As the Democratic Party grimly marches toward Hillary Clinton’s nomination, little thought has been given to her extraordinary record as a war hawk and what that could mean to the world, observes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.Consortium News
The argument over whether Hillary Clinton is a neocon may have been settled by her hawkish debate performance on Thursday, which followed her Israel-pandering speech before AIPAC, reports Robert Parry.
If there were any doubts that Hillary Clinton favors a neoconservative foreign policy, her performance at Thursday’s debate should have laid them to rest. In every meaningful sense, she is a neocon and – if she becomes President – Americans should expect more global tensions and conflicts in pursuit of the neocons’ signature goal of “regime change” in countries that get in their way.
Beyond sharing this neocon “regime change” obsession, former Secretary of State Clinton also talks like a neocon. One of their trademark skills is to use propaganda or “perception management” to demonize their targets and to romanticize their allies, what is called “gluing white hats” on their side and “gluing black hats” on the other.…Arch neocon Robert Kagan (husband of Victoria Nuland) on HRC:
Kagan told the Times, “I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”The neocon agenda for a Clinton administration.
Now with Clinton’s election seemingly within reach, the neocons are even more excited about how they can get back to work achieving Syrian “regime change,” overturning Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, and – what is becoming their ultimate goal – destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia and seeking “regime change” in Moscow.
After all, by helping Assad bring some stability to Syria and assisting Obama in securing the Iranian nuclear deal, Russian President Vladimir Putin has become what the neocons view as the linchpin of resistance to their “regime change” goals. Pull Putin down, the thinking goes, and the neocons can resume checking off their to-do list of Israel’s adversaries: Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.
And what could possibly go wrong by destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia and forcing some disruptive “regime change”?Feeling suicidal? Vote for HRC.
From: Chuck Spinney
Todd Pierce has produced a tour de force that is crucially important to your appreciation of the increasing possibility of Cold War II.
Related subjects not discussed include
(1) the role of domestic politics in shaping the systematic expansion of NATO in violation of our promises to Gorbachev as a quid pro quo for ending the first Cold War and
(2) the role of shoveling money to the Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex in the shaping the domestic politics of contemporary militarism.
These issues in no way detract from the importance of Todd's message; I only mention them because they are also central to rise of a peculiar form of 21st Century American Militarism that violates all the criteria of a sensible grand strategy.
On a personal note: as one who laughing dismissed Wolfowitz's draft Defense Planning Guidance when it was leaked to the New York Times in 1992 as the inconsequential divagations of a troglodyte moron, I stand corrected.
Chuck Spinney, The Blaster
In late 2008, when President Obama opted more for “continuity” than “change” — and ceded control over much of his foreign policy to hawkish “rivals” — he locked in many of Dick Cheney’s neocon theories that trampled constitutional principles, as retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce explains.
