Joining the chorus of republican sore losers and neo-cons, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been making headlines recently by blaming President Obama for the crises in Iraq and Syria, and vociferously defending the state of Israel for it’s recent murderous rampage in Gaza.

Hillary Clinton has always been known as a foreign policy hawk, and I have always contended that she is a warmonger, but she has gone out of her way in recent interviews to explain just how hawkish she is, and how things might have been better in the world right now if the Obama Administration had listened to her more often.  Of course, Mrs. Clinton is also posturing for her all but certain presidential run, apparently planning to run as the pro-war, pro-intervention, militaristic hawk. . . as a democrat.  This seems an odd choice, since part of what swept Obama into office was his anti-war positions, like his opposition to the Iraq War.

But Hillary Clinton has always been pro-war.  Even among republican lawmakers, she is viewed as a foreign policy hawk.  Yet somehow many democrat, liberal and progressive voters seem unaware of this, or unwilling to admit it.  But her record as a senator, and as Secretary of State, lend sincerity to her aggressive, militaristic rhetoric.  On the issue of war and aggression, Hillary Clinton is making it very clear that if she becomes president, she will be more aggressive with use of U.S. military power.  As for Israel, and its’ Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, she appears to be pledging her future allegiance and U.S. support, undermining the Obama Administration and current Secretary of State, John Kerry, as their relations with Israel are strained at the moment.

True to her form, she has timed her comments based on recent polling, telling people what she thinks they want to hear.  When she retired as Secretary of State, and Obama’s foreign policy favorability ratings were comfortably higher, she was all smiles in a joint television interview with the president, highlighting how great they worked together, etc.  Now, amid multiple international conflicts, from Ukraine to Iraq and Syria, Mr. Obama’s foreign policy polls have been sliding, as would be the case regardless of who happens to be president at the moment.  What she is overlooking in the polls, however, is that the majority of Americans, regardless of how they are rating Obama’s handling of foreign policy, don’t want more U.S. military intervention over seas.

The recent interview of Mrs. Clinton by Jefferey Goldberg on August 10th in The Atlantic is well worth reading, especially for supporters of her for president in 2016, who may not realize how right wing and aligned with the neo-cons she is on foreign policy.  It is also especially worth reading if you think the United States should use its leverage as Israel’s only true friend and largest supplier of military supplies and money, to force Israel into a binding peace agreement with the Palestinians, or if you are concerned with the death and carnage being carried out in Gaza.  Mrs. Clinton makes it clear in this interview that she is a supporter of more robust United States involvement in wars, is against reasonable bargaining with Iran over nuclear issues, and is fiercely unapologetic for Israel’s occupation and brutalization of Palestine.

Many of the things she has to say in this interview are absolutely astounding, so let’s start with what she has to say about the current crisis in Iraq.  The Obama Administration has been bombing the militant group I.S.I.S. that has taken over large territory and cities in Iraq and Syria.  The bombings, or “airstrikes” in the sanitized language of officials, has been done partially under the guise of “humanitarian” reasons, such as the refugees from Kurdistan trapped in the Mountains after fleeing I.S.I.S.  This was begun with President Obama assuring Americans, whom he knows have no interests in more war, that he was not going to let the United States get pulled into another Iraq War, emphasizing that although we are sending advisers and conducting bombings, no combat troops, or “boots on the ground” will be sent, maintaining that Iraq needs a political solution to it’s problem.   It appears that U.S. officials feared the takeover of Kurdistan, or at least it’s capital, and the takeover of Baghdad.  Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) and Baghdad have control of huge oil reserves and the Iraq government , and the loss of these areas’s enormous resources and geopolitical location is not something the U.S. is going to be willing to lose, especially after we went through the trouble to invade Iraq in the first place.  Hillary Clinton now has the nerve to actually blame President Obama for I.S.I.S.’s gains in Iraq, for a couple of reasons, neither of which are true.

When the “civil war” in Syria began over two years ago, supposedly by internal unrest, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States, Britain, and others quietly began arming and providing “non-lethal” aid to the rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad.  Whatever may have started out as some grassroots rebellion in Syria, soon morphed into a full on war with the explicit intentions of overthrowing Assad’s regime, with many foreign fighters and jihadis flocking to the conflict.  Iran and Russia, allied with Syria, began countering the outside help of the rebels with help to Assad.  For a while, it had looked as if Assad’s government might collapse, leading Obama to make the proclamation that “Assad must go.”  When it became apparent that Assad was likely not going to be overthrown, at least anytime soon, there were calls among warmongers in our country, like Senator Sore Loser John McCain and Senator Lindsay Graham, for Obama to provide more direct arms and lethal aid to assist the rebels and foreign fighters.  It was reported in various newspapers at the time that the C.I.A.  was already helping “coordinate” some of the arms donated to the fighters from countries like Saudi Arabia in addition to the supposedly non-lethal aid.  President Obama ultimately decided against more arming, citing his concerns that the U.S. and it’s allies couldn’t guarantee that the weapons wouldn’t end up in the hands of terrorist groups, as the civil war was attracting huge numbers of foreign fighters trying to take over Syria.  Obama had good reason for this concern, as it was obvious that the “rebellion” against Assad had become a proxy war between U.S. Gulf State allies, and Iran and Russia.  And it was well known that many terrorist groups were happy to be taking weapons from whoever would provide them.  It was also reported at this time that Secretary of State Clinton had favored more direct involvement in the war in Syria, more arming of rebels, more U.S. firepower.  She was the voice of the interventionalist hawks.

Fast forward to the present, and a new terrorist group known as I.S.I.S., has taken over a large swatch of Syria and Iraq.  It’s hard to determine from the press or from the self serving statements of politicians, just what percentage of I.S.I.S. was originally backed by the U.S. or it’s allies, but it’s clear that the group morphed into the large scale terrorist army that it is now within the framework of the instability that the Syria proxy war has caused.  It was also possible for I.S.I.S. to make the surprisingly fast gains that it has in Iraq, thanks to the country being devastated by the U.S. invasion under former President George W. Bush.

But to hear Hillary explain it, it’s partly Obama’s fault for leaving a “power vacuum” in Iraq by failing to leave a residual force, and possibly Obama’s fault for not arming the right rebels in Syria sooner, as was her wish, along with McCain and Graham.

First of all, the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq was negotiated by Bush before Obama took office.  On top of that fact, the Obama Administration wanted to leave a residual force as opposed to a complete withdrawal, but the Iraqi’s refused to agree to that on terms that were acceptable to the U.S.

Second of all, this “power vacuum” in Iraq that Hillary Clinton has the gall to blame on President Obama, was created by the U.S. invasion, which SHE, then Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, voted for.  It was Senator Obama’s public stand against the Iraq War that first got him noticed by the liberal base that ultimately propelled him into the presidency.  It was clear at the time, especially to elected U.S. officials, that “weapons of mass destruction” was a hyped up excuse to go to war.  It was also clear, with the evidence made public at the time, that this charge to invade Iraq was built upon false pretenses.  It didn’t take a senator with access to classified intelligence to smell bullshit when Colin Powell gave Bush’s last push for the invasion to the United Nations, in a speech with such evidence as cartoon renderings of “mobile labs” that Saddam Hussein supposedly had all over Iraq, or the fake bottle of Anthrax that Mr. Powell held up in his hands – anthrax that was already known at the time to have not come from Iraq, and most likely to have come from someone in the U.S. government, as it was weapons grade anthrax of a formula or strain that we had created before.

Cartoon renderings, fake anthrax not believed to have come from Iraq, and tales of Saddam’s attempts to acquire nuclear bomb material – also publicly debunked in the press at the time – all obviously smoke and mirrors and a false pretext for war with Iraq for even the casual observer.

And Hillary Clinton voted “yes” for that invasion, which as we now know for certain, was based on deliberate lies about weapons of mass destruction.  We also know that we were not greeted as “liberators” as we were told we would be, and we know that the war didn’t pay for itself through increased Iraq oil production, as we were also told at the time.

We do know that Iraq is now a devastated country, with hundreds of thousands of citizens killed, millions displaced, and now partly under control from a terrorist group, because George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton and the other warmongers in Washington, voted “yes” for an invasion sold on lies, and later revised as “democracy promotion” when the lies became completely exposed.

Of course, Hillary blames her support for the Iraq war on faulty intelligence and misleading from the Bush Administration, and now blames the “power vacuum” on President Obama.  Could there be any more evidence that she is a liar, a hypocrite,  and a warmonger?

Only true fans of Hillary Clinton, with willful ignorance, could claim otherwise.  Here is the link to the interview in The Atlantic, and it should be read by anyone not choosing deliberate ignorance:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clinton-failure-to-help-syrian-rebels-led-to-the-rise-of-isis/375832/

Hillary Clinton also says that she would be a much tougher negotiator with Iran over its nuclear program, going so for as to say she doesn’t think Iran should be allowed to enrich any uranium.  This is a completely unrealistic goal, if not an outright blowing of hot air on Mrs. Clinton’s part.  The Iranian people and their economy have been suffering a long time now under sanctions that were strengthened by the Obama Administration, but some of these sanctions have been temporarily eased with direct negotiations now going on between the U.S. and Iran – historical, given the decades old silent and subversion treatment waged by the U.S. as punishment for the Iranians overthrowing our previously installed dictator, and their desire to control their own resources.  There are many in congress who are fighting the president on the easing of these sanctions, and on the negotiations, undermining chance for a lasting peace with Iran.  Our “ally” Israel, with “Bibi” Netanyahu taking to U.S. Sunday morning talk programs, has also been publically fighting Obama’s negotiations with Iran, as well as courting individual elected U.S. officials behind the president’s back, undermining his Administration’s efforts.  Hillary is adding to their chorus and undermining by her tough talk about how she’d do it differently than the current president she just recently worked for.

Where does Hillary’s allegiance lie?  She has gone out of her way recently in The Atlantic interview and elsewhere, to voice her strong support of Israel and its murderous attacks on the people in Gaza.  She has gone so far out of the way to show her unflinching support to Netanyahu’s right wing government, that the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an editorial titled “Israel’s new lawyer:  Hillary Clinton” on August 11th.  The author went on to detail how inaccurate, and misleading, many of her statements were in The Atlantic interview, point for point, asserting that “She sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through Bibi’s eyes, which could be the reason she gets so much wrong.”  The editorial doesn’t flat out call her a liar, but it does break down many of Clinton’s claims about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one by one, providing evidence of either her inaccurate statement of facts, or omission of facts.  The editorial is also worth reading, as the evidence compared to her rhetoric, don’t hold water.  Here is the link to that article, although the entire text may not be available now without a subscription:

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.610007

The liberal online U.S. newspaper The Huffington Post recently published an article titled “Hillary Clinton Twists Herself in Knots to Avoid Blaming Israel for U.N. Bombing.” This article also quotes Hillary from The Atlantic interview, pointing out her one sided and hypocritical defense of Israel’s actions in Gaza that have now claimed over 2000 Palestinian lives, mostly civilians.  Hard to argue with that author’s logic as well, the article is also worth reading:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/hillary-clinton-israel-gaza-school-bombing_n_5672881.html

As I stated in my last blog, criticism of Israel is often mischaracterized as “anti-Semitism” for the purposes of vilifying the critic of Israeli state policy, and to intimidate others from speaking out against Israel’s actions.  To defame critics, reporters, academics, or policy makers as anti-Semites when they disagree with the right wing of Israel’s government or its allies in Washington, is a shameful tactic, gleefully embraced Hillary Clinton, of course.  When questioned in The Atlantic interview about the world’s condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza and protests against them in Europe, Hillary responded with ” “You can’t ever discount anti-Semitism, especially with what’s going on in Europe today. There are more demonstrations against Israel by an exponential amount than there are against Russia seizing part of Ukraine and shooting down a civilian airliner.”  When she says “you can’t ever discount anti-Semitism” she is in essence saying that she will always blame criticism on anti-Semitism.  Doing so allows her to overlook a preponderance of evidence supporting the criticism, and fill it in with generic praise for how Israel is a great “democracy” in the Middle East, and dear friend of the United States, it’s backer.

Hillary is also being more honest that she probably intends to be lately, making several statements to various reporters and audiences that reveal her love of the power of propaganda over reality.  She recently gave a speech in support of genetically modified foods at the BIO International Convention- not surprising as she has long been an advocate for the industry –  but what stands out most is that she told the industry leaders that they needed to change their “vocabulary” about how they talk about their products, to change public perception.  She had a similar answer for Jon Stewart in a recent The Daily Show interview on foreign policy, by saying “We have not been telling our story very well. We do have a great story. We are not perfect by any means, but we have a great story about human freedom, human rights, human opportunity, and let’s get back to telling it, to ourselves first and foremost, and believing it about ourselves and then taking that around the world. That’s what we should be standing for.”  Hillary is big on language over substance and truth, whether she’s defending the likes of companies like Monsanto who are  genetically modifying our food supply and attempting to monopolize crop seeds, or when she is re-writing our own history that we should be “believing it ourselves” before telling other countries we are bombing or supporting brutal dictatorships how great we are.  In response to bloody scenes and photos coming out of Gaza, she told The Atlantic:  “What you see is largely what Hamas invites and permits Western journalists to report on from Gaza. It’s the old PR problem that Israel has.”

Yes, “the old PR problem.”

Facts are unimportant to Hillary Clinton, but her arrogant dismissal of the truth should outrage anyone supporting her or thinking of supporting her.  Democrats already on the bandwagon for Hillary 2016 need to wake up and read a small dose of reality. Informed voters, sick of the status quo of corporate owned America and the giant Military Industrial Complex, need to speak out now against Hillary Clinton, before her PR machine gets in full swing, drowning out the voices of numerous, better qualified candidates for the presidency.

 

 

 

The current score of Israel’s “right to defend itself:”  Over 1,800 dead Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians, and 10,000 more wounded.  Israel’s loss:  slightly over 60 killed, all soldiers except for 3.  The world condemns Israel’s actions, but as usual, it’s backer, enabler and partner in international crimes, the United States government, continues it’s sole support of it’s favorite client state.  All under the false claim of “self defense.”

President Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize winner, is the fourth consecutive U.S. president to bomb the country of Iraq.  But, he assures us, the U.S. cannot sit by and allow the potential slaughter and starvation of 40,000 refugees in the mountains near Kurdistan, when we have the “unique” capability to do something about it, such as “humanitarian” air drops of food and water from our air force; and of course, along side this noble concern for innocent civilians that our leaders love to profess as a pretext for war, we will be bombing the militant group that is taking over large swaths of Iraq, I.S.I.S.

For the casual observer in America, nothing sounds unreasonable about “Israel’s right to defend itself,” which is generally understood to be a universal norm – everyone has a right of self-defense.   Also, who would be against our superior air force dropping food and water to 40,000 refugees stranded in the mountains?  And if we have to bomb some radicals who have invaded the country of Iraq that we and our coalition of lapdogs (mostly Britain) broke in the first place, Mr. Obama assures us that we are not going back into war with Iraq, and there will be no U.S. ground troops.

Looking underneath the official rhetoric and propaganda of U.S. officials, and it’s defender of the false narrative of our nobility towards innocents, the mainstream press  – facts quickly arise that should leave no doubt that the U.S. government, regardless of what president is in power, does not care in the least about the suffering and murder of millions of innocent civilians world wide, unless they can be used as an excuse for war. Let’s consider just a few examples of many, starting in Iraq and Iran.

In 1953 the CIA orchestrated a coup to overthrow the parliamentary government of Iran and replaced it with one of the world’s most notorious dictators (there are a few more though, also supported by the U.S.) the Shah.  Until 1979. the Shah acted as a puppet of the United States, allowing us and other western companies to go in and exploit Iran’s oil.  Prior to the Shaw, the people of Iran’s government had the audacity of nationalizing their countries oil supply, instead of realizing they were all just living on top of our oil.  The Shaw tortured and murdered thousands of Iranian citizens, keeping them in line to serve their true purpose, the enrichment of Western powers.  This eventually led to the 1979 Iranian revolution when the Shaw was finally overthrown.  And since then, Iran has been considered and treated like one of the United State’s and Israel’s worst enemies, and presented as a danger to the world.

After the Shaw was overthrown and the U.S. kicked out of Iran, the U.S. government moved quickly to support another murderous tyrant, Saddam Hussein.  The U.S. officials were aware of course of Saddam’s crimes and cruelty towards his own people, and supported him with money and military supplies.  The U.S. became his backer against his bloody eight year war with Iran.  The incident of the Butcher of Baghdad using chemical warfare to “gas his own people” the Kurds, was condemned by most of the world and the United Nations at the time, but U.S. officials in Washington made sure that no punitive action was taken against him.  Afterall, we gave him those chemical weapons to kill Iranians with, so whats a few dead innocent men women and children in northern Iraq?  It was something to be swept under the rug, and only condemned years later by U.S. officials as a pretext to overthrow Saddam and invade Iraq when he fell out of favor with Washington.  Then the narrative became “he gassed his own people.”  He’s a murderer, a torturer, our leaders couldn’t say enough bad things about him.  And it is true that he was a torturer and murderer and cruel tyrant, but it is also true that the same U.S. leaders knew this to be the case all along when he was a tyrant serving our needs.  He only officially became evil when Washington could no longer control him.  Morality never played a part in U.S. treatment of him.

Concern for the citizens of Iraq was also not deemed morally important by the Clinton administration, when it forced sanctions on Iraq that are known to have killed over half a million Iraqi children.  When Madeline Albright, U.N. ambassador at the time who later became Secretary of State, was asked about the half million plus children of Iraq that were killed by Clinton’s U.S. sanctions, she said said it was worth the price. Here is a Youtube link of her statements in the interview, in which she declared that half a million innocent children killed through U.S. sanctions was worth the price of punishing Saddam, copy and paste in your browser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4PgpbQfxgo

The number of civilians killed in Iraq since George W. Bush and his cowboys invaded it under the lies of “weapons of mass destruction” is hard to come by, but numerous studies point to total deaths from this most recent war in Iraq between 150 thousand and 400 thousand, and 1.3 million refugees from this country of 30 million, fleeing the liberating effects of the U.S.’s invasion, which was later revised as “promoting democracy” when no weapons of mass destruction were found.  There are also studies showing there are now 4.5 million orphans in Iraq, with 600 thousand of them homeless.  The following is a link to the respected MIT’s website, which offers a more complete picture of the human tragedy caused in Iraq by U.S. led wars, figures not often reported in the mainstream U.S. press and dialogue, and offers a sobering amount of evidence to debunk President Obama’s proclamation of the U.S. government’s concern for civilians.  I strongly recommend you take a look at the statitistics on this site if you are interested in a true picture of the cost of war on the people we waged it against:

http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/

It is also worth noting, though it is not often noted by American political pundits on the Propaganda News Channels, that the United States and it’s Arab allies along with England and a few Western culprits, have been supporting the arming of the Islamic extremists that have now blossomed and evolved into our current Frankenstein’s monster in Iraq, ISIS, for over two years in the “civil war” in Syria for the purpose of overthrowing Syria’s leader Assad, to be replaced by presumably, someone more agreeable with our interests there.  There have been well over 100 thousand civilians killed in this conflict, and over a million refugees fleeing the country’s war.  I haven’t heard about any air-lifts of supplies to these refugees, or much concern expressed about their well being; however, you may recall last year that Obama almost bombed Syria because of our love of Syria’s innocents who were killed in chemical attacks in the ongoing conflict.  One positive result of this, however, was Assad’s agreement to hand over his chemical weapons for destruction, and this has largely been carried out.  Other nations in the region still maintain their illegal chemical weapons, such as Israel.

Watching Obama’s first announcements the other night about our new “humanitarian” effort and bombing in Iraq, was like watching a soundbite of his announcement of our bombing and participation of the overthrow of Gaddafi of Libya in 2011.  His words sounded almost exactly like I remember his words describing our motives for helping our allies Britain and France bomb them into a new government.  It was because if we din’t, our conscience would have  be bothered by the slaughter of civilians in Libya that would result from our lack of inaction.  We are just trying to help out and be the good guy.

And speaking of our concern for the slaughter of civilians in the Gaza strip by the U.S. fed war machine of Israel, well, “Israel has a right to defend herself.”  Apparently though, the Palestinians, who have for over 30 year been illegally occupied, murdered, tortured, and starved of both food and water supplies on an ongoing basis by the Israelis, with U.S. backing in direct monetary and military aid.  The U.S. has of course for years claimed to want a peaceful solution, a solution for which there is an international consensus that involves a two state solution of Israel and Palestine, with Israel withdrawing its illegally occupied Palestinian territory to the 1967 borders, with some minor adjustments.  Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and brutal oppression of it’s people is recognized by almost the entire world and United Nations body to be illegal and immoral, but that means little when the world’s one super power continues to obstruct the peace process, even as it pretends in public to be a fair and concerned broker.

Hamas, whom the U.S. government, U.S. press, and Israel often refer to as terrorists, was democratically elected by the Palestinian people in 2007 over the U.S. and Israel’s preferred candidates of the Palestinian Authority.  Noam Chomsky, one of the world’s leading intellectuals, and expert and critic on U.S. foreign policy, characterises the blockade on Gaza that resulted after this election as the U.S. and Israel’s punishment of the Palestinian people for voting the wrong way.  For the past 7 years, the people living in Gaza have been in a virtual land prison, blocked in by an ocean blockade, and land blockade by Israel and Egypt.  The details and human cost of this blockade are well documented, and today even the king of Propaganda News, Fox, actually posted a story about the blockade in Gaza which is worth reading, especially by  conservative readers suspicious of the “liberal” media.  The article does distort some of what prompted the blockade, by citing Hamas’s “violent takeover” of Gaza in 2007, which was actually the result of a mini-civil war among the Palestinians, stoked covertly by the United States after Hamas won in a free and fair election, the results of which were unacceptable to the U.S. and Israel.

Since Fox rarely reports facts it doesn’t like, this article is worth reading.  Here is that link:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/08/11/7-year-old-border-blockade-imposed-to-isolate-hamas-has-hurt-gaza-18-million/

As in most of these exercises in self defense, Israel always manages to bomb hospitals and schools sheltering civilians from the violence, with the occasion member of the press killed as well, but always called an “accident” by Israel, and then blamed on Hamas for using “human shields.”  It is amazing with all of Israel’s high tech weaponry and “surgical” strikes. that they continue to mistake United Nations schools in Gaza as shields for Hamas, the people’s choice of representation against the decades long occupation and siege.

Of course, there is the usual rhetoric from the propaganda peanut gallery that any criticism of U.S. foreign policy is committed by haters of freedom and un-patriotic Americans, and that any criticism of Israeli crimes are anti-semitic.  But any reasonable person, looking at the evidence with objective eyes, will most likely not approve of the U.S. support for brutal dictators worldwide, and it’s support of Israel’s abuse of Palestinians.  These charges are meant to tarnish the critics and quell debate instead of addressing the issues, just as weapons of mass destruction and the humanitarian efforts of bombing the enemy are meant to rally the blind to continue their support through taxes and volunteer citizens of it’s military.

The rest of the world is well aware the U.S.’s one sided support for Israel’s atrocities, but it appears that more Americans are paying attention to the current crisis, as images and videos of bloody children and urban destruction on an apocalyptic scale are making it’s way into their consciousness.  If the American people begin to recognize the scale of suffering and violence being brought upon the people of Gaza, our government might see a reason to be more assertive than it has been in forcing a peace deal between Israel and Palestine with a two state solution.  But as of now, Israel continues to illegally settle new areas of Palestinian territories, and further carve up the Palestinian territory with it’s “security wall” that is further eroding the possibility of a two state solution, cutting off and isolating large Palestinian populations from each other.  I do believe that Americans in general are good people at heart and that if they become fully aware of it’s government’s near unflinching support of warmongering Israeli policies, it will demand change.  But that’s audacious hope, I do realize.