Sunday 8 May 2016

Could Clinton Be Worse Than Trump?

Unless either gets run over by their tour bus in the next few weeks we can safely assume that the next American President will be either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Of course what either, if elected, does in America is no concern of us Europeans' but what will affect us is the course their foreign policy will take.
Donald Trump has come across as a xenophobic racist who should be kept well away from the corridors of power but we can only guess what he would do if in charge, Hillary Clinton on the other hand has a record of Secretary of State we can look back at and try and judge what way the wind blows with her.
She famously voted for the Iraq War, making a speech that included the now notorious intelligence failure that Saddam Hussein: 'has given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists'.
A lot of people were unwittingly sucked into the Blair and Bush lies used to justify the Iraq invasion but her record shows that she has backed every conflict America has been involved in since Afghanistan.
She was a key player in pushing an unenthusiastic President Obama into establishing a humanitarian no-fly zone in Libya. The bombing of Libya and the removal of Colonel Gaddafi was trumpeted as a success even after Libya descended into chaos, a situation she denied with the defence that Gaddafi's removal was followed up by two successful elections and any current problems are due to insufficient U.S. involvement since.
Drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan surged under her command and the messes in Ukraine and Syria are due to her departments meddling.
In 2011, as Arab regimes were toppled in the Arab Spring, Hillary’s state department decided to withdraw diplomatic recognition from Syria. As Secretary of State, she stated that Syrian President Bashar Assad had lost his legitimacy and had to go and decided to actively arm the 'moderate opposition'.
Despite plenty of warnings, it soon became clear that the 'moderate opposition' forces the U.S. were assisting were Islamist's aligned with a branch of al-Qaeda who took the American weapons being offered, renamed themselves Islamic State and used them to wreak carnage in the region.
Now she is advocating a no-fly zone in Syria along the lines of the one that worked so awfully in Libya.
In the Ukraine, more meddling as the uprising saw Clinton's office pour $5 billion dollars into opposition factions to affect regime change which led to a coup against the elected government in 2014 and that infamous telephone call where it was decided who the post-coup leader should be.  
Hillary Clinton is also an eager advocate of further expansion of NATO, Finland and Sweden are currently being discussed along with Georgia and Ukraine, who sit worryingly on an already irate Russia's borders.
An unashamed apologist for Israeli aggression against Palestine, Hillary's past record seems to show a choice between a man who exudes racism and Islamophobia who caters to the anti-immigrant right or a hawkish woman who has supported armed conflict at every single opportunity and done so much in such a short time to make multiple bad situations a whole lot worse.
If one is concerned about world peace it is a tough choice between the two but one thing we do know about Hillary is that as she is currently promoting upping the ante in Syria and the continuation of prodding Russia with a stick, she has not learned any lessons from the Syrian, Iraqi or Libyan conflicts she was involved in.
 That could make her a far worse prospect then Donald Trump with regards to who is more likely to pour petrol on an already out of control fire.

6 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
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Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
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Falling on a bruise said...

Not a xenophobic racist? Have you not been listening to the xenophobic racist stuff then? No need to shout it, he does that. I don't care what they do in the USA, this I about foreign policy which I do care about and will effect me.

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Falling on a bruise said...

Already have amongst other things.