton has developed a
reputation as one of the most rightwing Democrats on the Israel-Palestine
conflict. She has repeatedly sided with Likud-led governments against
Israeli progressives and moderates. She has not only condemned Hamas and
other Palestinian extremists, but has been critical of the Palestinian
Authority (PA) as well. That has bolstered the Israeli right's contention
that there are no moderate Palestinians with which to negotiate.
As a US senator, Clinton defended Israel's colonization efforts in the
occupied West Bank and was highly critical of UN efforts to uphold
international humanitarian law that forbids transferring civilian
populations into territories under foreign belligerent occupation, taking
the time to visit a major Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank in

show of support in 2005. She moderated that stance somewhat as secretary

state in expressing concerns over how the rightwing Israeli government's
settlement policies harmed the overall climate of the peace process, but
she
has refused to acknowledge the illegality of the settlements or demand

that

Israel abide by international demands to stop building additional
settlements. Subsequently, she has argued that the Obama administration
pushed too hard in the early years of the administration to get Israel to
suspend settlement construction. In 2011, Clinton successfully argued for

US veto of a UN Security Council resolution reiterating the illegality of
the settlements and calling for a construction freeze. On this issue, that
fit a pattern of Clinton's disregard for the UN Security Council, which

was

established precisely to be a vehicle for enforcing international law such
as in matters of belligerent foreign occupation. "We have consistently

over

many years said that the United Nations Security Council - and resolutions
that would come before the Security Council - is not the right vehicle to
advance the goal," Clinton has said.
The favoritism toward Israel is all the more glaring given America's
failure
or unwillingness to stop Israel's colonization on its own. When the
government of Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reneged on an

earlier

promise of a temporary and limited freeze and announced massive subsidies
for the construction of new settlements on the eve of Clinton's 2011 visit
to Israel, she spoke only of the need for peace talks to resume. She
equated
the PA's pursuit of its legal right to have Palestine statehood recognized
by the United Nations with Israel's illegal settlements policy as factors
undermining the peace process.
While rejecting Palestinian demands that Israel live up to its previous
commitments to freeze settlements on the grounds there should be no
pre-conditions to talks, Clinton has at times demanded pre-conditions for
Arab participation. For example, in response to President Bush's

invitation

for Arab states to attend the Annapolis peace conference in 2007,
then-Senator Clinton went on record insisting that Arab states wishing to
attend should unilaterally "recognize Israel's right to exist and not use
such recognition as a bargaining chip for future Israel concessions" and
"end the Arab League economic boycott of Israel in all its forms." The
letter made no mention of the establishment of a Palestinian state, an end
to the Israeli occupation, the withdrawal of illegal Israeli settlements,
or
any other Israeli obligations. As James Zogby of the Arab American
Institute
put it at the time, "if the goal is for Arab states not to participate in
the upcoming conference, this would be the way to go." The Bush
administration rejected her demands for such pre-conditions.
Another example of Clinton's double standards has been in her pledge as a
presidential candidate to increase US military aid and diplomatic support
for Israel's rightwing government. This is a government that includes
ministers from far right parties who support violent settler militia that
have repeatedly attacked Palestinian civilians, oppose recognition of a
Palestinian state, and reject the Oslo Accords and subsequent agreements

the Israeli government. However, Clinton insists, "We will not deal with
nor
in any way fund a Palestinian government that includes Hamas unless and
until Hamas has renounced violence, recognized Israel, and agreed to

the previous obligations of the Palestinian Authority."
More recently, Clinton has been making a series of excuses as to why

Israel

cannot make peace despite the Palestine Authority's acquiescence to
virtually all the demands of the Obama administration. For example, the
Washington Post noted how she "appeared to blame the collapse of direct
Israel-Palestinian talks on the wave of Mideast revolutions and unrest
during the 2011 Arab Spring, although talks had broken off the previous
year." Clinton has also said that Israelis cannot be expected to make

peace

until they "know what happens in Syria and whether Jordan will remain
stable," which most observers recognize will take a very long time; that
line of thinking enables Israel to further colonize the West Bank to the
point where the establishment of a viable Palestinian state is impossible.
What kind of peace settlement she envisions has not been made clear, but
she
did endorse then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's 2004 "Convergence Plan,"
which would have allowed Israel to annex large areas of Palestinian
territory conquered by Israeli forces in the 1967 war, despite the
longstanding principle in international law against any country expanding
its territory by force and the fact that the plan divides any future
Palestinian state into a series of small, non-contiguous cantons

surrounded

by Israel.
As a US senator, Clinton co-sponsored a resolution which, had it passed,
would have established a precedent by referring to the West Bank not as an
occupied territory but as a "disputed" territory. This distinction is
important for two reasons. The word "disputed" implies that the claims of
the West Bank's Israeli conquerors are as legitimate as the claims of
Palestinians who have lived on that land for centuries. And disputed
territories - unlike occupied territories - are not covered by the Fourth
Geneva Convention and many other international legal statutes. As a

lawyer,

Clinton must have recognized that such wording had the effect of
legitimizing the expansion of a country's territory by force, a clear
violation of the UN Charter.
Clinton has challenged the jurisdiction of the International Court of
Justice (ICJ). In 2004, the world court ruled by a 14-1 vote (with only

the

US judge dissenting, largely on a technicality) that Israel, like every
country, is obliged to abide by provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention
on the Laws of War, and that the international community - as in any other
case in which ongoing violations are taking place - is obliged to ensure
that international humanitarian law is enforced. At issue was the Israeli
government's ongoing construction of a separation barrier deep inside the
occupied Palestinian West Bank, which the World Court recognized - as does
the broad consensus of international legal scholarship - as a violation of
international humanitarian law. The ICJ ruled that Israel, like any
country,
had the right to build the barrier along its internationally recognized
border for self-defense, but did not have the right to build it inside
another country as a means of effectively annexing Palestinian land. In an
unprecedented congressional action, Senator Clinton immediately introduced
a
resolution to put the US Senate on record "supporting the construction by
Israel of a security fence" and "condemning the decision of the
International Court of Justice on the legality of the security fence." In
an
effort to render the UN impotent in its enforcement of international law,
her resolution (which the Republican-controlled Senate failed to pass as
being too extreme) attempted to put the Senate on record "urging no

further

action by the United Nations to delay or prevent the construction of the
security fence."
Clinton's claim that "it makes no sense for the United Nations to
vehemently
oppose a fence which is a nonviolent response to terrorism rather than
opposing terrorism itself" was false in that the UN and the world court
were
only objecting to the barrier being built beyond Israel's borders. Indeed,
in her resolution and elsewhere, she appeared to be deliberately
misrepresenting the ICJ's published opinion, claiming that opposition to
the
plan of building a barrier in a serpentine fashion deep inside the West
Bank
as part of an effort to effectively annex large swathes of the occupied
territory into Israel was denying Israel its right to self-defense and
therefore was proof of an "anti-Israel" bias. In a series of statements

and

in her resolution, she made no distinction between Israel's legal right to
defend its borders, which the world court upheld, and the land grab to
which
the court objected.
Clinton has also been an outspoken defender of Israeli military actions,
even when the United Nations and reputable international and Israeli human
rights groups have documented violations of international humanitarian

law.

While appropriately condemning terrorism and other attacks on civilian
targets by Hamas, Hezbollah, and other extremist groups, she has
consistently rejected evidence that Israel has committed war crimes on an
even greater scale. For example, since becoming a US senator in early

2001,

she has publicly condemned the vast majority of the 135 killings of

Israeli

children, but not once has she criticized any of the more than 2,000

deaths

of Palestinian children.
In the face of widespread criticism by reputable human rights

organizations

over Israel's systematic assaults against civilian targets in its April
2002
offensive in the West Bank, Senator Clinton co-sponsored a resolution
defending the Israeli actions that claimed they were "necessary steps to
provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure
in the Palestinian areas." She opposed UN efforts to investigate alleged
war
crimes by Israeli occupation forces and criticized President Bush for
calling on Israel to pull back from its violent reconquest of Palestinian
cities in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
She has vigorously defended Israel's wars on Gaza. As secretary of state,
she took the lead in attempting to block any action by the United Nations
in
response to a 2009 report by the UN Human Rights Council - headed by the
distinguished South African jurist Richard Goldstone (a Zionist Jew) -
which
documented war crimes by both Israel and Hamas. She claims that the report
denied Israel's right to self-defense, when it in fact explicitly
recognized
Israel's right to do so. Since the report's only objections to Israeli
conduct were in regard to attacks on civilian targets, not its military
actions against extremist militias lobbing rockets into Israel, it appears
that either she was deliberately misrepresenting the report, never

bothered

to read it before attacking it, or believes killing civilians can
constitute
legitimate self-defense.
When Israeli forces attacked a UN school housing refugees in the Gaza

Strip

in July of 2014, killing dozens of civilians, the Obama administration
issued a statement saying it was "appalled" by the "disgraceful" shelling.
By contrast, Clinton - when pressed about it in her interview with Jeffrey
Goldberg in the Atlantic - refused to criticize the massacre, saying that
"it's impossible to know what happens in the fog of war." Though
investigators found no evidence of Hamas equipment or military activity
anywhere near the school, Clinton falsely alleged that they were firing
rockets from an annex to the school. In any case, she argued, when
Palestinian civilians die from Israeli attacks, "the ultimate
responsibility
has to rest on Hamas and the decisions it made."
Clinton's defense of Israeli war crimes is not restricted to
Palestinian-populated areas, but includes those that take place in
countries
with historically close relations with the United States. During the
thirty-four-day conflict between Israeli and Hezbollah forces in 2006,
which
resulted in the deaths of more than eight hundred Lebanese civilians, she
responded to the widespread international criticism of the Israeli attacks
on civilian infrastructure and the high civilian casualties by
co-sponsoring
a resolution unconditionally endorsing Israel's war on Lebanon. Failing to
distinguish between Israel's right to self-defense and the large-scale
bombing of civilian targets far from any Hezbollah military activity,
Clinton asked, "If extremist terrorists were launching rocket attacks
across
the Mexican or Canadian border, would we stand by or would we defend
America
against these attacks from extremists?" During and after the fighting,
Clinton failed to recognize that most critics of the Israeli actions never
questioned Israel's right to self-defense against Hezbollah, but - in the
words of a Human Rights Watch report - the "systematic failure by the IDF
to
distinguish between combatants and civilians" and the way in which

"Israeli

forces have consistently launched artillery and air attacks with limited

dubious military gain but excessive civilian cost." The report, echoing a
similar report by Amnesty International and other human rights groups,
noted
how "in dozens of attacks, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent
military target. In some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack,

the

absence of a military target, as well as return strikes on rescuers,
suggest
that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians." While tens of
thousands of Israelis protested the Lebanon war - which the Israeli
government later acknowledged was unnecessary and harmful for Israel -
Clinton emerged as one of its biggest cheerleaders. While diplomats at the
United Nations were desperately working to end the fighting, Clinton spoke
at a rally by rightwing groups outside the UN headquarters in New York

City

where she praised Israel's efforts to "send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah,
to the Syrians, [and] to the Iranians," because, in her words, they oppose
the United States and Israel's commitment to "life and freedom."
Clinton has opposed humanitarian efforts supportive of the Palestinians,
criticizing a flotilla scheduled to bring relief supplies to the besieged
Gaza Strip in 2011, claiming it would "provoke actions by entering into
Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the
right
to defend themselves." Not only did she fail to explain how ships with no
weapons or weapons components on board (the only cargo on the US ship were
letters of solidarity to the Palestinians in that besieged enclave), she
also failed to explain why she considered the Mediterranean Sea off the
coast of the port of Gaza to be "Israeli waters" when the entire
international community recognizes Israeli territorial waters as being

well

to the northeast of the ships' intended route. Clinton's State Department
issued a public statement designed to discourage Americans from taking

part

in the flotilla to Gaza because they might be attacked by Israeli forces,
yet it never issued a public statement demanding that Israel not attack
Americans legally traveling in international waters. The flotilla never
went
forward, however, after she successfully convinced the Greek government to
deny the organizers the right to sail from Greek ports.
A focus of Clinton has been her insistence that the PA was responsible for
publishing textbooks promoting "anti-Semitism," "violence," and
"dehumanizing rhetoric." The only source she has cited to uphold these
charges, however, has been a rightwing Israeli group that calls itself the
Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP). The group, whose board
includes Daniel Pipes and other prominent American neoconservatives, was
founded to undermine the peace process following the signing of the Oslo
Accords in 1993. CMIP's claims have long since been refuted, for example

a detailed report released in March 2003 by the Jerusalem-based
Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. The center reviewed
Palestinian textbooks and tolerance education programs, and concluded that
while the textbooks do not openly or adequately reflect the multiethnic,
multicultural, and multireligious history of the region, "the overall
orientation of the curriculum is peaceful." The report said the

Palestinian

textbooks "do not openly incite against Israel and the Jews and do not
openly incite hatred and violence." The report goes on to observe how
religious and political tolerance is emphasized in the textbooks. Similar
conclusions have been reached in published reports by the Adam Institute,
the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and Nathan Brown, a political science
professor at George Washington University and senior associate at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (The books Clinton cited were
apparently old Egyptian and Jordanian texts found on some library shelves;
they were not currently being used as textbooks nor were they supported by
the PA.) Yet Clinton has continued to make these charges, emphasizing that
the PA's "incitement," which she insists is creating a "new generation of
terrorists," more than Israel's occupation, repression, and settlements,

the driver of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Here, as in forming her
support
for the Iraq war, Clinton often seems to rely more on rightwing advocacy
groups than she does scholarly research.
The Moroccan Connection
Israel is not the only occupying power in the region supported by Clinton.
She has been a strong backer of Morocco's ongoing occupation of Western
Sahara, working with the autocratic Moroccan kingdom to block the
long-scheduled referendum on self-determination that would almost

certainly

lead to a vote for independence. As a recognized self-governing territory
(a
colony), international law requires that the Sahrawis be given the option
of
independence, along with other alternatives. Clinton instead has called

for

international acceptance of Morocco's dubious "autonomy" plan and for
"mediation" between the monarchy and the exiled nationalist Polisario
Front,
a process that would not offer the people of the territory a say in their
future.
Rather than joining Amnesty International and other human rights groups in
condemning the increase in the already-severe repression in the Western
Sahara, Clinton - in a visit to Morocco in November 2009 - instead chose

offer unconditional praise for the Moroccan government's human rights
record. Just days before her arrival, Moroccan authorities arrested seven
nonviolent activists from Western Sahara on trumped-up charges of high
treason, whom Amnesty International had declared as prisoners of

conscience

and demanded their unconditional release. Clinton decided to ignore the
plight of these and other political prisoners held in Moroccan jails. Not
long after Clinton praised the monarchy's human rights record, the regime
illegally expelled Aminatou Haidar, known as the Saharan Gandhi, for her
leadership in the nonviolent resistance struggle in Western Sahara. Haidar
-
a winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and other honors for
her nonviolent activism - spent years in Moroccan prisons, where she was
repeatedly tortured. She went on a month-long hunger strike that almost
killed her before Morocco relented to international pressure and allowed
her
to return to her country.
The Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP), a Moroccan government-owned
mining company that controls one of the world's largest phosphate mines in
the occupied Western Sahara, was the primary donor to the Clinton Global
Initiative conference in Marrakech in May 2015. Exploitation of
nonrenewable
resources in non-self-governing territories, such as the OCP mining
operations, is normally recognized as a violation of international law.
This
and other support provided to the Clinton Foundation by OCP - now totaling
as much as $5 million - has raised some eyebrows, given Hillary Clinton's
efforts as secretary of state to push the Obama administration to take a
more pro-Moroccan position. Since leaving office, she has continued her
outspoken support for the monarchy. When she announced the Marrakech
meeting
in the fall of 2014, she praised Morocco as a "vital hub for economic and
cultural exchange," thanking the regime "for welcoming us and for its
hospitality."
President Hillary Clinton?
Increasing numbers of Americans, particularly those who identify with the
Democratic Party, are taking a critical view of the militaristic aspects

US policies in the Middle East. It would therefore be somewhat ironic that
at a time when polls indicate that a majority of Democrats are

increasingly

critical of US military intervention in the Middle East and of US support
for dictatorial regimes and occupation armies, the party would nominate a
candidate who comes from the more hawkish wing of the party. Moreover,
should she win the Democratic nomination for president, her Republican
opponent in the November election will likely be advocating an even more
hawkish policy in the Middle East. In such a scenario, regardless of who
becomes president, Americans may end up providing their next president

with

a mandate for a more militaristic and interventionist policy for a region
in
the throes of historic upheaval.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may

not

be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
STEPHEN ZUNES
Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern
studies at the University of San Francisco.
RELATED STORIES
Five Reasons No Progressive Should Support Hillary Clinton
By Joseph Mulkerin, Truthout | Op-Ed
Hillary Clinton Hasn't Learned a Thing From Iraq
By Medea Benjamin, OtherWords | Op-Ed
Hillary Clinton's Ghosts: A Legacy of Pushing the Democratic Party to the
Right
By Michael Corcoran, Truthout | News Analysis
________________________________________
Show Comments
Hide Comments
<a href="http://truthout.disqus.com/?url=ref";>View the discussion
thread.</a>
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Hillary the Hawk
Monday, 29 February 2016 00:00 By Stephen Zunes, The Cairo Review of

Global

Affairs | News Analysis
     font size Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
reference not valid.
      Hillary Clinton, a Democratic presidential hopeful, speaks during a
rally at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina,
February 26, 2016. (Doug Mills / The New York Times)
     Despite being an icon for many liberals and an anathema to the
Republican right, former US Senator and Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton's
positions on the Middle East have more closely resembled those of the
latter
than the former. Her hawkish views go well beyond her strident support for
the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and subsequent occupation and
counter-insurgency war. From Afghanistan to Western Sahara, she has
advocated for military solutions to complex political problems, backed
authoritarian allies and occupying armies, dismissed war crimes, and
opposed
political involvement by the United Nations and its agencies. TIME
magazine's Michael Crowley aptly summed up her State Department record in
2014:
As Secretary of State, Clinton backed a bold escalation of the Afghanistan
war. She pressed Obama to arm the Syrian rebels, and later endorsed
airstrikes against the Assad regime. She backed intervention in Libya, and
her State Department helped enable Obama's expansion of lethal drone
strikes. In fact, Clinton may have been the administration's most reliable
advocate for military action. On at least three crucial issues -
Afghanistan, Libya, and the bin Laden raid - Clinton took a more

aggressive

line than [Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates, a Bush-appointed

Republican.

Her even more hawkish record during her eight years in the Senate, when

she

was not constrained by President Barack Obama's more cautious foreign
policy, led to strong criticism from progressive Democrats and played a
major role in her unexpected defeat in the 2008 Democratic presidential
primaries.
After stepping down from the helm of the State Department in early 2013,
she
made a concerted effort to distance herself from Obama's Middle East
policies, which - despite including the bombing of no less than seven
countries in the greater region - she argues have not been aggressive
enough. It is not surprising, therefore, that the prominent

neoconservative

Robert Kagan, in examining the prospects of her becoming
commander-in-chief,
exclaimed to the New York Times in 2014, "I feel comfortable with her on
foreign policy." He elaborated by noting that "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

call it something else." The same New York Times article noted how
neoconservatives are "aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and
her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver's seat
of American foreign policy."
If Clinton wins the American presidency in 2016, she will be confronted
with
the same momentous regional issues she handled without distinction as
Obama's first secretary of state: among them, the civil war and regional
proxy war in Syria; the Syrian conflict's massive refugee crisis; civil
conflict in Yemen and Libya; political fragility in Iraq and Afghanistan;
Iran's regional ambitions; the Israel-Palestine conflict; and

deteriorating

relations with longstanding allies Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. There
are disagreements as to whether Clinton truly embraces a neoconservative

other strong ideological commitment to hardline policies or whether it is
part of a political calculation to protect herself from criticism from
Republicans who hold positions even further to the right. But considering
that the Democratic Party base is shifting more to the left, that she
represented the relatively liberal state of New York in the Senate, and
that
her 2008 presidential hopes were derailed in large part by her support for
the Iraq war, it would probably be a mistake to assume her positions have
been based primarily on political expediency. Regardless of her
motivations,
however, a look at the positions she has taken on a number of the key
Middle
East policy issues suggest that her presidency would shift America to a
still more militaristic and interventionist policy that further
marginalizes
concerns for human rights or international law.
Voting for War in Iraq
Hillary Clinton was among the minority of congressional Democrats who
supported Republican President George W. Bush's request for authorization
to
invade and occupy Iraq, a vote she says she cast "with conviction."As arms
control specialists, former United Nations weapons inspectors,
investigative
journalists, and others began raising questions regarding the Bush
administration's claims about Iraq having reconstituted its chemical,
biological, and nuclear weapons programs and its chemical and biological
weapons arsenals, Clinton sought to discredit those questioning the
administration's alarmist rhetoric by insisting that Iraq's possession of
such weapons and weapons programs were not in doubt. She said that "if

left

unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage
biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear
weapons." She insisted that there was a risk that, despite the absence of
the necessary delivery systems, Saddam Hussein would somehow, according to
the 2002 resolution, "employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack
against the United States," which therefore justifies "action by the

United

States to defend itself" through invading and occupying the country.
As a number of prominent arms control analysts had informed her

beforehand,

absolutely none of those charges were true. The pattern continued when
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in a widely ridiculed speech told the
United Nations that Iraq had close ties with Al-Qaeda, still had major
stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and active nuclear,
chemical,
and biological weapons programs. Powell himself later admitted his speech
was misleading and filled with errors, yet Clinton insisted that it was
nevertheless "compelling."
In an apparent effort to convince her New York constituents, still stung

the September 11 attack thirteen months earlier, of the necessity of war,
she was the only Democratic US senator who made the false claim that

Saddam

Hussein had "given aid, comfort, and sanctuary" to Al-Qaeda, an accusation
that even many fervent supporters of the invasion recognized as ludicrous.
Indeed, top strategic analysts had informed her that there were no

apparent

links between Saddam Hussein's secular nationalist regime and the radical
jihadist Al-Qaeda. Indeed, doubts over such claims appeared in the US
National Intelligence Estimates made available to her and in a definitive
report by the Department of Defense after the invasion. These reports not
only confirmed that no such link existed, but that no such link could have
been reasonably suggested based upon the evidence available at that time.
Clinton's defenders insist she was misled by faulty intelligence. She
admitted that she did not review the National Intelligence Estimate that
was
made available to members of Congress prior to the vote that was far more
nuanced in their assessments than the Bush administration claimed. (She
claimed that the authors of the report, including officials from the State
Department, Central Intelligence Agency, and Department of Defense, had
briefed her: "I felt very well briefed.") She also apparently ignored the
plethora of information provided by academics, independent strategic
analysts, former UN inspectors, and others, which challenged the Bush
administration's claims and correctly noted that Iraq had likely achieved
at
least qualitative disarmament. Furthermore, even if Iraq had been one of
the
dozens of countries in the world that still had stockpiles of chemical
and/or biological weapons and/or a nuclear program, the invasion was still
illegal under the UN Charter, according to a consensus of international

law

experts as well as then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; it was also
arguably unnecessary, given the deterrence capability of the United States
and well-armed Middle Eastern states.
Despite wording in the Congressional resolution providing Bush with an
open-ended authority to invade Iraq, Clinton later insisted that she voted
for the resolution simply because "we needed to put inspectors in." In
reality, at the time of vote, the Iraqis had already agreed in principle

a return of the weapons inspectors and were negotiating with the United
Nations Monitoring and Verification Commission on the details which were
formally institutionalized a few weeks later. (Indeed, it would have

likely

been resolved earlier had the United States not repeatedly postponed the

Security Council resolution in the hopes of inserting language which would
have allowed the United States to unilaterally interpret the level of
compliance.) In addition, she voted against the substitute amendment by
Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, which would have also granted
President Bush authority to use force, but only if Iraq defied subsequent
UN
demands regarding the inspections process. Instead, Clinton voted for the
Republican-sponsored resolution to give President Bush the authority to
invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own choosing regardless

whether inspectors returned. Unfettered large-scale weapons inspections

had

been going on in Iraq for nearly four months with no signs of any
proscribed
weapons or weapons facilities at the time the Bush administration launched
the March 2003 attack, yet she still argued that the invasion was

necessary

and lawful. Despite warnings by scholars, retired diplomats, and others
familiar with the region that a US invasion of Iraq would prove harmful to
the United States, she insisted that at US-led takeover of Iraq was "in

the

best interests of our nation."
Rather than being a misguided overreaction to the 9/11 tragedy driven by
the
trauma that America had experienced, Clinton's militaristic stance on Iraq
predated her support for Bush's invasion. For example, in defending her
husband President Bill Clinton's four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in
December 1998, she claimed that "the so-called presidential palaces in
reality were huge compounds well suited to hold weapons labs, stocks, and
records which Saddam Hussein was required by the UN to turn over. When
Saddam blocked the inspection process, the inspectors left." In reality,
there were no weapons labs, stocks of weapons, or missing records in these
presidential palaces. In addition, Saddam was still allowing for virtually
all inspections to go forward. The inspectors were ordered to depart by

her

husband a couple days beforehand to avoid being harmed in the incipient
bombings. Ironically, in justifying her support for invading Iraq years
later, she would claim that it was Saddam who had "thrown out" the UN
inspectors. She also bragged that it was during her husband's
administration
that the United States "changed its underlying policy toward Iraq from
containment to regime change."
What distinguishes Clinton from some of the other Democrats who crossed

the

aisle to support the Republican administration's war plans is that she
continued to defend her vote even when the rationales behind it had been
disproven. For example, in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in
New York in December 2003, in which she underscored her support for a
"tough-minded, muscular foreign and defense policy," she declared, "I was
one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to

use

force against Saddam Hussein. I believe that that was the right vote" and
was one that "I stand by." Similarly, in an interview on CNN's "Larry King
Live" in April 2004, when asked about her vote in favor of war
authorization, she said, "I don't regret giving the president authority."
As it became increasingly apparent that her rationales for supporting the
war were false, US casualties mounted, the United States was dragged into

long counter-insurgency war, and the ongoing US military presence was
exacerbating sectarian violence and the threat from extremists rather than
curbing it, Clinton came under increasing pressure from her constituents

call for a withdrawal of US forces. She initially rejected these demands,
however, insisting US troops were needed to keep fighting in order to
suppress the insurgency, terrorism, and sectarian divisions the invasion
had
spawned, urging "patience" and expressing her concern about the lack of
will
among some Americans "to stay the course." She insisted that "failure is
not
an option" in Iraq, so therefore, "We have no option but to stay involved
and committed." In 2005, she insisted that it "would be a mistake" to
withdraw US troops soon or simply set a timetable for withdrawal. She
argued
that the prospects for a "failed state" made possible by the invasion she
supported made it in the "national security interest" of the United States
to remain fighting in that country. When Democratic Congressman John

Murtha

of Pennsylvania made his first call for the withdrawal of US forces from
Iraq in November of that year, she denounced his effort, calling it a "a
big
mistake" and declared, "I reject a rigid timetable that the terrorists can
exploit." Using a similar rationale as was used in the latter years of the
Vietnam War, she declared, "My bottom line is that I don't want their sons
to die in vain," insisting that, "I don't think it's the right time to
withdraw" and that, "I don't believe it's smart to set a date for
withdrawal." In 2006, when Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts
(her eventual successor as secretary of state) sponsored an amendment that
would have required the redeployment of US forces from Iraq by the middle
of
2007 in order to advance a political solution to the growing sectarian
strife, she voted against it. Similarly, on "Meet the Press" in 2005, she
emphasized, "We don't want to send a signal to insurgents, to the
terrorists, that we are going to be out of here at some, you know, date
certain."
Two years after the invasion, as the consensus was growing that the
situation in Iraq was rapidly deteriorating, Clinton still defended the

war

effort. When she visited Iraq in February 2005 as a US senator, the
security
situation had gotten so bad that the four-lane divided highway on flat

open

terrain connecting the airport with the capital could not be secured at

the

time of her arrival, requiring a helicopter to transport her to the Green
Zone, but she nevertheless insisted that the US occupation was

"functioning

quite well." When fifty-five Iraqis and one American soldier were killed
during her twenty-four-hour visit, she insisted that the rise in suicide
bombings was somehow evidence that the insurgency was failing. As the

chaos

worsened in subsequent months, she continued to defend the invasion,
insisting, "We have given the Iraqis the precious gift of freedom,"
claiming
that whatever problems they were subsequently experiencing was their

fault,

since, "The Iraqis have not stepped up and taken responsibility, as we had
hoped."
Clinton finally began calling for the withdrawal of US troops when she
became a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, but

she

was critical of her rival Barack Obama's longstanding antiwar stance. Even
though Obama in 2002 (then a state senator in Illinois) had explicitly
supported the ongoing international strategy of enforcing sanctions,
maintaining an international force as a military deterrent, and returning
UN
inspectors to Iraq, Clinton charged in a nationally televised interview on
"Meet the Press" on January 14, 2008, that "his judgment was that, at the
time in 2002, we didn't need to make any efforts" to deal with the alleged
Iraqi "threat" - essentially repeating President Bush's argument that
anything short of supporting an invasion meant acquiescence to Saddam's
regime. She also criticized Obama's withdrawal plan.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates writes in his book Duty: Memoirs
of
a Secretary at War that Clinton stated in his presence that her opposition
to President Bush's decision in 2007 to reject the bipartisan call of the
Iraq Study Group to begin a osased withdrawal of US troops and to instead
escalate the number of American combat forces was largely political, given
the growing opposition to the war among Democratic voters. Indeed, long
before President Bush announced his "surge," Clinton had called for the
United States to send more troops.
Unlike former US Senators John Kerry, Tom Harkin, John Edwards, and other
Democratic supporters of the Iraq war resolution, Clinton has never
apologized for her vote to authorize force. She has, however, said that

she

now "regrets" her vote, which she refers to as a "mistake." Yet, arguments
against the Iraq war authorization, virtually all of which have turned out
to have been accurate, had been clearly articulated for months leading up
to
the congressional vote. She and her staff met with knowledgeable people

who

made a strong case against supporting President Bush's request, including
its illegality under the United Nations Charter, providing her with
extensive documentation challenging the administration's arguments, and
warning her of the likely repercussions of a US invasion and occupation.
"All Options on the Table"
Saddam's Iraq is not the only oil-rich country towards which Clinton has
threatened war over its alleged ties to terrorists and Weapons of Mass
Destruction. She long insisted that the United States should keep "all
options on the table" - clearly an implied threat of unilateral military
force - in response to Iran's nuclear program despite the illegality under
the UN Charter of launching such a unilateral attack. Her hawkish stance
toward Iran, which is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) and has disavowed any intention of developing nuclear weapons,

stands

in contrast with her attitude toward countries such as Israel, Pakistan,
and
India which are not NPT signatories and have already constructed nuclear
weapons. She has shown little regard for the danger of the proliferation

countries allied with the United States, opposing the enforcement of UN
Security Council resolutions challenging the programs of Israel, Pakistan,
and India, supporting the delivery of nuclear-capable missiles and jet
fighters to these countries, and voting to end restrictions on US nuclear
cooperation with countries that have not signed on to the NPT.
Clinton has nonetheless insisted that the prospect of Iran developing
nuclear weapons "must be unacceptable to the entire world" - challenging
the
nuclear monopoly of the United States and its allies in the region would
somehow "shake the foundation of global security to its very core," in her
view. In 2006, she accused the Bush administration of failing to take the
threat of a nuclear Iran seriously enough, criticized the administration
for
allowing European nations to lead diplomatic efforts, and insisted that

the

United States should make it clear that military options were still being
actively considered. Similarly, during the 2008 presidential campaign, she
accused Obama of being "naïve" and "irresponsible" for wanting to engage
with Iran diplomatically. Not only did she promise to "obliterate" Iran if
it used its nonexistent nuclear weapons to attack Israel, she refused to
rule out a US nuclear first strike on that country, saying, "I don't
believe
that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the
use or non-use of nuclear weapons."
As with Iraq, she has made a number of alarmist statements regarding Iran,
such as falsely claiming in 2007 that Iran had a nuclear weapons program,
even though International Atomic Energy Agency and independent arms

control

specialists, as well as a subsequent National Intelligence Estimate,
indicated that Iran's nuclear program at that time had no military
component. Clinton supported the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment calling on
President Bush to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist
group, which the Bush administration correctly recognized as an
irresponsibly sweeping characterization of an organization that also
controls major civilian administration, business, and educational
institutions. The amendment declared that "it should be the policy of the
United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and
destabilizing influence of the Government of the Islamic Republic of
Iran," language which many feared could be used as a de facto

authorization

for war.
Her hawkish stance towards Iran continued after she became Obama's first
secretary of state in 2009. In Michael Crowley's 2014 story in TIME, Obama
administration officials noted how she was "skeptical of diplomacy with
Iran, and firmly opposed to talk of a 'containment' policy that would be

alternative to military action should negotiations with Tehran fail."
Clinton disapproved of the opposition expressed by Pentagon officials
regarding a possible US attack on Iran because she insisted "the Iranians
had to believe we would use force if diplomacy failed." In an August 2014
interview with the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, when she was no longer in
the administration, she took a much harder line on Iranian nuclear
enrichment than the United States and its negotiating partners recognized
was realistic, leading some to suspect she was actually pushing for
military
intervention.
Clinton, by then an announced candidate for the Democratic presidential
nomination, did end up endorsing the 2015 nuclear agreement. Opposing a
major foreign policy initiative of a sitting Democratic president,
especially one with strong Democratic support, would have been politically
untenable. Yet, Clinton's hardline views toward the Islamic Republic

remain

palpable. For example, in a speech in September 2015 at the Brookings
Institution, she claimed that Iran's leaders "talk about wiping Israel off
the face of the map" - a gross distortion routinely parroted by hardliners
in Washington. The original statement was uttered by revolutionary leader
Ayatollah Khomeini a quarter century earlier and quoted in 2005 by
then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who left office in 2013). Moreover,
there is no such idiom in Farsi for "wiping off the map." Khomeini's
statement was in a passive tense and asserted his belief that Israel

should

no longer be a Jewish nation state, not that the country's inhabitants
should be annihilated. Yet, during her speech, Clinton kept repeating for
emphasis, "They vowed to destroy Israel. And that's worth saying again.
They
vowed to destroy Israel."
Clinton often seems oblivious to the contradictions in her views and
rhetoric. For example, to challenge Iran, an authoritarian theocratic
regime
which backs extremist Islamist groups, she has pledged to "sustain a

robust

military presence in the region" and "increase security cooperation with
our
Gulf allies" - namely, other authoritarian theocratic regimes like Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, which also back extremist
Islamist groups.
She has also repeated neoconservative talking points on alleged Iranian
interference in various Middle Eastern conflicts. For example, she has
decried Iran's "involvement in and influence over Iraq," an ironic
complaint
for someone who voted to authorize the overthrow of the anti-Iranian
secular
government of Saddam Hussein despite his widely predicted replacement by
pro-Iranian Shiite fundamentalist parties. As a US senator, she went on
record repeating a whole series of false, exaggerated, and unproven

charges

by Bush administration officials regarding Iranian support for the Iraqi
insurgency, even though the vast majority of foreign support for the
insurgency was coming from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries and that
the majority of the insurgents attacking US occupation forces were
fanatically anti-Iranian and anti-Shiite.
She has also gone on record holding "Iran responsible for the acts of
aggression carried out by Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel." Presumably
since she realizes that relations between Iran and Hamas - who are
supporting opposing sides in the Syrian civil war - are actually quite
limited, she has not called for specific actions regarding this alleged
link. But she has pledged to make it a priority as president to cut off
Iran's ability to fund and arm Hezbollah, including calling on US allies

somehow block Iranian planes from entering Syria. In addition,
notwithstanding the provisions in the nuclear agreement to drop sanctions
against Iran, she has called on Congress to "close any gaps" in the
existing
sanctions on non-nuclear issues.
When Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, her principal rival for the
Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, suggested taking steps to
eventually normalize diplomatic relations with Iran, the Clinton campaign
attacked him as being irresponsible and naïve. Despite the fact that the
vast majority of US allies already have diplomatic relations with the
Islamic Republic, a campaign spokesperson insisted it would somehow "cause
very real consternation among our allies and partners."
Dictators and Democrats
Though bringing democracy to Iraq was one of the rationales Hillary

Clinton

gave for supporting the invasion of that country, she has not been as
supportive of democratic movements struggling against American allies.
During the first two weeks of protests in Tunisia against the dictatorial
regime of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali in December 2010, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton expressed her concern over the impact of the "unrest and
instability" on the "very positive aspects of our relationship with
Tunisia." She insisted that the United States was "not taking sides" in

the

struggle between the corrupt authoritarian government and the

pro-democracy

demonstrators, and that she would "wait and see" before communicating
directly with Ben Ali or his ministers. Nearly four weeks after the
outbreak
of protests, she finally acknowledged some of the grievances of the
demonstrators, saying "one of my biggest concerns in this entire region

are

the many young people without economic opportunities in their home
countries." Rather than calling for a more democratic and accountable
government in Tunisia, however, her suggestion for resolving the crisis

was

calling for the economies of Tunisia and other North African states "to be
more open." Ironically, Tunisia under the Ben Ali regime - more than

almost

any country in the region - had been following the dictates of Washington
and the International Monetary Fund in instituting "structural adjustment
programs" privatizing much of its economy and allowing for an

unprecedented

level of "free trade."
Just two days after the interview in which she appeared to back the Ben

Ali

regime, as the protests escalated further, Clinton took a more proactive
stance at a meeting in Qatar, where she noted that "people have grown

tired

of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order" and called for
"political reforms that will create the space young people are demanding,
to
participate in public affairs and have a meaningful role in the decisions
that shape their lives." By this point, however, Tunisians were making
clear
they were not interested in simply "political reforms" but the downfall of
the regime, which took place the following day.
Clinton took a similarly cautious approach regarding the Egyptian

uprising,

which began a week and a half later on January 25. In the initial days of
the protests, despite the government's brutal crackdown, she refused to do
more than encourage the regime to allow for peaceable assembly. Despite
appearances to the contrary, Clinton insisted that "the country was

stable"

and that the Mubarak government was "looking for ways to respond to the
legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people," despite the

failure

of the regime in its nearly thirty years in power to do so. As protests
continued, she issued a statement simply calling on the regime to reform
from within rather than supporting the movement's demand for the downfall
of
the dictatorship.
After two weeks of protests, Clinton pressed vigorously for restraint by
security forces and finally called for an "orderly, peaceful transition"

a "real democracy" in Egypt, but still refused to demand that Mubarak had
to
step down, insisting that "it's not a question of who retains power. That
should not be the issue. It's how are we going to respond to the

legitimate

needs and grievances expressed by the Egyptian people and chart a new
path."
On the one hand, she recognized that whether Mubarak would remain in power
"is going to be up to the Egyptian people." On the other hand, she
continued
to speak in terms of reforms coming from within the regime, stating that

policy was to "help clear the air so that those who remain in power,
starting with President Mubarak, with his new vice president, with the new
prime minister, will begin a process of reaching out, of creating a
dialogue
that will bring in peaceful activists and representatives of civil society
to plan a way forward that will meet the legitimate grievances of the
Egyptian people." As the repression continued to worsen and demands for
suspending US military assistance to the regime increased, she insisted
"there is no discussion of cutting off aid." As late as February 6, when
Mubarak's fall appeared imminent, Clinton was publicly advocating a
leadership role for Mubarak's newly named vice president. That was General
Omar Suleiman, the longtime head of Egypt's feared general intelligence
agency, who among other things had played a key role in the Central
Intelligence Agency's covert rendition program under which suspected
terrorists were handed over to third-party governments to be interrogated
and in some cases were tortured. In discussions within the Obama
administration, she pushed for the idea of encouraging Mubarak to initiate
a
gradual transition of power, disagreeing with Obama's eventual recognition
that the US-backed dictator had to step down immediately. In her book Hard
Choices, a memoir of her tenure as secretary of state written three years
later, Clinton noted, "I was concerned that we not be seen as pushing a
longtime partner out the door."
After Saudi Arabian forces joined those of the Bahraini monarchy in
brutally
repressing nonviolent pro-democracy demonstrators the following month, the
Wall Street Journal reported that Clinton had emerged as one of the
"leading
voices inside the administration urging greater US support for the

Bahraini

king." In Yemen, while she eventually called for authoritarian President
Ali
Abdullah Saleh to step down, she backed the Saudi initiative to have him
replaced by his vice president, General Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, rather
than
support the demands of the pro-democracy movement to allow a broad
coalition
of opposition activists to form a transition government and prepare for
democratic multiparty elections.
Clinton proved an enthusiastic supporter of regime change when it came to
dictatorships opposed by the United States, however. While there has been
debate regarding the appropriateness and extent of US intervention in

Libya

and Syria, she consistently allied herself with those advocating US
military
involvement. She pushed hard and eventually successfully for US
intervention
in support for rebel forces in Libya, over the objections of key Obama
administration officials, including the normally hawkish Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates. While the Arab League had requested and the United
Nations had authorized the enforcement of a no-fly zone to protect
civilians
from attack by the forces of dictator Muammar Gadhafi, North Atlantic
Treaty
Organization (NATO) forces - with Clinton's encouragement - dramatically
expanded their role to essentially become the air force of the rebels.
Following the extra-judicial killing of Gadhafi by rebel soldiers, she
joked, "We came, we saw, he died," which some took as an effective
endorsement of crimes committed by armed allies against designated enemy
leaders.
During the Benghazi hearings in October 2015, when she was asked about

that

comment, she said it "was an expression of relief that the military

mission

undertaken by NATO and our other partners had achieved its end." However,
in
justifying US military intervention, the Obama administration initially
insisted that the goal was "to protect the Libyan people from immediate
danger, and to establish a no-fly zone," not regime change or
assassination,
underscoring Clinton's apparent role in dramatically expanding the mission
of US forces. The chaos that resulted from the seizure of power by a

number

of armed militia groups, including Islamist extremists, created a

situation

where militiamen numbered nearly a quarter million in a country of some

six

million people. While there appears to be little merit in the Republican
accusations against Clinton in regard to her conduct regarding the killing
of the US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in
Benghazi by Islamist extremists in September 2012, her role in helping to
create the situation that gave rise to such extremists raises more serious
questions.
As a US senator, and well before the 2011 uprising in Syria, Clinton was a
strong supporter of Republican-led efforts to punish and isolate the

Bashar

Al-Assad regime. She was a co-sponsor of the 2004 Syrian Accountability
Act,
demanding that - under threat of tough economic sanctions - Syria
unilaterally disarm various weapons systems (similar to those possessed by
hostile neighbors), abide by a UN Security Council resolution calling for
the withdrawal of foreign troops from Lebanon (which had also been

occupied

by Israel for twenty-two years without US objection), and return to peace
talks with Israel (despite Israel's categorical refusal to withdraw from
the
occupied Golan Heights). Her resolution also claimed that the Syrian
government was responsible for the deaths of Americans in Iraq and
threatened to hold Syria accountable in language that other senators

feared

could be used by the Bush administration for military strikes.
Not long after the initially nonviolent uprising in Syria turned into a
bloody civil war with heavy foreign intervention, the New York Times
reported that Clinton pushed hard for the Obama administration to become
directly involved militarily in support for Syrian rebels. Irritated that
NATO had gone well beyond its mandate in Libya, Russia and China blocked

action on Syria. Obama eventually agreed with Clinton to begin training

and

arming some rebels, but despite the half billion dollars invested in the
project, only a few dozen rebels made it into the field and they were
quickly overrun by rival Islamist rebels of the Al-Nusra Front. Clinton

has

subsequently insisted that the disorganized and factious nature of the
armed
secular Syrian opposition notwithstanding, the failure to topple the

Syrian

regime or contain the rise of Islamist extremists was that the United
States
did not arm the rebels earlier and more heavily. Indeed, she has
essentially
blamed Obama for the dramatic rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,
saying his failure "to help build up a credible fighting force left a

big

vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled." She has also expressed
disappointment that the Obama administration backed down from its threats
in
2013 to bomb Syria following the Al-Assad regime's launch of a deadly

sarin

gas attack on residential areas near Damascus, even after the government
agreed to disarm its chemical weapons.
"Friend" of Israel
During and after her term as a US senator, Hillary Clinton has developed a
reputation as one of the most rightwing Democrats on the Israel-Palestine
conflict. She has repeatedly sided with Likud-led governments against
Israeli progressives and moderates. She has not only condemned Hamas and
other Palestinian extremists, but has been critical of the Palestinian
Authority (PA) as well. That has bolstered the Israeli right's contention
that there are no moderate Palestinians with which to negotiate.
As a US senator, Clinton defended Israel's colonization efforts in the
occupied West Bank and was highly critical of UN efforts to uphold
international humanitarian law that forbids transferring civilian
populations into territories under foreign belligerent occupation, taking
the time to visit a major Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank in

show of support in 2005. She moderated that stance somewhat as secretary

state in expressing concerns over how the rightwing Israeli government's
settlement policies harmed the overall climate of the peace process, but
she
has refused to acknowledge the illegality of the settlements or demand

that

Israel abide by international demands to stop building additional
settlements. Subsequently, she has argued that the Obama administration
pushed too hard in the early years of the administration to get Israel to
suspend settlement construction. In 2011, Clinton successfully argued for

US veto of a UN Security Council resolution reiterating the illegality of
the settlements and calling for a construction freeze. On this issue, that
fit a pattern of Clinton's disregard for the UN Security Council, which

was

established precisely to be a vehicle for enforcing international law such
as in matters of belligerent foreign occupation. "We have consistently

over

many years said that the United Nations Security Council - and resolutions
that would come before the Security Council - is not the right vehicle to
advance the goal," Clinton has said.
The favoritism toward Israel is all the more glaring given America's
failure
or unwillingness to stop Israel's colonization on its own. When the
government of Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reneged on an

earlier

promise of a temporary and limited freeze and announced massive subsidies
for the construction of new settlements on the eve of Clinton's 2011 visit
to Israel, she spoke only of the need for peace talks to resume. She
equated
the PA's pursuit of its legal right to have Palestine statehood recognized
by the United Nations with Israel's illegal settlements policy as factors
undermining the peace process.
While rejecting Palestinian demands that Israel live up to its previous
commitments to freeze settlements on the grounds there should be no
pre-conditions to talks, Clinton has at times demanded pre-conditions for
Arab participation. For example, in response to President Bush's

invitation

for Arab states to attend the Annapolis peace conference in 2007,
then-Senator Clinton went on record insisting that Arab states wishing to
attend should unilaterally "recognize Israel's right to exist and not use
such recognition as a bargaining chip for future Israel concessions" and
"end the Arab League economic boycott of Israel in all its forms." The
letter made no mention of the establishment of a Palestinian state, an end
to the Israeli occupation, the withdrawal of illegal Israeli settlements,
or
any other Israeli obligations. As James Zogby of the Arab American
Institute
put it at the time, "if the goal is for Arab states not to participate in
the upcoming conference, this would be the way to go." The Bush
administration rejected her demands for such pre-conditions.
Another example of Clinton's double standards has been in her pledge as a
presidential candidate to increase US military aid and diplomatic support
for Israel's rightwing government. This is a government that includes
ministers from far right parties who support violent settler militia that
have repeatedly attacked Palestinian civilians, oppose recognition of a
Palestinian state, and reject the Oslo Accords and subsequent agreements

the Israeli government. However, Clinton insists, "We will not deal with
nor
in any way fund a Palestinian government that includes Hamas unless and
until Hamas has renounced violence, recognized Israel, and agreed to

the previous obligations of the Palestinian Authority."
More recently, Clinton has been making a series of excuses as to why

Israel

cannot make peace despite the Palestine Authority's acquiescence to
virtually all the demands of the Obama administration. For example, the
Washington Post noted how she "appeared to blame the collapse of direct
Israel-Palestinian talks on the wave of Mideast revolutions and unrest
during the 2011 Arab Spring, although talks had broken off the previous
year." Clinton has also said that Israelis cannot be expected to make

peace

until they "know what happens in Syria and whether Jordan will remain
stable," which most observers recognize will take a very long time; that
line of thinking enables Israel to further colonize the West Bank to the
point where the establishment of a viable Palestinian state is impossible.
What kind of peace settlement she envisions has not been made clear, but
she
did endorse then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's 2004 "Convergence Plan,"
which would have allowed Israel to annex large areas of Palestinian
territory conquered by Israeli forces in the 1967 war, despite the
longstanding principle in international law against any country expanding
its territory by force and the fact that the plan divides any future
Palestinian state into a series of small, non-contiguous cantons

surrounded

by Israel.
As a US senator, Clinton co-sponsored a resolution which, had it passed,
would have established a precedent by referring to the West Bank not as an
occupied territory but as a "disputed" territory. This distinction is
important for two reasons. The word "disputed" implies that the claims of
the West Bank's Israeli conquerors are as legitimate as the claims of
Palestinians who have lived on that land for centuries. And disputed
territories - unlike occupied territories - are not covered by the Fourth
Geneva Convention and many other international legal statutes. As a

lawyer,

Clinton must have recognized that such wording had the effect of
legitimizing the expansion of a country's territory by force, a clear
violation of the UN Charter.
Clinton has challenged the jurisdiction of the International Court of
Justice (ICJ). In 2004, the world court ruled by a 14-1 vote (with only

the

US judge dissenting, largely on a technicality) that Israel, like every
country, is obliged to abide by provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention
on the Laws of War, and that the international community - as in any other
case in which ongoing violations are taking place - is obliged to ensure
that international humanitarian law is enforced. At issue was the Israeli
government's ongoing construction of a separation barrier deep inside the
occupied Palestinian West Bank, which the World Court recognized - as does
the broad consensus of international legal scholarship - as a violation of
international humanitarian law. The ICJ ruled that Israel, like any
country,
had the right to build the barrier along its internationally recognized
border for self-defense, but did not have the right to build it inside
another country as a means of effectively annexing Palestinian land. In an
unprecedented congressional action, Senator Clinton immediately introduced
a
resolution to put the US Senate on record "supporting the construction by
Israel of a security fence" and "condemning the decision of the
International Court of Justice on the legality of the security fence." In
an
effort to render the UN impotent in its enforcement of international law,
her resolution (which the Republican-controlled Senate failed to pass as
being too extreme) attempted to put the Senate on record "urging no

further

action by the United Nations to delay or prevent the construction of the
security fence."
Clinton's claim that "it makes no sense for the United Nations to
vehemently
oppose a fence which is a nonviolent response to terrorism rather than
opposing terrorism itself" was false in that the UN and the world court
were
only objecting to the barrier being built beyond Israel's borders. Indeed,
in her resolution and elsewhere, she appeared to be deliberately
misrepresenting the ICJ's published opinion, claiming that opposition to
the
plan of building a barrier in a serpentine fashion deep inside the West
Bank
as part of an effort to effectively annex large swathes of the occupied
territory into Israel was denying Israel its right to self-defense and
therefore was proof of an "anti-Israel" bias. In a series of statements

and

in her resolution, she made no distinction between Israel's legal right to
defend its borders, which the world court upheld, and the land grab to
which
the court objected.
Clinton has also been an outspoken defender of Israeli military actions,
even when the United Nations and reputable international and Israeli human
rights groups have documented violations of international humanitarian

law.

While appropriately condemning terrorism and other attacks on civilian
targets by Hamas, Hezbollah, and other extremist groups, she has
consistently rejected evidence that Israel has committed war crimes on an
even greater scale. For example, since becoming a US senator in early

2001,

she has publicly condemned the vast majority of the 135 killings of

Israeli

children, but not once has she criticized any of the more than 2,000

deaths

of Palestinian children.
In the face of widespread criticism by reputable human rights

organizations

over Israel's systematic assaults against civilian targets in its April
2002
offensive in the West Bank, Senator Clinton co-sponsored a resolution
defending the Israeli actions that claimed they were "necessary steps to
provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure
in the Palestinian areas." She opposed UN efforts to investigate alleged
war
crimes by Israeli occupation forces and criticized President Bush for
calling on Israel to pull back from its violent reconquest of Palestinian
cities in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
She has vigorously defended Israel's wars on Gaza. As secretary of state,
she took the lead in attempting to block any action by the United Nations
in
response to a 2009 report by the UN Human Rights Council - headed by the
distinguished South African jurist Richard Goldstone (a Zionist Jew) -
which
documented war crimes by both Israel and Hamas. She claims that the report
denied Israel's right to self-defense, when it in fact explicitly
recognized
Israel's right to do so. Since the report's only objections to Israeli
conduct were in regard to attacks on civilian targets, not its military
actions against extremist militias lobbing rockets into Israel, it appears
that either she was deliberately misrepresenting the report, never

bothered

to read it before attacking it, or believes killing civilians can
constitute
legitimate self-defense.
When Israeli forces attacked a UN school housing refugees in the Gaza

Strip

in July of 2014, killing dozens of civilians, the Obama administration
issued a statement saying it was "appalled" by the "disgraceful" shelling.
By contrast, Clinton - when pressed about it in her interview with Jeffrey
Goldberg in the Atlantic - refused to criticize the massacre, saying that
"it's impossible to know what happens in the fog of war." Though
investigators found no evidence of Hamas equipment or military activity
anywhere near the school, Clinton falsely alleged that they were firing
rockets from an annex to the school. In any case, she argued, when
Palestinian civilians die from Israeli attacks, "the ultimate
responsibility
has to rest on Hamas and the decisions it made."
Clinton's defense of Israeli war crimes is not restricted to
Palestinian-populated areas, but includes those that take place in
countries
with historically close relations with the United States. During the
thirty-four-day conflict between Israeli and Hezbollah forces in 2006,
which
resulted in the deaths of more than eight hundred Lebanese civilians, she
responded to the widespread international criticism of the Israeli attacks
on civilian infrastructure and the high civilian casualties by
co-sponsoring
a resolution unconditionally endorsing Israel's war on Lebanon. Failing to
distinguish between Israel's right to self-defense and the large-scale
bombing of civilian targets far from any Hezbollah military activity,
Clinton asked, "If extremist terrorists were launching rocket attacks
across
the Mexican or Canadian border, would we stand by or would we defend
America
against these attacks from extremists?" During and after the fighting,
Clinton failed to recognize that most critics of the Israeli actions never
questioned Israel's right to self-defense against Hezbollah, but - in the
words of a Human Rights Watch report - the "systematic failure by the IDF
to
distinguish between combatants and civilians" and the way in which

"Israeli

forces have consistently launched artillery and air attacks with limited

dubious military gain but excessive civilian cost." The report, echoing a
similar report by Amnesty International and other human rights groups,
noted
how "in dozens of attacks, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent
military target. In some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack,

the

absence of a military target, as well as return strikes on rescuers,
suggest
that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians." While tens of
thousands of Israelis protested the Lebanon war - which the Israeli
government later acknowledged was unnecessary and harmful for Israel -
Clinton emerged as one of its biggest cheerleaders. While diplomats at the
United Nations were desperately working to end the fighting, Clinton spoke
at a rally by rightwing groups outside the UN headquarters in New York

City

where she praised Israel's efforts to "send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah,
to the Syrians, [and] to the Iranians," because, in her words, they oppose
the United States and Israel's commitment to "life and freedom."
Clinton has opposed humanitarian efforts supportive of the Palestinians,
criticizing a flotilla scheduled to bring relief supplies to the besieged
Gaza Strip in 2011, claiming it would "provoke actions by entering into
Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the
right
to defend themselves." Not only did she fail to explain how ships with no
weapons or weapons components on board (the only cargo on the US ship were
letters of solidarity to the Palestinians in that besieged enclave), she
also failed to explain why she considered the Mediterranean Sea off the
coast of the port of Gaza to be "Israeli waters" when the entire
international community recognizes Israeli territorial waters as being

well

to the northeast of the ships' intended route. Clinton's State Department
issued a public statement designed to discourage Americans from taking

part

in the flotilla to Gaza because they might be attacked by Israeli forces,
yet it never issued a public statement demanding that Israel not attack
Americans legally traveling in international waters. The flotilla never
went
forward, however, after she successfully convinced the Greek government to
deny the organizers the right to sail from Greek ports.
A focus of Clinton has been her insistence that the PA was responsible for
publishing textbooks promoting "anti-Semitism," "violence," and
"dehumanizing rhetoric." The only source she has cited to uphold these
charges, however, has been a rightwing Israeli group that calls itself the
Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP). The group, whose board
includes Daniel Pipes and other prominent American neoconservatives, was
founded to undermine the peace process following the signing of the Oslo
Accords in 1993. CMIP's claims have long since been refuted, for example

a detailed report released in March 2003 by the Jerusalem-based
Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. The center reviewed
Palestinian textbooks and tolerance education programs, and concluded that
while the textbooks do not openly or adequately reflect the multiethnic,
multicultural, and multireligious history of the region, "the overall
orientation of the curriculum is peaceful." The report said the

Palestinian

textbooks "do not openly incite against Israel and the Jews and do not
openly incite hatred and violence." The report goes on to observe how
religious and political tolerance is emphasized in the textbooks. Similar
conclusions have been reached in published reports by the Adam Institute,
the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and Nathan Brown, a political science
professor at George Washington University and senior associate at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (The books Clinton cited were
apparently old Egyptian and Jordanian texts found on some library shelves;
they were not currently being used as textbooks nor were they supported by
the PA.) Yet Clinton has continued to make these charges, emphasizing that
the PA's "incitement," which she insists is creating a "new generation of
terrorists," more than Israel's occupation, repression, and settlements,

the driver of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Here, as in forming her
support
for the Iraq war, Clinton often seems to rely more on rightwing advocacy
groups than she does scholarly research.
The Moroccan Connection
Israel is not the only occupying power in the region supported by Clinton.
She has been a strong backer of Morocco's ongoing occupation of Western
Sahara, working with the autocratic Moroccan kingdom to block the
long-scheduled referendum on self-determination that would almost

certainly

lead to a vote for independence. As a recognized self-governing territory
(a
colony), international law requires that the Sahrawis be given the option
of
independence, along with other alternatives. Clinton instead has called

for

international acceptance of Morocco's dubious "autonomy" plan and for
"mediation" between the monarchy and the exiled nationalist Polisario
Front,
a process that would not offer the people of the territory a say in their
future.
Rather than joining Amnesty International and other human rights groups in
condemning the increase in the already-severe repression in the Western
Sahara, Clinton - in a visit to Morocco in November 2009 - instead chose

offer unconditional praise for the Moroccan government's human rights
record. Just days before her arrival, Moroccan authorities arrested seven
nonviolent activists from Western Sahara on trumped-up charges of high
treason, whom Amnesty International had declared as prisoners of

conscience

and demanded their unconditional release. Clinton decided to ignore the
plight of these and other political prisoners held in Moroccan jails. Not
long after Clinton praised the monarchy's human rights record, the regime
illegally expelled Aminatou Haidar, known as the Saharan Gandhi, for her
leadership in the nonviolent resistance struggle in Western Sahara. Haidar
-
a winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and other honors for
her nonviolent activism - spent years in Moroccan prisons, where she was
repeatedly tortured. She went on a month-long hunger strike that almost
killed her before Morocco relented to international pressure and allowed
her
to return to her country.
The Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP), a Moroccan government-owned
mining company that controls one of the world's largest phosphate mines in
the occupied Western Sahara, was the primary donor to the Clinton Global
Initiative conference in Marrakech in May 2015. Exploitation of
nonrenewable
resources in non-self-governing territories, such as the OCP mining
operations, is normally recognized as a violation of international law.
This
and other support provided to the Clinton Foundation by OCP - now totaling
as much as $5 million - has raised some eyebrows, given Hillary Clinton's
efforts as secretary of state to push the Obama administration to take a
more pro-Moroccan position. Since leaving office, she has continued her
outspoken support for the monarchy. When she announced the Marrakech
meeting
in the fall of 2014, she praised Morocco as a "vital hub for economic and
cultural exchange," thanking the regime "for welcoming us and for its
hospitality."
President Hillary Clinton?
Increasing numbers of Americans, particularly those who identify with the
Democratic Party, are taking a critical view of the militaristic aspects

US policies in the Middle East. It would therefore be somewhat ironic that
at a time when polls indicate that a majority of Democrats are

increasingly

critical of US military intervention in the Middle East and of US support
for dictatorial regimes and occupation armies, the party would nominate a
candidate who comes from the more hawkish wing of the party. Moreover,
should she win the Democratic nomination for president, her Republican
opponent in the November election will likely be advocating an even more
hawkish policy in the Middle East. In such a scenario, regardless of who
becomes president, Americans may end up providing their next president

with

a mandate for a more militaristic and interventionist policy for a region
in
the throes of historic upheaval.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may

not

be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Stephen Zunes
Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern
studies at the University of San Francisco.
Related Stories
Five Reasons No Progressive Should Support Hillary Clinton
By Joseph Mulkerin, Truthout | Op-EdHillary Clinton Hasn't Learned a Thing
From Iraq
By Medea Benjamin, OtherWords | Op-EdHillary Clinton's Ghosts: A Legacy of
Pushing the Democratic Party to the Right
By Michael Corcoran, Truthout | News Analysis

Show Comments

Follow-Ups:
- [blind-democracy] Re: Hillary the Hawk
  - From: Bob Hachey

[blind-democracy] Re: Hillary the Hawk

Other related posts: