Let’s assume, as kos pointed out in his bullet-point-laden front-pager, that Hillary Clinton is very likely to be our next president.
Let’s get all the cheering out of the way up front…
YEA, HILLARY!!!!!
A victory for clear-thinking pragmatism! The reality-based community wins again!
Good. Done. (I always figured she’d win the nomination. The fact that Sanders even made her sweat is more a of commentary on Clinton’s weaknesses than it is on Sanders’ strengths.)
Now, let’s look at the reality of what a Clinton presidency is likely to bring.
If you haven’t already done so, please invest some time reading the two-part series in The New York Times the past two days on Secretary Clinton’s aggressive push to shape the administration’s Libya policy.
The Libya Gamble Part 1: Hillary Clinton, ‘Smart Power’ and a Dictator’s Fall
The Libya Gamble Part 2: A New Libya, With ‘Very Little Time Left’
This is detailed reporting with on-the-record interviews with a host of parties involved, including administration sources, Libyan opposition leaders, and French and British counterparts. The Times even includes a separate sidebar piece with these interviewees speaking in their own words:
In Their Own Words: The Libya Tragedy
It is a devastating indictment of Clinton’s aggressive, neocon-like, interventionist tendencies when it comes to U.S. Middle East policy. This series, as well as other sources, also highlight Secretary Clinton’s failed attempts push more aggressive U.S. actions with Iran and in Syria. Fortunately, in both of those cases, Clinton was overruled by both Obama and Biden.
While Clinton has talked in circles on her Iraq AUMF vote, the pattern of her behavior, both as a senator and as Secretary of State is clear: she is a Middle East hawk, more closely aligned with the neocons than she is with Obama’s more cautious approach.
Not surprising, then, that noted neocon, Robert Kagan, endorsed Clinton last week in the Washington Post (assuming that Trump is the GOP nominee).
As Kevin Drum pointed out in Mother Jones last August:
Robert Kagan Thinks America's Problem Is Too Little War
Jacob Heilbrunn writing in The New York Times all the way back in July of 2014 (you know, back before Clinton knew she would be running for president *cough*) reported that Kagan and other neocons were reaching out to her and keeping their options open for 2016:
Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan’s careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in The New Republic this year that “it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya.”
And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.
It’s easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton’s making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board.
My biggest objection to Clinton from the outset has been her hawkish, neocon foreign policy. At a time when we can least afford flushing another trillion dollars down the abyss that is the Middle East, Clinton has shown an agonizingly clear tendency toward interventionist, militaristic “solutions” in the world’s most volatile region.
I will predict now that should Hillary Clinton win the presidency, she will embroil us in another, colossal, Iraq-sized boots-on-the-ground disaster in the Middle East within the first two years of her administration that will cost us another trillion dollars, thousands of American lives, and hundreds of thousands of civilian lives in the region.
This, at a time when we can least afford such military adventurism — our infrastructure is crumbling and needs a multi-trillion dollar investment, there's a desperate need for good paying jobs, and the future of our planet is in peril.
I have already been hearing the excuses from her most ardent backers here:
“No matter who becomes president, we’ll be involved in another war in the Middle East."
I disagree. We do not need to become embroiled in yet another Middle East fiasco. We have more pressing priorities as a nation and as a planet.
I hope we can all agree as Democrats, liberals and progressives that what we expressly don’t need is another extended, no-win, boots-on-the-ground engagement in the region.
But I predict, and fear, that is precisely what we will get with a President Clinton.
Yea, Hillary!