By Grant Marcus
The eleventh reason not to trust Hillary Clinton on foreign policy is how she gave birth to politics, as Arkansas’s regional student coordinator for the Barry Goldwater campaign. For those not old enough to remember, Goldwater was a Republican presidential nominee, and an admitted racist, who was running on the platform of using atomic weapons, including the hydrogen bomb on Vietnam. When Clinton recently echoed Cheney and Bush, saying “everything is on the table” against Iran, what will the weight of these early leanings of poor judgment bring to bear on her current state of poor judgment?
#10: As a warhawk bulldog, she gave her unwavering support for the war in Iraq.
#9: In her role as Senator of New York, she supported every defense budget increase for the Iraq war and the defense department.
#8: And, in her role as N.Y. Senator, and with the collusion of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), it was Hillary Clinton who led the Senate in promoting legislation to brand Iran as “a terrorist organization.” This legislation passed in spite of the fact Iran has never aggressively invaded another country in their nation’s history, or, for at least a couple thousand years as the Persian Empire. Will she see the region Netanyahu’s narrow way, or what is good for America and the American people who must go fight the wars she creates?
#7: In her position as Sec. Of State, her first military action was the promotion of “regime change” in Libya. With no insight, her insistence on the bombing of Libya has left the country without infrastructure, leadership, law enforcement, or a replacement government. The country is now in chaos. Small groups, thieving American weapons, fight over control of oil wells. And along with ISIS, they are terrifying the country and adding to the refugee crisis in Europe. The American diplomats killed were blowback of Hillary’s fallout.
#6: Hillary shows she can’t learn from her mistakes. Before she leaves the State Department, she pushes for “regime change” in Syria as well, insisting this time there are enough rebels there to replace Pres. Assad. She gets the same results with her myopic stubbornness. Strangely, these expanded targets of the war relate to similar targets planned long ago by “The American Century Project,” a neocon group of Republicans, forming an “axis of evil,” and bent on profiting from war.
#5: She uses her position as Sec. Of State to buddy-up with big oil companies. (Exxon is the top oil contributor to her campaign). Advised by Big Oil, she spreads the fracking industry to a bonanza of countries and turns fracking into a global phenomenon. Can she separate her allegiances with Big Oil from efforts to strive for a genuine peace in the world? The prognosis is more than doubtful. Instead, she is an arrogant front-runner, who shows no clue of her past mistakes or conflicting allegiances.
#4: Hillary rightly speaks of the necessity of gun control and better restrictions on guns at home. Yet, there is also something called foreign policy, or gun control abroad. Under her watch, ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban have all buttressed their presence in the Middle East. They have more military equipment, faster transportation, and more munitions, as well as more powerful weapons, because she helped give it all to them. Through her acts of carelessness, poor planning, and questionable dispersal, known terrorists have weapons. If she insists on gun control for Americans, she shows no gun control for foreign countries, rebels, and terrorists. When more powerful weapons get into the wrong hands, or those “rebel” groups Clinton puts them in, greater threats happen, like ISIS. Clinton’s mistakes show the State Dept. didn’t really know the people they serviced, obviously couldn’t trust them, nor could they predict how easily they could switch sides. They switch faster than schizophrenia, following no rules of engagement, killing our diplomats, journalists, soldiers, and our fellow Americans. You want to be the sponsor of gun control at home, show consistency and use gun control abroad. Hillary Clinton obviously doesn’t think so, and feels the American people will be too blind to make this connection.
#3: And her own crazy gun control policies under the State Dept have set us back in Iraq as well. Not only has the war expanded under her watch, she has renewed the same quagmire from where we started. Only this time, there is a better financed army called ISIS, and they have an even greater arsenal of weapons, along with control of some of the region’s oil wells. Because of Hillary Clinton, war is back in Iraq with a vengeance.
#2: And most recently, after successful negotiations with Iran, Clinton was still saber-rattling, criticizing the President and John Kerry, as she nearly disrupted the hostage exchange, demanding new sanctions on Iran while American prisoners were still waiting to takeoff for freedom from an Iranian airport. That’s a pretty dumb thing to do just for an MSNBC sound bite.
And the #1 reason not to trust Hillary’s foreign policy is her track record, so embarrassing she can’t really talk about it; and the media skips past it, and Bernie Sanders doesn’t dare mention it. Her track record has become so abysmal; it is the proverbial “elephant in the living room.” Her ties with oil, AIPAC, and parroted stupidity all mean, that if you care about peace, or stability in the region, or the refugee crisis, or our own national security, or even a wise, as well as tough president, you just can’t trust Hillary. Never-the-less, Goldman Sachs can. Hmmm.
*****
Grant Marcus is an RN, with an ME, watches too much news, reads too many books, and stews over too many problems with the nation, while living with his dog and cat in Ventura, California (who try not to disturb him).
