There was a time when I was proud of Obama for being so sensible about Libya, but that was before Secretary Clinton prevailed on him to intervene and led him into what he now acknowledges was the biggest mistake of this presidency. I remember when Steve Clemons said that Defense Secretary Robert Gates was pissed because “Clinton won the bureaucratic battle to use DOD resources to achieve what’s essentially the State Department’s objective… and Obama let it happen.”
I said at the time:
I’m nervous. but so far I am quite proud of how Barack Obama and Robert Gates have resisted calls to get our country overly involved in the situation in Libya. I fear reports of Gaddafi’s demise have been premature. But, probably a much more important consideration than Gaddafi’s fate is the general lack of knowledge about what might follow his regime. I am not concerned about radical Islamists taking over. I don’t think that is likely. I am concerned about no one taking over. I haven’t seen any compelling evidence that there are the makings of a functional government that can unite the country waiting in the wings.
Radical Islamists have been expanding their presence and influence in Libya in recent years, but they haven’t taken over. I was right that the real danger was that no one would take over.
Here’s something else I said:
What disturbs me is the absolutely thoughtless way that so many Americans and American leaders are willing to commit our country to the use of violence and meddling in other countries. In some cases it is justifiable, but can someone do a week of research before they start sending in the 82nd Airborne?
I mean, Jesus, seriously…
And I praised Robert Gates for correctly noting that “the No. 1 lesson of Iraq: That once the United States plays a major role in the ouster of a Middle Eastern leader, it bears responsibility for whatever state emerges in its place.”
I also said this about the idea of imposing just a no-fly zone:
We have marginal corporate interests in the country, and we don’t want to see their oil off the market if that is going to lead to severe energy inflation in Europe. But that argues for stability, not for a sustained period of civil war and uncertainty.
Getting Gaddafi to resign does nothing to assure stability. Who says that his opponents are unified? Who says they will agree to split the spoils equitably? Saddam ruled his country the way he did not only because he was a sadist but because the country would tear apart at the seams without some heavy-hand to keep things in order. The same may well be true about Gaddafi. I’m not opposed to the idea of democracy for Libyans, but we shouldn’t get too invested in the idea. There’s no evidence that Libya is ripe for parliamentary democracy. If it happens, great. If it doesn’t, let’s make sure we’re not to blame.
If someone wants to risk getting themselves into a decades-long commitment to “overseeing” Libyan affairs, let it not be NATO and the United States, but some coalition of regional players, including Arab ones, or let it be done by the United Nations if that is possible.
Kristof is too-willing to commit us without answering difficult questions. Gen. Merrill McPeak says, “Just flying a few jets across the top of the friendlies would probably be enough to ground the Libyan Air Force, which is the objective.” Well, who are the friendlies? Are we going to consider anyone who is fighting Gaddafi to be a friendly? Do we even know these people? What makes this tribe better than that one? Do we even care? And is grounding the Libyan Air Force really the objective? No, of course not. The objective of a no-fly zone is regime change. Once you commit to it, you are committed forever, or until there is a regime change. Unless the objective is to burn cash and gas flying planes over northern Africa, a decision to impose a no-fly zone is a decision to oust Gaddafi.
There are obviously costs and risks to our pilots, but as Iraq demonstrated, there are unintended consequences. There is blowback.
I keep saying this. Libya is not our problem. It’s not our responsibility to determine who will govern Libya. We can be prepared to intervene to prevent widescale slaughter of innocent civilians, but this isn’t a war between civilians and Gaddafi, but a war between armed groups representing different regions and tribes with different interests.
And I just kept getting more vehement in my insistence that we should not commit to Libya with no plan for the day after:
Let me say this again. We don’t know what kind of leadership would emerge from this opposition if they were to prevail, but they don’t even appear to have operational leadership in the field. We have no compelling reason to commit ourselves to this fight. It’s a mistake. And the president has been pushed very far out on a limb here, probably through a false sense of momentum arising from the successful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. It will be painful to walk this back, but unless Hillary Clinton discovers a compelling, organized opposition in Benghazi when she arrives there this week, our commitment to regime change in Libya should be scaled back. It’s not our problem. Obama is in the process of making it our problem. We should stand ready to prevent massacres and offer asylum, but should not commit our military to do what the rebels cannot do themselves.
And, so, as his presidency comes into its final lap, Obama says:
A failure to adequately plan for the aid and governing of Libya after the U.S.-led NATO attacks in 2011 “probably” was his biggest error in office, President Barack Obama said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
Asked by host Chris Wallace about the “worst mistake” of his soon-to-end White House years, Obama listed the aftermath of the ouster and death of Moammar Qaddafi, even as he defended the intervention.
“Probably failing to plan for the day after,” Obama said in the session, which was taped at the University of Chicago on April 7.
Almost everyone pressured Obama to intervene, from our closest European allies, to the Arab League, to the Republicans who accused him of being soft, to the humanitarian activists in the Democratic Party, to some of his key foreign policy advisers. No one was more important than Hillary Clinton, however:
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Yahoo News in January that he thought Clinton’s “influence was pivotal in persuading the president to broaden the goal in Libya beyond just saving the people in Benghazi” from Qaddafi’s forces and “essentially focusing more on regime change. The president told me that it was one of the closest decisions he’d ever made, sort of 51-49, and I’m not sure that he would’ve made that decision if Secretary Clinton hadn’t supported it.”
It was a close call and Obama’s instincts were all correct. He went against his instincts and he’ll aways regret it. It could have cost him his presidency, and he’s lucky that it didn’t.
If you want to know why I won’t endorse Clinton, it’s because of my utter lack of faith in her foreign policy judgment. I may be more liberal than she is on a lot of domestic policy, but I’m comfortable with her working with Congress on the budget and appropriations. I think she’ll come up with a pretty strong Justice Department and have a decent regulatory scheme.
I just do not want her making the last call on tough foreign policy decisions.
And it’s not Iraq that is the worrisome example of what I’m talking about. Iraq was a mistake a lot of people made, and it wasn’t in any way her decision.
Libya is her baby, and I’m still angry that she convinced Obama to be the father of that fiasco.
I agree. Hillary’s proposal for a no-fly zone over Syria is also very bad. I assume she would not have our military form and execute a unilateral plan for a no-fly zone over a country in the middle of a multi-factional civil war with major regional dangers. In many ways, it doesn’t even matter if she would cobble together some coalition agreement, it would remain bad policy.
As long as terrorism is used as an asymmetrical tactic, there will always be political pressure from the public to “do something” to stop it, but even a perfect set of foreign and energy policies will not stop it. It’s truly messed up.
Unbeleivably, a third point we agree on.
But what about all those Libyan phony refugees trying to get into the US so they can take your job?
No, It’s the Indians and Pakistanis that took my job. After their governments paid their educations in US colleges.
This. I’m not that impressed by Obama’s remarks, given that he apparently still believes there was a way of doing the Libya invasion “right”, but the Obama-Kerry Syria policy suggests they must have learned at least something from Libya. Every time Clinton talks about this “no-fly zone” it gives the impression that she hasn’t learned anything.
We’re probably going to have to vote for her in November, and I’m doing everything I can to feel positive about it and communicate that to others, but this one is really impossible.
Then their blood is on YOUR hands.
You know, Voice, if I want to think about it that way I’ve already got so much blood on my hands, for everything from voting for Obama to eating Southeast Asian shrimp, that it’s not going to make any difference. I’m going to be a beetle in my next incarnation for sure.
On the other hand, if everybody who reads this blog had been able back in 2000 to convince somebody in Florida to vote Gore instead of Nader, the number of lives that would have been saved is incalculable, not to mention the lost chance of putting the earth on the road to stopping global warming before it was too late, as it now may well be. And we wouldn’t even know it, because we couldn’t have imagined what George W. Bush was going to do, and we’d be all grumpy and saying “Oh that Gore is just a Republican lite,” but it really would have been a better world all the same.
With you on this one. Her hawkishness is definitely my biggest concern. On the other hand, I think she’s got better instincts on Social Security and other major domestic programs than Obama.
Of course, if Sanders pulls out an upset during the primary, we won’t be worrying about it.
As for Libya, I wonder how much of her bad judgment had to do with Sid Blumenthal? Because the problem is not only her bad judgment, it’s the company she keeps and has kept for decades … because they are her advisors.
As for Iraq, I’m afraid I can’t agree with you that “Iraq was a mistake a lot of people made, and it wasn’t in any way her decision.”
Yes it was a mistake, in the sense of a mistaken political calculation hat didn’t turn out the way she expected , not in the sense of believing that Bush/Cheney BS, or that the vote was only to give the president emergency discretionary powers, not (heaven forfend!) a de facto authorization for war. (Since it was obvious to any 5-year-old that Bush & Cheney wanted war.) Yes, a mistake. After all, she voted for the power side, it ought to have been to her advantage.
The Senate vote for the Iraq Resolution was Republicans 49-1, Democrats 29-21. among those voting nay were Sens. Paul Wellstone, Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold, Robert Byrd, and Edward Kennedy. Why couldn’t she have made it 28-22? Answer – she could have, and that was absolutely her decision.
When Hillary came to the senate, she became close to Sen. Byrd, who came to be known as her mentor. The most senior person in the senate, Byrd never forgot the Iraq vote. In 2008 he endorsed Obama, not Clinton, and the reason was her vote on Iraq, along with the belief that Obama would get us out of Iraq.
Sen. Byrd also had great respect for Bernie Sanders.
http://www.ouramazingworld.org/politics/senator-robert-byrds-iraq-war-case-against-hillary-clinton-a
s-president
How you feel about Iraq and foreign policy with respect to Clinton is how I and many others here feel about EVERY ASPECT of her political being.
Seconded.
“And then I told Wall Street to “cut it out” with all their naughty behavior. And then I said to Bibi, ‘Settlement expansion is not helpful.’ Send me a check, Saban.”
yes, Ukraine, for instance, destabilizing the the pragmatic relationship between Russia and US on Syrian chemical weapons. and I agree with most posters here, it’s about destabilizing, preventing strong alliances in the various regions, and making $ on arms sales. Kissinger school.
And before that, Dulles school
“The Devil’s Chessboard” is a must read to have a better understanding of how we got here.
It would be better known as the Rockefellor school, as Dulles Brothers, Dean Rusk, Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft and Madeline Albright among others all were prodigies of the Rockefeller foreign policy clique.
One of the biggest reasons I supported Obama over Clinton in the 2008 primary was his opposition to the Iraq war, when HRC voted for it. HRC tries to make foreign policy her biggest strength, when it is one of her greatest weaknesses. I worry that Pres. Obama’s foreign policy accomplishments will be reversed if HRC wins the election. On a regular basis, HRC spends her Christmas holidays with Henry Kissinger. That says it all for me.
While in general I share your opinion, more was made about how different they were on foreign policy during 2008 than was really there. Obama chose Clinton as Secretary of State. You don’t do that if you have a radically different foreign policy view.
A good deal of his biggest failures came on her watch, and he can’t claim to be an innocent bystander. And while things have gone better with Kerry at the helm, some of this is due to this being his last term and wanting to go out with some history making accomplishments.
I’ve always considered that a very cynical political calculation.
Political calculation? Yes, but not like all the Lincoln stuff Obama kept channeling into crap about keeping your enemies close. Plain and simply pressure by the Democratic Party bigwigs and Hillary and Bill’s insistence on their due, entitlement as party leaders. The decision struck me as ever so stupid. A President Clinton is sure to mess up the relationship with Iran at the behest of Netanyahu’s Israel and to operate a lot of military operations in many places if not an outright war. Her whole attitude towards Russia and China will be super confrontational, if not aggressive. She a High Brass Lady, Madam Yes.
Don’t disagree.
I’m not excusing Pres. Obama. As Harry Truman’s sign on his desk said, “The Buck Stops Here.”
Ah, okay. Sorry if I misread your post.
Obama chose her; they are both at fault for these failures.
The notion that this is Clinton’s fault even though it was absolutely Obama’s call makes me nervous.
I have a problem with the narrative of the war in Libya. For example:
Obama Cites Lack of `Day After’ Plan in Libya as Biggest Mistake – Bloomberg Politics
But when the air attacks started there was knowledge that it would lead to civil war.
Canadian military predicted Libya would descend into civil war if foreign countries helped overthrow Gaddafi | National Post
So the question that should be asked, is what goals did a civil war in Libya serve, given that the decision makers likely knew that it would lead to civil war?
And secondly, the narrative of spontan rebellion, and then support form the outside is also looking shaky.
Qatar admits sending hundreds of troops to support Libya rebels | World news | The Guardian
Special forces from at least Qatar was involved in creating the civil war. Even assuming it was only the Qataris, if decision-makers in the US did not know what Qatar was doing and the tacit approval for stirring up a war in Libya came from a lower level, that just moves the question to who knew what and why was the decision made to let (at least) Qatar go ahead with stirring up a civil war. So why?
It was much easier with the Bush administration, they bragged about their plans to have a generations-long occupation of Iraq to transform it into free market utopia, then conquer Iran and so on.
In the end, I don’t think Obama and Clinton roles in the war can be evaluated properly without a fuller understanding of the war.
I know this is a hijack, but I must make this point, and I hope folks will do as I say and not as I do and stay on topic.
If a voter believes that Libya was merely a mistake with bad planning, they can still hold HRC as a viable candidate. And a Bernie voter that believes this was an innocent mistake, so to speak, might still vote for HRC in the fall.
But I think something in the zeitgeist has turned, and for whatever reason, many Bernie voters will see the second option. If they see this decision as a deliberate effort to foment unrest, arms sales, new business opportunities with new regimes, or any other craven interest, then they may feel there is no circumstance where they would give their vote to HRC.
There is something about this campaign that seems to be sending people across a mental rubicon, and they now are more likely to believe the second option. Exactly why, and to what extent, I do not know, but I am positive it is happening.
The trust level of the leaders is approaching zero.
One person cannot counterbalance 70 years of “tradition” in the US national security institutions. Clinton after watching eight years from the White House and hobnobbing with US national security leaders had been schooled in the conventional wisdom before she became a Senator. Obama had to be a quick study once he began to get the inside conversation as Senator and then as President. Given how Congress covers the butts of the US national security institutions, Obama also had to be strategic in who he offended.
Given the sources of information in the US about Libya, it was easy to drink the koolaid. Twas when I discovered that there is in fact no reliable cable channel at all. And that US propaganda can be peddled by other countries’ media.
I’ve noticed this in conversation with R voters; one factor, imo, is Trump calling out the R lies. from what I’ve seen a % of Fox viewers don’t trust the media [including Fox] and what it says about politicians (including about Obama, interestingly)
I think this Rubicon you mention is the same one that people kept talking about in 2008. Perhaps overstated?
I agree. I’d say that the Rubicon flows right through the DNC. Not that that’s the be-all and end-all, but for most Dems it’s easy to see that the Republican Party is corrupt and uses hate, fear and bigotry to keep the villagers restless and fighting among themselves, if not fighting great demons OVER THERE.
But that’s what the corporate Dems now essentially do the same things and they’re essentially working for the same people. Oh, the Republican money is a little harsher, there’s more of a lean of end-of-times politics, than, say, a Bill Gates who’ll hold a TED talk with Sting and Malala and Reverend Tutu and make everyone feel fuzzy and warm and moral. But in the end the wealth of the top 1% keeps going up and the rest of the country remains in fiscal quicksand.
Whether it’s an oil scion or the wife of an Arkansas governor, we will still get the same wars. Trump, if the victor, we will at the crowds and write half-fascist shit and keep his ego inflated. A Paul Ryan would doing nothing different than any other Repub, chipping away at the safety net while occasionally waving the flag to distract the villagers.
Here’s a good article by Robert Parry, essentially make a case for H. Clinton’s continued use of regime change and warfare under her regime.
https:/consortiumnews.com/2016/04/10/would-a-clinton-win-mean-more-wars
There will be winners and there will be losers.
The buck stops at his desk!
No surprise here as I’ve written about the Libya-Syria screw-up for years. Secretary Clinton was in colusion with the Muslim Brotherhood players Erdogan in Turkey and the emir of Qatar (the Elder). Hillary Clinton voted FOR the Iraq War, initiated both the Libya echec and in a direct line the Syrian Revolution with weapons and fighters from North African nations and the greater Middle East. Pure neocon policy to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad. HRC also frustrated the peace process between Palestinians and Israel with her policy stance, neocon advisors and rhetoric. President Hillary Clinton will invite that a$$hole Bibi Netanyahu as first ally and leader to the White House. What a bs.
Well said by fjallström … simply look at her advisors and you unravel her character and ugly side on foreign policy. She belongs to the old gard and Cold War policy makers, not someone for the developments in a vast changing world of the 21st century.
History will judge Obama poorly on Middle-East policy … George Bush screwed up Iraq with hundreds of thousands deaths as a result; Obama screwed up Libya and Syria with the death count above 300,000 and counting. Gaddafi’s weapons were also moved into the Maghreb for jihadists after his overthrow. Several groups gaining prominence were Al Qaeda affiliates in both Mali and Nigeria (Boko Haram).
Austerity economics keeps NATO from pulling off regime change like they did in the old days.
State department traditions prevent the US back the player that is most likely to bring stability.
One suspects that different NATO intelligence agencies back different factions or that there are multiple CIA operations that back different factions (Syria is a window) and that amplifies divisions that would be more easily settled.
And over all is the failure of journalism to deliver accurate and unrigged reports of what is going on.
It is much too easy to point the finger at “those people over there who can’t get it together” when there is so much meddling going on from outside.
Did Hillary Clinton and the CIA fix the facts around the desired policy and feed the President biased information? The President can only decide on the basis of the information he receives from his direct reports despite all the effort at due diligence he might put in
And isn’t it interesting the propensity of the US to want to overthrow secular leaders — Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadhafi, Bashir Assad.
Fixing the facts…Ukraine
What do you mean, you refuse to endorse her? For weeks you have been saying Sanders should quit and we should all get behind Hillary. That’s an endorsement!
he has never said Sanders should quit and drop out, actually the opposite.
“Well, who are the friendlies?” – I think this question goes to the core of our problems in the Middle East. The answer does not fit the John Wayne good guy vs bad guy mentality of most of our leaders. I get it – we’re Americans and we have trouble with nuance. Thankfully our President is quite good at it that’s why you elect smart people. Unfortunately this time he listened to the wrong advice.
Tough to prove a counterfactual, but I imagine if we didn’t intervene, we would have been looking at a repeat of Rwanda 1994. Rwanda remains a mess today, though luckily not a genocidal one.
I don’t think we assumed responsibility for Libya by following Britain, France and Italy into that mess. And the overall chaos of the Middle East is a product of the governance problems that have existed there since Sykes-Picot.
Minor point, but Italy had to be dragged into the war. Libya was big exporter of oil and gas to Italy and just three years prior Italy had made a deal with Libya.
Silvio Berlusconi – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On the Rwanda angle, I haven’t seen anything (after the initial war propaganda died down) that suggests this as a genocidal or even primarily ethnic conflict.
Theres a good chance Qaddaffi would have gone the way papa Assad did in the 70s. The question is, would it have turned into Syria if he had? That might have been even worse than what we have now.
Also anything Berlusconi did is automatically suspect.
That was my feeling at the time as well, that the intervention saved lives. Un fortunately it may have cost more integrated over time.
How many lives did our revolution take? Not to mention the Civil War. Should we have stayed loyal British subjects and worked within the system for redress like Parliamentary representation? With America firmly within the British Empire, when the Brits abolished slavery in 1833 would the South have dared revolt against not only the North but the entire British Empire?
Hey if we’d stayed British at least we’d have single payer health care now!
And the metric system!
OT:
LOL
Ted Cruz Is Fuming Because John Kasich Won’t Bow Out
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER and JONATHAN MARTIN
APRIL 4, 2016
MADISON, Wis. — Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, eyeing a victory here that could reshape the race for the Republican presidential nomination, has appeared most vexed by a rival he views as more of a long-term nuisance than a short-term threat: Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.
As Mr. Cruz looks beyond Wisconsin, where he is favored to defeat Donald J. Trump on Tuesday, his frustrations with Mr. Kasich have increasingly been laid bare. With activists and operatives opposed to Mr. Trump fanning out across the electoral map in a scramble to deny him the nomination, Mr. Cruz’s team has argued that it is Mr. Kasich’s “quixotic” bid for the White House that will prove the biggest boon to Mr. Trump in the states to come.
On Monday, Mr. Cruz amplified calls for Mr. Kasich to step aside and predicted that “the people would quite rightly revolt” if party leaders tried to elevate anyone other than Mr. Cruz or Mr. Trump at a contested convention in July.
Mr. Cruz has begun airing ads in Wisconsin accusing Mr. Kasich of cronyism as Ohio’s governor. He has sent mailers attacking Mr. Kasich’s record on spending and his views on the Second Amendment. And his team has accused Mr. Kasich of auditioning to be Mr. Trump’s vice president, with some joking that he must be receiving some sort of payment.
The exasperation with Mr. Kasich has been long in the making, but as Mr. Trump stumbles and his grasp on the nomination is loosened, it is reaching a boiling point.
At a forum with Megyn Kelly of Fox News, broadcast on Monday night, Mr. Cruz strained to conceal his frustration with Mr. Kasich’s argument that only he could defeat the Democrat nominee in the fall.
Hillary’s hawkishness is disconcerting. While I’m nominally a supporter, it’s that side of her that makes me leery. No doubt it’s her weak spot on the left hand side of the aisle. It’s why I will happily vote for Sanders if he pulls the upset.
OTOH, Bernie’s inexperience on the national stage, fighting a general election campaign against a foe who will be happy to have him try to win via purity contest, gives me pause. He’ll need all the resources Clinton’s amassed to go against a multistage, multi-state, Republican effort to destroy him. If he has to run to the Clintons or the party for help, they are going to be happy to paint him as a hypocrite and typical politician. Sprinkle in some of his voting record, and they’ll make him seem like a sellout corporate hack. I suspect this is why a lot of Supers aren’t jumping on his bandwagon.
Ah well, you go to war with the army you’ve got . . .
Assuming that happens in this scenario the Clintons let him drown?
Thats says a lot about their actual commitment to fighting the republicans which HRC has bandied about so much this year.
Like a rock! The Clintons are merciless to their enemies. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her endorse Cruz “to save the country”.
Best to keep speculations within the realm of the most likely possibility. Not impossible that HRC would have endorsed McCain but not with Palin as his VP. Therefore, whatever, if any, deal Obama made with the Clintons was done before McCain named Palin.
The Clintons legacy would be trashed if HRC endorsed Cruz or Trump (or any rabbit the GOP could pull out of its ass). They won’t go there. But wouldn’t expect to see either of them prominent in the general election as DEM supporters of Sanders.
Would have endorsed McCain. They are partisan Democrats who have spent the last 20+ years working to get Democrats in congress.
It is completely unfounded speculation they would have endorsed McCain.
I phrased that very carefully on purpose. Please read with the same level of care. I did not say that HRC would have endorsed McCain and specifically excluded the possibility of an endorsement of the McCain/Palin ticket. I also eliminated from the “realm of possibility” a HRC endorsement of Trump or Cruz. You do understand the term “realm of possibility” don’t you?
Many additional factors could have come into play that would have taken “impossible” to possible. For example, during the time frame under consideration (which would have been June), had McCain’s favorability rating jumped five or more points and Obama’s dropped by a similar amount, the landscape would have changed. That alone is unlikely to have led to a Clinton making a different calculation but add a few more and it’s not “impossible.”
That there is nothing in the Clinton’s history to assume they would have endorsed McCain for president over Obama. You can add all of the qualifiers you want to it but it truly is completely unfounded speculation based on what I have no idea.
This sub-thread began with me chastising Voice for his speculation that if not nominated that, HRC would endorse Trump or Cruz. That seemed to me outside the bounds of the possible. Not that people don’t surprisingly go there; only that speculations should remain more inside.
Zell Miller endorsed GWB in 2004 and Joe Lieberman endorsed McCain in 2007. HRC had been close to McCain when they were in the Senate together and the primary loyalty of the Clintons is to their own aspirations and power. With the right offer, not at all outside that “realm of possibility” that she could have endorsed McCain. (John Dean ended up supporting the Iraq War because he thought it was impossible that a a President to would like about WMD and use such a lie to get a war one — and Dean has far more first hand experience in observing nefarious acts by a WH and you or I could ever hope to have and he got it absolutely wrong.)
As all this is idle speculation about something that could have happened in the past, yours isn’t any better than mine.
Bill might anyway. He is getting to be a loose cannon.
“If you want to know why I won’t endorse Clinton, it’s because of my utter lack of faith in her foreign policy judgment. I may be more liberal than she is on a lot of domestic policy, but I’m comfortable with her working with Congress on the budget and appropriations. I think she’ll come up with a pretty strong Justice Department and have a decent regulatory scheme.”
This is basically where I stand.
Wish I shared your optimism on the domestic side. In order to “get things done” she will play ball with the Republicans even more than Obama has, pulling the country still farther to the right. I believe this to be even more true when it comes to the economy. And neither she nor Bill has shown any understanding of environmental issues, so I haven’t much hope for those issues that I hold near and dear.
Well, if Bill was any measure, he knocked the shit outta Republicans over their attempts to cut Medicare and raise premiums in 1995. On Social Security, his key proposals involved utilizing a portion of the projected budget surplus in the late 90s to support additional retirement accounts or to use it to extend the current level of Social Security payout beyond 2032. Pretty solid overall.
“to support additional retirement accounts” Just like W! I do have to admit that I preferred W’s stock market account scheme better than Obama’s flat out cuts via chained CPI and means testing.
In 2004 W proposed to carve private accounts out of the existing SS system. In the late 90s, Clinton wanted to use the then projected budget surplus to create additional retirement accounts (or just boost the existing system). Big big difference.
“This is basically where I stand.”
And I respect that, although I don’t agree.
That’s the same hogwash that many have employed wrt to the Iraq war. “Overthrow” was the right thing to do; we just screwed up the day after. DEM supporters of that day also claim that they couldn’t have foreseen the GWB/Cheney occupation screw-up. Again hogwash because since I could project such incompetence in Afghanistan and which informed my opposition to that “war,” then Iraq was guaranteed to be a much larger clusterfuck.
The intervention disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria was inherent to the interventions. Korea (and we’re still there over sixty years on) was the dividing line between the glory of WWII and ugliness of all the US wars of choice since then.
Very disturbing to me was how much the Libyan question divided lefty blogland. While there were far fewer blog participants when the Iraq question was raised, there was unanimity in opposition to it. Libya created a near 50/50 split. (Even Meteor Blades argued for the intervention.) That split is probably mirrored in the HRC-Sanders split.
HRC was unacceptable in ’08 and her SOS stint has made her more unacceptable. However, it apparently made no difference when it came to questions such as Libya because both would have done the same thing. Obama would merely exhibit some reluctance for public consumption and that gave him an out if things didn’t go according to plan and he needed to pass the buck.
She’s not unacceptable in 2016. I’m voting for her as, I predict, will a lot of other people if it’s her in the general. There are a whole host of things I care about, such as the Supreme Court. No way do I want Cruz, Kasich, or any other Republicans nominating the next few justices. But I guess if you want to go right-to-work nationally, get rid of net neutrality (gotta love your cable company!), dump the ACA, trash the CFPB, “reform” Social Security, “reform” NEPA, hand the justice department to people who want to trash the voting rights act, we can.
Bernie can also beat Cruz or Trump in the general election; so, your reason for supporting HRC is not even complete low-level thinking. Same was true in ’08 — and while I preferred Obama, I viewed the Obama supporters that argued for Obama over HRC b/c he was more “electable” in the general with the same disdain as I view your current argument.
You’ll be sitting out the general then, I take it, given the way things are shaping up in the primary? Just don’t see why discussing Sanders’s weaknesses, which the right will have no problem exploiting to the max, is so wrong or bad. After all, we’ve made it practically a hobby to go over HRC’s, right?
Suggestion — stop telling others what they will or won’t do in the future.
Did you perceive and then discuss Gore’s and Kerry’s weakness in the general election that the right would exploit?
If you want to detail and rationally discuss all of Sanders’ and HRC’s weakness in the general election and then compare how well the two of them would fare, many here would engage on that basis. But you’ve not demonstrated any interest or ability to do that. For example and within the general population, Sanders does not now have a trust issue and HRC has a big trust issue. The GOP always goes after a DEM opponent on the issue of trust — that’s as predictable as the sun rising in the morning. While it’s not known how either of them will fare from such an onslaught, those that begin in negative territory never do as well as those that begin in positive territory.
Thanks for the advice–I won’t tell you what to do. Didn’t think I did that based on my comment above, but what the hell, right?
Yeah, Clinton’s got the trust issue to deal with–foreign policy is where I’ve said I’m leery of her–but that doesn’t mean Sanders is a great candidate. You’ve decided he’s the one, I’ve said I’ll vote for him if he makes it through the primary. As I noted above, that doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend he’s faultless or a spectacular general election candidate. If we can continually roll over HRCs negatives, why can’t we do so with the Betnster too?
Hobson’s Choice. I was hoping that O’Malley would be an alternative, but “debate” moderators never gave him any oxygen. Apparently he went the traditional road of fund raising and probably found that Hillary had already sucked them dry. That left Bernie with his unconventional fund raising not controlled by the Koch’s/Soros et al. A source the 1% couldn’t control.
Many lessons will be learned from this campaign, but anyone who concludes that the Sander’s campaign failed because it couldn’t raise cash will be wrong.
I don’t disagree with your comment in the least.
He didn’t imply that only HRC is electable.
He said that he would vote for HRC if she’s the candidate in the general, and he thinks many other people will too. Correctly.
Perhaps you should read what people actually write before calling it “low-level thinking”.
This preoccupation with shitting on HRC at every chance, while leaving out the fact that Sanders is unlikely to be the candidate in the general, is exceedingly tiresome.
I think that in 2008, Barack Obama was determined to appoint Hillary Clinton to an important Cabinet position as a way to mollify her and her supporters. I don’t think that was a mistake. Perhaps a different Cabinet portfolio would have been better for her, but which? Treasury? Justice? Criticize all these hypotheticals, that’s not a problem for me. I just think it was a no-brainer that Hillary Clinton would get an important position in the Obama Administration.
Yep. That’s been politics forever. It actually harkins back to our nation’s early days, when the SOS was regarded as the next in line for the presidency.
The permanent government had specific plans to continue the wars and the PNAC plans past 2008. Putting in Clinton to run the foreign policy was a no-brainer for them. Essentially, it is an energy war and Venezuela is a target. So was Libya. If the western powers want to use gas from Libya to help replace Russia’s pipelines across Ukraine, they will have to go in and create some order there. Because the biggest target of US foreign policy is the destruction of Russia as an economic competitor in the energy business.
Likewise, the struggle in Syria/Iraq is all about getting Qatari gas to the European market. Assad made the unfortunate choice of going with Iranian natural gas instead, in 2011, and so the faux rebels in ISIS received their weapons and marching orders. Hard to think that people are being raped, enslaved and murdered in the Syrian desert so that the West can further isolate Russia and hopefully gain control of their vast pool of energy.
Particularly since they need to leave it in the ground if we want a chance to survive climate change…the disconnect is insane.
That’s the delicious irony. Big Energy is fighting to control fossil fuels and fossil fuels is the worst thing for this planet. So it’s a foreign policy aimed at driving us off the cliff.
Think of how scary solar, wind or wave power must be to the energy cartels. Any of those means can be used without much ecological consequence and can, to a certain extent, be exploited without Big Energy controlling it.
So the problem in our permagov/energy masters’ strategy is that there is too much fossil fuel tor our energy masters’ profitability and that form of energy is killing the planet, but an evolution to safer energy means will kill fossil fuels.
The solution? Diversify would be the soundest eventual strategy for Big Energy. Knock more sources of fossil fuels off line to drive up prices. That means more wars, and just look at maps of the world and draw lines between fossil fuel deposits and centers of energy use. You can find our future wars along those lines. Continue to discourage alternate energy resources.
Defense would be a better fit. Then she could shake down the big defense contractors. They are always eager to “contribute”.
Marie, were you familiar with this?
http://www.worldbulletin.net/haber/152967/french-colonial-tax-still-enforce-for-africa
http://www.siliconafrica.com/france-colonial-tax/
And this?? A good roundup of the CT/gossip circulating at the time. Who knows what is correct?
Two weeks after France began bombing Libya, in March, 2011, Hillary Clinton’s old friend and advisor Sidney Blumenthal passed her an intelligence memo that supposedly revealed France’s true — and quite unflattering– motivations for toppling Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. While France’s then-President Nicolas Sarkozy publicly said he wished to free the Libyan people from tyranny, Blumenthal’s memo argues that he was driven by a cocktail of less lofty incentives, including a desire for Libyan oil, and a fear that Qaddafi secretly planned to use his vast supply of gold to displace France’s primacy in the region.
https://news.vice.com/article/libyan-oil-gold-and-qaddafi-the-strange-email-sidney-blumenthal-sent-h
illary-clinton-in-2011
Sid’s stuff should be taken with a bucket of salt. Blair, Cameron, and Sarkozy were all cozying up to Ghaddafi. (Sarkozy apparently got $50 million out of him.) Ghaddafi bought these guys but they just wouldn’t stay bought while Ghaddafi/Libya retained ownership of the source of the wealth.
Learned something important and new today. But did know of Haiti’s reparations to France (took over a hundred years to pay off). Lucky for those in this country that such a financial burden wasn’t part of the price of freedom from England.
“I just do not want her making the last call on tough foreign policy decisions.”
Then how can you justify leading our discussion away from Bernie’s historic challenge to the neo-liberalism of the Third Way Clinton Machine to examine every minute detail of the Republican train wreck for so long?
It has been pretty clear for some time you are quite comfortable with preserving neo-liberalism but I ask you, at what cost?
Hillary has shown time and time again she simply does not possess the judgment for her “making the last call on tough foreign policy decisions.”
This is the most important single issue that makes deciding if Hillary is more dangerous than her Republican opponents a tough call. This is even more urgent than her embrace of neo-liberalism keeping the Democratic Party on a glide path to certain future defeat. We can form another Party but war is war.
I mean more than just supporting Bernie for the purpose of tweaking the useless Democratic platform; it’s not too late for you to change positions. If you did it, especially at this moment, you would be my hero.
from committing a genocide was a mistake. And yes I believe that is exactly what he was going to do. He was using the same language that was used in the Darfur genocide, a genocide he played no small part in through his support of Janjaweed.
Western powers didn’t step in with either Rwanda or Darfur and were blamed for letting it happen. In Libya they stepped in and are blamed for that as well. Now some of that blame is warranted because as President Obama said there wasn’t a follow-up plan (and that is what he said his mistake was not intervening in the first place) but I still think stopping a genocide was worth stepping in.
mistake then that is Obama not Clinton. He is the president and the buck stopped with him. Not her.
I think it calls her judgement into question when the buck does stop with her.
HRC pushed Libya and Obama caved. It’s not like HRC was somebody’s assistant in the State Dept. Both are at fault.
First, Obama Tried to Stick the Blame …
on US allies in mischief Sarkozy of France and Cameron of Great Britain. Remember both taking the bows in Tripoli for their “Mission Accomplished” statement in 2011!
○ Obama blasts Cameron, Sarkozy for Libya ‘mess’ | France 24 |
The triumphant visit to Libya by UK Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy - Sept. 15, 2011. (Credit: Getty Images)
Italy’s Berlusconi was vehemently AGAINST the overthrow of Gaddafi, as he was just as corrupt as the Libyan leader and they had a deal there would be no African refugees leaving the Libyan coast with destination Europe! The Italian island of Lampedusa was just too attractive and a short distance from Libya (70 miles).
Opening statement of my new diary – Obama’s Victory in Libya of 2011 Became Clinton’s Failure in 2016.
I’m sorry I’m so late to this conversation.
I’ve never bought this version of events. This decision was at the center of Michael Lewis’s Vanity Fair article on Obama. Obama took him through the making of this particular decision.
According to Lewis, Hillary was pretty wishy-washy about it. She carried forward the arguments of the British and French who really wanted to do something, but they would have been satisfied with a symbolic move. So would Hillary. A no-fly zone qualified as symbolic because Quadafi wasn’t flying anyway. Obama rejected the no fly zone idea because it wouldn’t change anything and he thought it was stupid to do something symbolic. You either stop Quaddafi or you don’t.
Susan Rice was the only senior advisor who was enthusiastic for intervention. Hillary would have accepted a lot less as long as it mollified the allies. As Sec state, that was her job. Biden and Gates were against it.
Obama is probably hard on himself looking back. The British and French were the ones who were supposed to take the responsibility for the aftermath. It probably didn’t have a chance to work out for them either.
A civil war was starting in Libya because that is how Quadafi was responding to his Arab spring. At best – in terms of suffering – Benghazi was going to be leveled and the insurgency crushed. At worst it devolves into another Syria. Nothing good was likely going to happen no matter what.
Even if you want to blame Obama for this call, I don’t think you can really blame him for the result. They didn’t intervene in Syria and that sure hasn’t worked out any better. Me, I don’t think anything could have saved the country once it started.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack-obama
Just wanted to add to this thread that while the buck stops with a POTUS for a disastrous policy, administration principles don’t get a pass. Hence the revulsion for McNamara, Kissinger, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Cheney on the left.
You might want to expand with Brzezinski, Albright and Susan Rice (her link to Paul Kagame)! Rice is Obama’s srchitect of R2P policy for intervention and regime change.
○ US Policy of Military ‘Re-alignment’ and Obama’s Military Think-tank
Of course, but in the minds of DEMs and even lefties, their status in disastrous US military actions aren’t as prominent as the others I listed. The reasons for that are because there wasn’t a national debate before the military actions, their role in real time was more opaque, and the costs, in terms of dollars and US lives, was much smaller than the Vietnam and Iraq Wars. What Carter and Brzezinski, Clinton and Albright, and Obama and Rice fomented were as invisible to the US public as Ike and Dulles did in Iran.
If HRC hadn’t insisted upon getting credit for Libya and hadn’t done her “we came, we saw, he died — haha” number, she too might have escaped blame for the mess (as she has done so far wrt Syria).
○ Emir Al Thani, Sultan Erdogan and HRC Foreign Policy of Revolutions by Oui on Feb. 16, 2016
Posted earlier in my new diary – Obama’s Victory in Libya of 2011 Became Clinton’s Failure in 2016.
Curious, do you think the Kurd resistance was the lever they used on Obama that finally worked? Press had a field day with the Christian minorities on top of that mountain.
Then ISIS invaded Iraq.
I’m finding it interesting that Obama is talking about this now