Yes, except that he changes his mind from one minute to the next, at least
if you listen to what he says. And this peaceful man is in favor of torture.
This is a guy who, when confronted with the fact that he was being supported
by the KKK, said he didn't know what it was. So how can anyone write a
serious article about his foreign policy?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran
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Sent: Monday, May 09, 2016 11:08 AM
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Subject: [blind-democracy] Trump, Clinton debate best foreign policy to
advance US imperialism
http://themilitant.com/2016/8019/801905.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 19 May 16, 2016
(front page)
Trump, Clinton debate best foreign policy to advance US imperialism
BY SETH GALINSKY
As Hillary Clinton heads toward clinching the Democratic Party nomination
and Donald Trump the Republican nod, there has been increased discussion of
their foreign policies. Both defend U.S. imperialist interests around the
globe, and the use of military might to enforce those interests. But New
York Times columnist Maureen Dowd gets at some of their differences in an
April 30 column, where she wrote, "It's Hillary the Hawk against Donald the
Quasi-Dove."
Along similar lines the April 24 Times magazine featured the article "How
Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk" by Mark Landler, the paper's White House
correspondent. He writes approvingly that Clinton believes "that the
calculated use of military power is vital to defending national interests,
that American intervention does more good than harm and that the writ of the
United States properly reaches, as [George W.] Bush once put it, into 'any
dark corner of the world.'" He adds that Clinton "is the last true hawk left
in the race."
Landler notes Clinton's "decades-long cultivation of the military,"
beginning when her husband Bill Clinton was president and continuing during
her stint as U.S. senator in New York and later as President Barack Obama's
secretary of state.
A month after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center
and Pentagon, Sen. Clinton traveled to Fort Drum in New York's Jefferson
County at the invitation of Gen. Buster Hagenbeck, the new Army 10th
Mountain Division commander. "She sat down," he told Landler, "took her
shoes off, put her feet up on the coffee table and said, 'General, do you
know where a gal can get a cold beer around here?'"
Clinton for more robust intervention
"Spurning a long tradition of New York senators," Landler adds, she took a
seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee instead of Foreign Relations
when offered a choice in 2002. "For a politician looking to hone hard-power
credentials - a woman who aspired to be commander in chief - it was the
perfect training ground," Landler said. "She dug in like a grunt at boot
camp."
During her time as secretary of state, Clinton generally favored "more
robust intervention" than Obama, Landler notes. Obama has been reluctant to
send large numbers of ground troops, preferring to use drones, airstrikes,
special forces and "diplomacy" to advance Washington's interests.
Clinton was a proponent of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recommendation in
2009 to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. She supported the Pentagon's
plan to leave a "residual force" of up to 20,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. She
opposed proposals by aides to Obama in February 2009 to make symbolic
concessions to Moscow as a gesture of "good will in resetting the
relationship," the Times says.
In 2010 after the North Korean military allegedly torpedoed a South Korean
ship, Clinton backed a plan to send a U.S. warship to the Yellow Sea between
North Korea and China, a move sure to provoke Beijing.
"We've got to run it up the gut!" Clinton said. Obama declined her plan.
In one dispute with Obama where she won out, Clinton pushed for the use of
U.S. air power in 2011 to hasten the fall of the regime of Moammar Gadhafi
in Libya.
There are numerous other examples.
Trump's 'America First'
In a speech April 27 Trump said that "since the end of the Cold War and the
break-up of the Soviet Union" the U.S. government has "lacked a coherent
foreign policy" and under Obama and Clinton has been "reckless, rudderless
and aimless."
Trump says he is going to put "America First." He says he opposed the U.S.
war in Iraq and that Washington should be "getting out of the
nation-building business."
"Unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and aggression will not be
my first instinct," Trump said. "A superpower understands that caution and
restraint are signs of strength."
"We went from mistakes in Iraq to Egypt to Libya, to President Obama's line
in the sand in Syria," referring to Obama's empty threats to take action
against the Bashar al-Assad regime if it used chemical weapons.
"Each of these actions have helped to throw the region into chaos,"
Trump said "and gave ISIS [Islamic State] the space it needs to grow and
prosper." While Trump says Obama gave too much away with his "disastrous"
deal with Iran, unlike his now-defeated Republican competitors he has never
said he would tear it up. Instead, he says he will "renegotiate" it.
The Republican candidate also says that to bargain from a position of
strength he will "rebuild our military" and spend more money on new
armaments. At the same time he said he will tell ISIS "their days are
numbered."
In the increasing disorder in the Mideast, Trump says that Washington should
"seek common ground" with Moscow and Beijing.
Conservatives and liberals alike who are apoplectic about Trump's march to
the Republican nomination derided his foreign policy speech. The liberal
Huffington Post said it was an "incoherent view of the world,"
while the conservative National Review called it "incoherent and shallow."
But many working people who have been drawn to Trump's meetings, seeking
answers to the grinding depression conditions spawned by the capitalist
economic crisis, are skeptical of U.S. intervention around the world.
They are attracted to his portrayal of himself as the candidate of "peace
and prosperity, not war and destruction."
"More drones or fewer, more diplomacy or less, more special forces or more
infantry, everything Washington does is to defend the interests of U.S.
capitalists around the world, not working people," said Osborne Hart,
Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. vice president, May 3.
"While Clinton and Trump have tactical differences on how to best defend
imperialist interests, nothing they do advances the interests of the working
class. Working people need our own foreign policy independent of the
bosses."
Related articles:
Workers need international solidarity, not 'Americanism'
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