Jonathan Cook, journalist
A short and timely overview of why Hillary Clinton is the queen of the military-industrial-intelligence complex.
JEWEL SAMAD via Getty Images
Jeffrey Sachs
Director, Earth Institute at Columbia University
There's no doubt that Hillary is the candidate of Wall Street. Even
more dangerous, though, is that she is the candidate of the
military-industrial complex. The idea that she is bad on the corporate
issues but good on national security has it wrong. Her so-called foreign
policy "experience" has been to support every war demanded by the US
deep security state run by the military and the CIA.
Hillary and Bill Clinton's close relations with Wall Street helped to
stoke two financial bubbles (1999-2000 and 2005-8) and the Great
Recession that followed Lehman's collapse. In the 1990s they pushed
financial deregulation for their campaign backers that in turn let loose
the worst demons of financial manipulation, toxic assets, financial
fraud, and eventually collapse. In the process they won elections and
got mighty rich.
Yet Hillary's connections with the military-industrial complex are
also alarming. It is often believed that the Republicans are the neocons
and the Democrats act as restraints on the warmongering. This is not
correct. Both parties are divided between neocon hawks and cautious
realists who don't want the US in unending war. Hillary is a staunch
neocon whose record of favoring American war adventures explains much of
our current security danger.
Just as the last Clinton presidency set the stage for financial
collapse, it also set the stage for unending war. On October 31, 1998
President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act that made it official US policy to support "regime change" in Iraq.
It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts toThus were laid the foundations for the Iraq War in 2003.
remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to
promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.
Of course, by 2003, Hillary was a Senator and a staunch supporter of
the Iraq War, which has cost the US trillions of dollars, thousands of
lives, and done more to create ISIS and Middle East instability than any
other single decision of modern foreign policy. In defending her vote,
Hillary parroted the phony propaganda of the CIA:
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reportsAfter the Iraq Liberation Act came the 1999 Kosovo War, in which Bill
show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and
biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his
nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to
terrorists, including Al Qaeda members... "
Clinton called in NATO to bomb Belgrade, in the heart of Europe, and
unleashing another decade of unrest in the Balkans. Hillary, traveling
in Africa, called Bill: "I urged him to bomb," she told reporter Lucinda
Frank.
Hillary's record as Secretary of State is among the most
militaristic, and disastrous, of modern US history. Some experience.
Hilary was a staunch defender of the military-industrial-intelligence
complex at every turn, helping to spread the Iraq mayhem over a swath of
violence that now stretches from Mali to Afghanistan. Two disasters
loom largest: Libya and Syria.
Hillary has been much attacked for the deaths of US diplomats in
Benghazi, but her tireless promotion of the overthrow Muammar Qaddafi by
NATO bombing is the far graver disaster. Hillary strongly promoted
NATO-led regime change in Libya, not only in violation of international
law but counter to the most basic good judgment. After the NATO
bombing, Libya descended into civil war while the paramilitaries and
unsecured arms stashes in Libya quickly spread west across the African
Sahel and east to Syria. The Libyan disaster has spawned war in Mali,
fed weapons to Boko Haram in Nigeria, and fueled ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
In the meantime, Hillary found it hilarious to declare of Qaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died."
Perhaps the crowning disaster of this long list of disasters has been
Hillary's relentless promotion of CIA-led regime change in Syria. Once
again Hillary bought into the CIA propaganda that regime change to
remove Bashir al-Assad would be quick, costless, and surely successful.
In August 2011, Hillary led the US into disaster with her declaration
Assad must "get out of the way," backed by secret CIA operations.
Five years later, no place on the planet is more ravaged by unending
war, and no place poses a great threat to US security. More than 10
million Syrians are displaced, and the refugees are drowning in the
Mediterranean or undermining the political stability of Greece, Turkey,
and the European Union. Into the chaos created by the secret CIA-Saudi
operations to overthrow Assad, ISIS has filled the vacuum, and has used
Syria as the base for worldwide terrorist attacks.
The list of her incompetence and warmongering goes on. Hillary's
support at every turn for NATO expansion, including even into Ukraine
and Georgia against all common sense, was a trip wire that violated the
post-Cold War settlement in Europe in 1991 and that led to Russia's
violent counter-reactions in both Georgia and Ukraine. As Senator in
2008, Hilary co-sponsored 2008-SR439,
to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. As Secretary of State, she
then presided over the restart of the Cold War with Russia.
It is hard to know the roots of this record of disaster. Is it
chronically bad judgment? Is it her preternatural faith in the lying
machine of the CIA? Is it a repeated attempt to show that as a Democrat
she would be more hawkish than the Republicans? Is it to satisfy her
hardline campaign financiers? Who knows? Maybe it's all of the above.
But whatever the reasons, hers is a record of disaster. Perhaps more
than any other person, Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the
violence that stretches from West Africa to Central Asia and that
threatens US security.
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