Sunday, June 05, 2016

LeftMN telling the truth about troublesome, worrisome war-mongering predilection.

This link. Be afraid.

Trump says let them fight it out among themselves in Syria.

Clinton's a proven interventionist, with neither Clinton having suffered exposure to horrors of actual combat.

Sending in troops should not be a reflex action. Clinton on her State Department watch, with help from the French, really horsed up Libya. At least she and Obama did not, there, put US boots on the ground; not publicly.

Unlike Syria: Advisors, they say. Training personnel, they say.

______________UPDATE______________
Please read the Steve Timmer post linked to above. It is tightly written and not provocatively worded, unlike a parallel but somewhat more strident exploration of the identical theme: Jeffrey Sachs, HuffPo, beginning (and at length) -

Clinton's Speech Shows that Only Sanders is Fit for the Presidency
06/05/2016 08:21 am ET | Updated 1 hour ago


Hillary Clinton's recent foreign policy speech was an attack on Donald Trump but was also a reminder that Clinton is a deeply flawed and worrisome candidate. Her record as Secretary of State was one of the worst in modern US history; her policies have enmeshed America in new Middle East wars, rising terrorism, and even a new Cold War with Russia. Of the three leading candidates, only Bernie Sanders has the sound judgment to avoid further war and to cooperate with the rest of the world.

Clinton is intoxicated with American power. She has favored one war of choice after the next: bombing Belgrade (1999); invading Iraq (2003); toppling Qaddafi (2011); funding Jihadists in Syria (2011 till now). The result has been one bloodbath after another, with open wounds until today fostering ISIS, terrorism, and mass refugee flows.

In her speech, Clinton engaged in her own Trump-like grandiose fear mongering: "[I]f America doesn't lead, we leave a vacuum - and that will either cause chaos, or other countries will rush in to fill the void. Then they'll be the ones making the decisions about your lives and jobs and safety - and trust me, the choices they make will not be to our benefit."

This kind of arrogance - that America and America alone must run the world - has led straight to overstretch: perpetual wars that cannot be won, and unending and escalating confrontations with Russia, China, Iran and others that make the world more dangerous. It doesn't seem to dawn on Clinton that in today's world, we need cooperation, not endless bravado.

Clinton professed her belief "with all my heart that America is an exceptional country - that we're still, in Lincoln's words, the last, best hope of earth." Yet surely President Lincoln was speaking in moral terms, not in Clinton's militaristic terms.

There is substantially more in that HuffPo item, so readers are urged to access the original. (The chicken hawk redux speech link, is in the original.)

Yes, do not forget Madeline's Kosovo war, on the Clintons' record, from during the Clinton presidency, as the Clintons' own foreign policy. (Early on in the HuffPo item's war-mongering recitation list.) Was there one mini-war Ms. Clinton did not like, entry wise and not as a hindsight admission that Buscho Iraqi intervention was a disaster (as Sanders said it would be from the instigation of the mess, and not as a matter of mere later convenience).

You have to suspend disbelief if wanting to feel the Clintons are a better foreign policy choice than Trump, who has yet to fully articulate a policy (beyond let the already engaged forces in Syria duke it out for now, wait and see). There's a degree of sense to that feeling. Ms. Clinton's record shows her more the interventionist than Sanders, for certain, and likely more interventionist than Trump even.

Trump with his "University" and his list of awful judges has a ton of baggage, but Clinton touting her own foreign policies and foreign affairs management record does not wash. And that is apart from what might or might not have been scrubbed from the secret private email server and apart from all the autocratic Arab money flowed to the Clinton Foundation (something raising worrisome cause and effect considerations among fair-minded people).

_____________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
What might Ms. Clinton do to lessen the likelihood of a massive "Bernie" write-in effort this upcoming election? Well, others might differ in opinion, but if the ultimate convention choice, I'd be happier if she were to match the Trump list of awful jurists with a list of her own inspiring confidence and including Alan Page, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie, Maria Cantwell and others not Eisenhower-Rockefeller Republicans like her and Bill. If that were to happen, there might be gravitas to her candidacy beyond, "Oh no, more of the same -- Bill's Newt Gringrich loving, killing Glass-Steagall messup eight years, all over again," which is nothing to hitch a current run to.

And if Glass-Steagall in your view should be reimposed, as most right minded patriotic citizens believe; don't wait for the maven of six-figure Goldman Sachs speeches to make such a move, if elected. Likely transcripts would reveal a promise to the contrary; which would explain reticence toward release of transcripts.

"Owned by Wall Street" is not a promising posture for regular people to want to vote for any such owned individual. Sanders is the only decent choice of the three, which explains the establishment's ongoing wanting to put his effort down and belittle his chances, including establishment media outlets playing that very game.

The GOP establishment is embracing Trump, go figure that, and Clinton from the get-go had the Dem establishment satisfied; e.g., the properly scorned Wasserman-Schultz payday loan loving types.