were she elected president of the United States.
In a recent Daily Kos diary, Ten Reasons Not to Vote for Hillary Clinton (Mon Feb 04, 2008), fromtheleft listed several foreign policy reasons why Hillary is likely to follow in George Bush’s footsteps and keep the United States in a state of war in the Middle East. On the matter of Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel-Palestine, Hillary’s votes on matters relating to foreign policy in the Senate have followed AIPAC’s right wing agenda: stay the course in Iraq, bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, and continue Israel’s efforts to complete colonization of the West Bank to achieve the right wing dream of a Greater Israel.
Fromtheleft’s foreign policy points were as follows:
Hillary Clinton voted for Bush’s Iraq war
Hillary Clinton voted for Bush’s Patriot Act and to reauthorize the Act when it came up for renewal
Hillary Clinton opposed the international treaty to ban land mines
Hillary Clinton is one of the Senate’s most outspoken critics of the United Nations
Hillary Clinton voted against the Feinstein-Leahy amendment restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilian-populated areas (like Israel during its invasion of Lebanon)
Hillary Clinton is one of the most prominent critics of the International Court of Justice for its landmark 2004 advisory ruling that the Fourth Geneva Conventions on the Laws of War is legally binding on all signatory nations
Hillary Clinton supported Israel’s massive military assault on the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, which took the lives of over 1,000 civilians, half of whom were children
Indeed, these positions are right out of the Israel Lobby playbook and mimics Cheney-Bush foreign policy initiatives and past and current leanings of Neocon’s in the United Nations, like John Bolton, AIPAC’s favorite stooge.
For these reasons alone, it can be expected that a Hillary Clinton administration will continue the Neocon ways of Cheney-Bush, which is nothing less than a reimposition of AIPAC’s foreign policy agenda on the United States.
Fortheleft’s points reveal the danger of Hillary Clinton were she elected president.
In December 2007. Stephen Zunes wrote about Hillary Clinton on International Law:
Perhaps the most terrible legacy of the administration of President George W. Bush has been its utter disregard for such basic international legal norms as the ban against aggressive war, respect for the UN Charter, and acceptance of international judicial review. Furthermore, under Bush’s leadership, the United States has cultivated a disrespect for basic human rights, a disdain for reputable international human rights monitoring groups, and a lack of concern for international humanitarian law.
Ironically, the current front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president shares much of President Bush’s dangerous attitudes toward international law and human rights.
For example, Senator Hillary Clinton has opposed restrictions on U.S. arms transfers and police training to governments that engage in gross and systematic human rights abuses. Indeed, she has supported unconditional U.S. arms transfers and police training to such repressive and autocratic governments as Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Equatorial Guinea, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Kazakhstan, and Chad, just to name a few. She has also refused to join many of her Democratic colleagues in signing a letter endorsing a treaty that would limit arms transfers to countries that engage in a consistent pattern of gross and systematic human rights violations.
Not only is she willing to support military assistance to repressive regimes, she has little concern about controlling weapons that primarily target innocent civilians. Senator Clinton has refused to support the international treaty to ban land mines, which are responsible for killing and maiming thousands of civilians worldwide, a disproportionate percentage of whom have been children.
She was also among a minority of Democratic Senators to side with the Republican majority last year in voting down a Democratic-sponsored resolution restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilian-populated areas. Each of these cluster bomb contains hundreds of bomblets that are scattered over an area the size of up to four football fields and, with a failure rate of up to 30%, become de facto land mines. As many as 98% of the casualties caused by these weapons are civilians.
Not only is Hillary’s record in the Senate clearly anti-American/proIsrael, she has taken up the war mongering rhetoric of Israeli politicians against Iran. In April 2007, Hillary announced that the US might have to confront Iran
Democratic presidential candidate and New York Senator Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that it might be necessary for America to confront Iran militarily, addressing that possibility more directly than any of the other presidential candidates who spoke this week to the National Jewish Democratic Council.
(snip)
Clinton first said that the US should be engaging directly with Iran to foil any effort to gain nuclear weapons and faulted the Bush administration for “considerably narrowing” the options available to America in countering Iran.
In an earlier article, Justin Raimondo called her a War Goddess:
January 23, 2006
(Hillary) wants permanent bases in Iraq and threatens war with Iran.
As the war in Iraq metastasizes into what General William E. Odom calls “the greatest strategic disaster in United States history,” and the cost in lives and treasure continues to escalate, we are already being set up for Act II of the neocons’ Middle East war scenario – with the Democrats taking up where the Republicans left off.
The Bush administration, for all its bellicose rhetoric, has shown little stomach for directly confronting Tehran, and this has prompted Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton to take on the Bushies for supposedly ignoring the alleged threat from Iran. Speaking at Princeton University on the occasion of the Wilson School’s 75th anniversary celebration, Clinton aligned herself with such Republican hawks as Sen. John McCain and the editorial board of the Weekly Standard, calling for sanctions and implicitly threatening war:
“I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations. I don’t believe you face threats like Iran or North Korea by outsourcing it to others and standing on the sidelines. But let’s be clear about the threat we face now: A nuclear Iran is a danger to Israel, to its neighbors and beyond. The regime’s pro-terrorist, anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric only underscores the urgency of the threat it poses. U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot and should not – must not – permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. In order to prevent that from occurring, we must have more support vigorously and publicly expressed by China and Russia, and we must move as quickly as feasible for sanctions in the United Nations. And we cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current leadership of Iran – that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons.”
The key phrase here is: Democrats taking up where the Republicans left off, a direct reference to Hillary Clinton.
But just what is Hillary’s focus on the key Middle East conflict, one that many believe is at the crux of US-Middle East foreign policy. In a word, what AIPAC wants, AIPAC gets.
KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON, former CIA analysts, wrote this piece about What Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Know About Palestine, after a visit she made to Israel.
her ability to stand in front of the wall and sing its praises is clear testimony to the power of denial, and the power of politics. Clinton made it clear that she had no intention of visiting “Palestinian areas” — by which she meant Palestinian areas where Israelis do not yet live — and her promise was triumphantly repeated in Israeli press coverage of her visit. Her constituents in New York and among Democrats eager for her presidential candidacy were undoubtedly also pleased that she refused to associate with those people, the Palestinians.
The wall, Clinton announced in its shadow, coyly mislabeling it a fence, “is not against the Palestinian people,” only against the terrorists. As if she knew. As if she knew anything about the situation on the ground. As if the wall selectively disrupts only the plans of a few terrorists and does not destroy the property, the land, the homes, the livelihoods, the very lives of 500,000 innocent Palestinians. In a statement posted on her website following the trip, Clinton affirmed her “strong” support for Israel’s “right” to ensure the safety and security of its citizens and to build a “security barrier to keep terrorists out,” and boasted that she had “taken the International Court of Justice to task for questioning Israel’s right to build the fence.” Apparently, we are supposed to be edified by Clinton’s cheek in taking an international court to task. Such steely determination on Israel’s behalf plays well in the U.S. political arena, where the utter immorality of the wall is of little import.
Indeed, no Democratic politician has been more in the forefront of enabling Israeli propaganda than Hillary, which attempts to cast the Palestinians, a people who have been fighting an incessant military occupation for the past 40 years, as terrorists. For that matter, the US State Department under Bush has likewise played down the military occupation as a necessary move to counter Palestinian terrorism. This is equivalent to the French and Italian resistance during WWII being called terrorist organizations by German forces.
So what really is Hillary’s problem with telling the truth about American foreign policy in the Middle East?
Joshua Frank put it in a nutshell when he wrote, Hillary Clinton and the Israel Lobby:
….as AIPAC and Israel pressure the U.S. government to force the Iran issue to the UN Security Council, Israel itself stands in violation of numerous UN resolutions dealing with the occupied territories of Palestine, including UN Resolution 1402, which in part calls on Israel to withdraw its military from all Palestinian cities at once.
AIPAC’s hypocrisy is nauseating. The Goliath lobbying organization wants Iran to cease to procure nukes while the crimes of Israel continue to be ignored. So who is propping up AIPAC’s hypocritical position? None other than Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.
As one of the top Democratic recipients of pro-Israel funds for the 2006 election cycle, pocketing over $83,000, Clinton now has Iran in her cross hairs.
During a Hanukkah dinner speech delivered in December 2005, hosted by Yeshiva University, Clinton prattled, “I held a series of meetings with Israeli officials [last summer], including the prime minister and the foreign minister and the head of the [Israel Defense Forces], to discuss such challenges we confront. In each of these meetings, we talked at length about the dire threat posed by the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, not only to Israel, but also to Europe and Russia. Just this week, the new president of Iran made further outrageous comments that attacked Israel’s right to exist that are simply beyond the pale of international discourse and acceptability. During my meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, I was reminded vividly of the threats that Israel faces every hour of every day. … It became even more clear how important it is for the United States to stand with Israel….”
As Clinton embraces Israel’s violence, as well as AIPAC’s fraudulent posture on Iran, she simultaneously ignores the hostilities inflicted upon Palestine, as numerous Palestinians have been killed during the continued shelling of the Gaza Strip over the past year.
Clinton’s silence toward Israel’s brutality implies the senator will continue to support AIPAC’s mission to occupy the whole of the occupied territories, as well as a war on Iran. AIPAC is correct – even President Bush appears to be a little sheepish when up against the warmongering of Hillary Clinton.
So as with Bill Clinton’s administration, which did the worst damage to the possibility of peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, a Hillary administration will continue to advocate for right wing Israel political factions if she became president. She would in fact become an AIPAC president, who would take her cues from the Israel Lobby.