By Mike Whitney
November 20, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Counterpunch" - If you’re one of the millions of Americans who think Hillary Clinton would make a lousy president, then pat yourself on the back because she pretty much proved it yesterday. In a presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations, Clinton made it clear that if she’s elected in 2016, she’s going to drag the country straight to war. Invoking the same imagery as her ideological twin, George W. Bush, Clinton fulminated for more than an hour and a half on Syria, war, terrorism, war, no-fly zones, war, radical jihadism, war, and “metastasizing threats”, whatever the heck those are. Oh, and did I mention war?
Seriously, while regretful Democrats can claim that they never thought Obama would turn out to be the disappointment he has been, the same can’t be said about Clinton. Madame Secretary has a long pedigree and the bold print on the warning label is easy to read. There’s simply no excuse for anyone to vote for a proven commodity like Hillary and then complain at some later date, that they didn’t know what a scheming and hard-boiled harridan she really was. Clinton’s hawkishness is part of the public record. It’s right there for everyone to see. She voted for Iraq, she supported the Libya fiasco, and now she’s gearing up for Syria. Her bloodthirsty foreign policy is just slightly to the left of John McCain and his looneybin sidekick, Lindsey Graham. Simply put: A vote for Clinton is a vote more-of-the-same death and destruction spread willy-nilly across the planet in the endless pursuit of imperial domination. It’s that simple. Here’s an excerpt from her speech:
“…let’s be clear about what we’re facing. Beyond Paris, in recent days, we’ve seen deadly terrorist attacks in Nigeria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey, and a Russian civilian airline destroyed over the Sinai. At the heart of today’s new landscape of terror is ISIS. They persecute religious and ethnic minorities, kidnap and behead civilians, murder children. They systematically enslave, torture, and rape women and girls. ISIS operates across three mutually reinforcing dimensions—a physical enclave in Iraq and Syria, an international terrorist network that includes affiliates across the region and beyond, and an ideological movement of radical jihadism. We have to target and defeat all three. And time is of the essence. ISIS is demonstrating new ambition, reach, and capabilities. We have to break the group’s momentum, and then its back.”…..
(“A Conversation With Hillary Clinton“, Council on Foreign Relations)
Get the picture? ISIS is everywhere; Syria, Iraq, Europe, the US, in the closet, under the rug…everywhere. So we need to get busy and kill them all pronto before they rape our women, behead our children and turn us all in to sex slaves.
Ever heard that mantra before? Maybe just once or twice?
Of course this is all music to the ears of the weapons manufacturers, the pudgy bankers and the other ne’er-do-wells who assemble at these elitist gatherings. They just love the idea of everlasting war, perpetual war, war stretching in all directions across all continents forever and always. That’s the perennial dream of elites, isn’t it; making sure that we’re all at-each-others-throats so they can lend us the money to buy the weapons to kill each other as efficiently as possible? That’s like Braham’s Lullaby to these guys, but for everyone else, it’s holy hell.
And what, pray tell, does Clinton have in store for us all once she’s sworn in and comfortably ensconced in the Oval Office? Well, more war, of course. Check it out:
“The United States and our international coalition has been conducting this fight for more than a year. It’s time to begin a new phase and intensify and broaden our efforts to smash the would-be caliphate and deny ISIS control of territory in Iraq and Syria. That starts with a more effective coalition air campaign, with more allies’ planes, more strikes, and a broader target set…..And we should be honest about the fact that to be successful, air strikes will have to be combined with ground forces actually taking back more territory from ISIS.
Like President Obama, I do not believe that we should again have 100,000 American troops in combat in the Middle East.” (“A Conversation With Hillary Clinton“, Council on Foreign Relations)
A “new phase” in the war on terror, says she, and it will only cost you 100,000 troops or so…for starters, that is. And, of course, she’s drawing on her vast military experience to make that calculation.
Oh, that’s right, she doesn’t have any “vast military experience”, in fact, she doesn’t have any military experience at all, she was a flunkey diplomat at the State Department who knows nothing about these matters.
But, maybe we’re being too harsh, after all, Don Rumsfeld didn’t have any experience either, and look how that turned out.
Here’s more: “We need to lay the foundation for a second “Sunni awakening.” We need to put sustained pressure on the government in Baghdad to gets its political house in order, move forward with national reconciliation, and finally, stand up a national guard.” (CFR)
Yes, and we also need to ride unicorns over rainbows to a shiny bright future in Candyland. It’s about the same thing, isn’t it?
Washington has been trying to accomplish what Clinton is recommending for the last 10 years and, guess what, it’s never worked. And it won’t work, because it’s a pipedream. The Iraqis are not “going to stand up, so we can stand down.” (Remember that one?) It’s not going to happen. She knows it and everyone in the audience knows it too. She’s just blowing smoke to convince the bigshots that she’ll faithfully prosecute their freaking wars until hell freezes over. That’s what’s really going on, or does someone actually believe these cutthroat plutocrats really want a more stable and secure Middle East?
Uh huh. That’s right at top of their list right next to higher wages for working people.
Clinton again: “We should immediately deploy the Special Operations force President Obama has already authorized, and be prepared to deploy more as more Syrians get into the fight. And we should retool and ramp up our efforts to support and equip viable Syrian opposition units. Our increased support should go hand in hand with increased support from our Arab and European partners, including special forces who can contribute to the fight on the ground.” (CFR)
Here we go again: More Special Ops, more guns and money for sketchy thugs in black pajamas, and stronger ties with the terror-breeding crackpots in Ankara and Riyadh. Intensify, escalate, ramp up, and deepen our involvement. Why not? What could go wrong?
Clinton again: “We should also work with the coalition and the neighbors to impose no-fly zones that will stop Assad from slaughtering civilians and the opposition from the air. Opposition forces on the ground with materiel support from the coalition could then help create safe areas where Syrians could remain in the country rather than fleeing toward Europe.” (CFR)
This is where career fantasist Clinton really goes off the rails. If you haven’t noticed, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are currently carrying out military operations in Syria. The objective of these operations is to prevent regime change, to maintain the sovereign integrity of the state (which means securing the borders) and to kill as many jihadi dirtbags as humanly possible. Russian President Vladimir Putin is not going to allow the United States, or anyone else for that matter, to effectively annex part of Syria so it can continue to wage its not-so-clandestine proxy-war on Assad. That’s just not going to happen. So if Clinton is under the misguided impression that the US is calling the shots, well, she’s in for a rude awakening.
It’s one thing to spew this kind of chest-thumping blabber in front of your think tank buddies at the CFR, but it’s something else altogether to try to put this type of lunatic plan into play. The problem is, Clinton doesn’t seem to know the difference because she’s what you call a “true believer”, one of those rare birds who actually believes in the imperial mission to conquer the unwashed masses and bring them under Uncle Sam’s benign rule. She’s a Koolaid drinker, the type of person who would risk a clash with Putin just to prove a point, just to prove that the exceptional nation has an exceptional role to play in making everyone comply with its exception diktats. That’s Hillary in a nutshell, a charter member of the American Taliban, an unrepentant extremist capable of launching a nuclear war if she ever gets close enough to the Big Red Switch. Which is why it is every voting-age American should make sure she never gets that chance, or we’ll all be goners.
One last excerpt: “Now, much of this strategy on both sides of the border hinges on the roles of our Arab and Turkish partners….because ultimately our efforts will only succeed if the Arabs and Turks step up in a much bigger way. This is their fight and they need to act like it….(but) There is no alternative to a political transition that allows Syrians to end Assad’s rule…..” (H. Clinton, CFR)
So, even though the Russian-led coalition now controls more than half of Syria and Assad is in no immediate danger of being removed, Clinton insists that the effort to topple Assad is going to continue.
Doesn’t that concern you, dear reader? Doesn’t that suggest that, if given half-a-chance, Clinton’s going to ramp up the war and use Turkish and US ground troops to launch an invasion of Syria? Read the excerpt again. What else could it mean?
Readers should peruse the CFR transcript for themselves and see if they think I’m exaggerating or not. This is serious stuff. There’s nothing Hillary Clinton would like more than to slip into her Rough-Rider togs and lead the country into World War 3. We need to make sure that never happens.
