Clinton, Trump and the War Party
Cato Institute looks at the war- like ways of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, giving Trump the edge when it comes to the likelihood of maintaining peace:
"Yet despite his [Trump's] many failings, he remains superior to Clinton when it comes to foreign policy. No one knows what Trump would do in a given situation, which means there is a chance he would do the right thing. In contrast, Clinton’s beliefs, behavior, and promises all suggest that she most likely would do the wrong thing, embracing a militaristic status quo which most Americans recognize has failed disastrously.
In fact, her proclivity for promiscuous war-making has attracted the support of leading Neoconservatives, including some architects of the disastrous Iraq war, which as Senator she voted to authorize. Some otherwise obscure Neocons even have appeared in her campaign ads. Her record of backing every recent U.S. military intervention is far more attractive than Trump’s intermittently blustering rhetoric to war-happy Republican hawks."
I'm not sure that gives Trump any advantage as the vast majority of Americans seem to prefer presidents who won't hesitate to attack other countries.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 7:47 AM
15 comments
15 Comments:
Trump and Hillary both are bargain hunters for whatever makes them richer. Trump might make better deals to save our people, but Hillary has proven the deal is all that matters.
Johnson doesn't know the first thing about the military.
Stein is an idiot. She would bomb the hell out of anyone who doesn't agree with her latest environmental scheme. Domestic or foreign would not cross her mind in her Globalist mind.
Who does that leave? Darrell Castle. He hasn't even hunted deer since his stint in Nam. He's seen enough killing as a 1st Lt in the Marines. He knows the Constitution, knows there is no war unless congress calls it. He's the only one with the experience to call upon as Admiral.
Fred, please list the countries Hillary has not hesitated to attack.
Let's see if you know what you're talking about or if you are just parroting right wing bullshit.
", please list the countries Hillary has not hesitated to attack."
As the linked article pointed out, she strongly encouraged hubby Bill to attack Yugoslavia back when we attacked them. She voted in support of attacking Iraq while in the senate and was the major instigator in the attack on Libya- an attack which I feel she owns due to her comment upon Ghaddafi's deat: "We came. We saw. He died".
She's also been somewhat vocal in escalating our involvement in Syria.
"knows there is no war unless congress calls it."
I tend to think candidates' calls for no intervention without approval of congress is a cop out. Has congress ever disapproved military action? Not in my memory.
Most in congress support our attacks by saying they're "supporting our troops". I saw one on C Span say that years ago in regards Iraq. The rest might say the same thing if asked.
When Congress declares war, it makes it official. When it's official, there are more repercussions. It is never declared lightly.
It is a cop out to NOT declare. Perpetual war is a ruse for taxing the people beyond relief. They promote fear, create crisis after crisis, all of it unconstitutional.
Your conclusion is your right to believe, but it is not a well thought out conclusion by any means.
Just a FYI:
We are currently engaged in a Congressionally declared war; the so-called "War On Terror" which President George W. Bush presented to the Congress for its approval shortly after 9/11 and has never been declared "over."
Everything done since then is authorized under what is the most general war making legislation since the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
As for Ms. Clinton's vote to approve the attack on Iraq: She has repeatedly apologized for that vote and has admitted she made a mistake. Somehow her detractors gloss over the part that indicates she is capable of learning from her errors.
As for Yugoslavia; the region was going to hell in a hand basket in a way not seen in Europe since WWII. The US-led NATO initiative stabilized the region and ended the slaughter.
As for Libya: While the US supported the mostly NATO intervention there we made it clear that it would be up to the European powers to prosecute the majority of military action and oversee putting the place back together again. In short, we made a clear statement that while we backed defeating Kidafy (sp?) the responsibility for what took place during and after belonged to Europe.
Despite their agreement to those conditions, Europe dropped the ball. Now, one can argue Ms. Clinton goofed in expecting our allies to full-fill their commitments; but she did not start that conflict nor did she do anything but limit our participation in that conflict.
I just thought I'd add some substance to a very thin discussion.
Let's start with the Iraq vote. There's a big misunderstanding about what the Senate was voting on.
Senator Clinton voted for the 2002 Congressional Resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq after President Bush made a “very explicit appeal” that “getting this vote would be a strong piece of leverage in order to finish the inspections.”
The resolution authorized President Bush, under strict requirements of the 1973 War Powers Act, to use force, Section 3(b) of the Act. But it also required that sanctions or diplomacy be fully employed before force was used, i.e. force was to be used only as “necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq,” and to do so only upon the President certifying to Congress that “diplomatic or other peaceful means” would be insufficient to defang Saddam.
Bush requested a resolution which he could use to force Saddam Hussein into readmitting U.N. inspectors, so they could continue their mission of verifying whether or not he had destroyed his chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons sites.
As you may recall Bush did not do what he said he would do, to pressure Saddam to open up to inspectors. Instead he told inspectors, who were in the field, carrying out inspections and were reporting full compliance by Saddam, to leave Iraq and Bush invaded.
Clinton’s mistake was to believe the President of the United States when he made a request to the US Senate.
Now, before we go further, we need to determine what is meant by "warmonger".
If you take down your 12 gauge from over the mantle and shoot your neighbor because you're mad at them that, most of us agree, would be murder. Agreed?
But if you look out your window and see a group of people attempting to beat your neighbor to death and you grab your shotgun and defend your neighbor, killing one of the attackers most of us would call that justified homicide, would we not? What would you call it?
Here's how Merriam-Webster defines "warmonger"
: a person who wants a war or tries to make other people want to start or fight a war
Is that how you use the word?
If we, America, are aware that a group of civilians are being slaughtered and we decide to intervene in order to stop the murder would you call that "warmongering"?
Do you draw a difference between starting a war and intervening to stop a war or to protect innocents or do you put it all in the warmongering bag?
"Official Declarations of War by Congress.
The Constitution grants Congress the sole power to declare war. Congress has declared war on 11 occasions, including its first declaration of war with Great Britain in 1812. Congress approved its last formal declaration of war during World War II."
"Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists," Is not an official declaration of war.
It was centered, focused, on the 911 attack.
"[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."
Fred, I haven't heard back from you. I'm going to assume we're somewhat on the same page re: justified and inappropriate use of force.
The Yugoslavian intervention was a NATO undertaking. "In 1998, KLA attacks targeting Yugoslav authorities in Kosovo resulted in an increased presence of Serb paramilitaries and regular forces who subsequently began pursuing a campaign of retribution targeting KLA sympathisers and political opponents[58] in a drive which killed 1,500 to 2,000 civilians and KLA combatants.[59][60] After attempts at a diplomatic solution failed, NATO intervened..."
Was Bill Clinton a major factor in the NATO decision? It seems he played a large role. Did Hillary egg him on? There's nothing to support that claim. But, so what?
Do you have a problem with NATO using force to stop the slaughter of civilians?
And I'll ask you the same question about Libya and Syria. Do we sit back and watch dictators slaughter civilians or are we morally bound to help others?
I think our major difference is that you tend to believe whatever news reports give us an excuse to go to war. I feel that even if the news report is accurate in iteself, it's likely based on falsehoods from a dubious source. Back in August I posted about journalist John Pilger who wrote about the media manufacturing a case for our attack on Yugoslavia. As he pointed out, no mass graves were found after that attack that would have proved mass executions. Not sure this link will paste well:
http://humboldtlib.blogspot.com/search?q=john+pilger
" Investigators in Bosnia have uncovered a mass grave thought to contain several hundred bodies of victims of the conflict that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia two decades ago.
The remains are believed to be those of victims of Bosniak and Croat ethnicity from Prijedor and its surroundings, killed in the summer of 1992, according to the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The site, at Tomasica in Prijedor municipality, is one of the biggest mass graves found in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the conflict, said Boris Grubesic, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office.
As of Thursday, 231 complete bodies had been exhumed, as well as the body parts of another 112 people."
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/01/world/europe/bosnia-mass-grave/
"In 2006, in the Bosnian Genocide case held before the International Court of Justice, Serbia and Montenegro was cleared of direct responsibility for, or complicity in, the massacre, but was found responsible for not doing enough to prevent the genocide and not prosecuting those responsible, in breach of the Genocide Convention. The Preliminary List of People Missing or Killed in Srebrenica compiled by the Bosnian Federal Commission of Missing Persons contains 8,373 names.[1] As of July 2012, 6,838 genocide victims have been identified through DNA analysis of body parts recovered from mass graves;[30] as of July 2013, 6,066 victims have been buried at the Memorial Centre of Potočari.[31]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre
"On Tuesday, the remains of 18 people were unearthed from the grave, which spreads across 3,000 square metres in uninhabited green hills. All the victims, men, women and children, were shot dead, forensics workers said. Many were wrapped in blankets.
Begic said his team expected to find the remains of 17 children, the youngest an 18-month-old baby, from the Bacic family killed along with their mother, grandfather and uncle.
As bulldozers removed layer after layer of thick clay, the sickening, all-pervading stench of decomposing bodies rose.
POSSIBLY LARGEST MASS GRAVE
The first bodies at Tomasica were found at the depth of seven metres (23 feet) in August and the remains of 240 people have been exhumed to date - believed to be Muslim villagers from the Prijedor area.
Witness accounts have established that around 1,000 people were buried there originally but there are indications that some were subsequently dug up and reburied elsewhere to cover up traces of the crime.
Lejla Cengic, spokeswoman for the Missing Persons Institute, said Tomasica could prove the largest single mass grave in the ex-Yugoslav republic. The largest excavated so far, Crni Vrh in eastern Bosnia, contained 629 bodies."
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-bosnia-grave-idUKBRE99L0XI20131022
Bob, Congress never declared official war on terror. They came up with the unconstitutional Patriot Act & other fancy headlines, but, they never declared official war. Terrorism is an abstract.
I don't know what Congress never declaring official war on terror has to do with anything.
Terrorism is a method. It's not a country or army or even an organization.
It would be nice if the US Congress started doing their job and worked with the President to further the nation's interests. But, as Mitch Mcconnell made it clear when Obama was sworn in, the first goal of the Republicans in Congress is to make Obama a failed president.
For over five years our Republican led Congress has done almost nothing to improve our country. Doing so might make President Obama look good, and that's not something they will risk.
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