Hillary Clinton: War Hawk

I want one thing to be clear. I am not opposed to Hillary Clinton because she is a woman. I’m a liberal and at 39, I am in an age group that has been exposed to women in leadership positions throughout my life. My own mother was in several leadership positions in her profession. During graduate school, I had many female professors. During my internship, my supervisors were women. At my first job, the owning partners were a man and a woman. At my second job, my supervisors were women. I currently run my own business and my business partner is a woman. I have no issues with women in authority and I certainly would have no problem voting for a female candidate for any office all the way up to and including the U.S. Presidency.

As a result, I find it tiresome that so much of the media focus around Hillary Clinton relates to the fact that she is female. For example, the Chicago Tribune article “Can Hillary Clinton Win” is peppered with quotes such as this:

“Is history ready?” asks Valdez, an independent voter, unsure whether voters will embrace the controversial former first lady for president.

The article does spend most of its column space explaining that the GOP is relishing the chance to dust off its Clinton scandal machine, and that Hillary will be a polarizing figure. However, there is just enough insinuation that Hillary’s status as a female may itself be the reason she won’t be able to win the general election to castigate people like me and “guilt-trip” us into voting for her. What do I mean by this?

Progressive voters such as myself cringe at discrimination based on irrelevant group status. Thus, we are loathe to be associated with those who would discriminate. By appealing to our sense of fairness, and moreover, suggesting that if we won’t vote for Clinton, we aren’t actually progressive, the Clinton team and the slavish media are busy whitewashing the reason I and so many others will not vote for her: she is a war hawk, supports the PATRIOT act, isn’t pro-habeas — in other words, she has been busy getting people killed while undermining our constitutional freedoms. Given Hillary Clinton’s voting history, nobody with a conscience could vote for her any more than such a person could vote for Bush.

Step one for expanding the Iraq war into Iran is accomplished thanks in part to Ms. Clinton. It was good to hear Mike Gravel, former Senator, chastise Hillary for her part in it, but shocking to hear how lightly she took her vote. While it might be a laughing matter for Hillary, it will be a bloody matter for all those who have been or will be affected by her past, current, and future inhumanity.

I suggest that when making a purportedly factual statement, it’s fairly reasonable to expect that the President of the U.S. would have the facts straight (aside from Bush that is). As plainly demonstrated in this clip, Hillary doesn’t even know simple information, such as the positions other candidates have taken on the Iraq war:

Now, I’m not a Ron Paul devotee. I respect his fiscal views but am non-plussed by how closely his social views mimick those of the Christian Right. Pushing those issues to the side however, Ron Paul has from day one said the war in Iraq would be a mistake. That fact is absolutely certain — he has spoken clearly, forcefully, and on the record numerous times regarding the folly of the Iraq war both before and after it started.

Further, Ron Paul has been a congressional representative during the entire time period that Hillary has been in the Senate. Different house, sure, but apparently Hillary can’t be bothered with what is going on in the House of Representatives. If she was paying any attention at all, she would not stand up in front of an audience of millions and say, flat out, that “to a man”, the Republicans support Bush and the war.

You can check out Republican Ron Paul’s voting record and see that Hillary was completely uninformed and yet, felt no qualms in making a false claim rooted in her lack of knowledge. Certainly that wasn’t a “lie” in the true sense of the word, but it’s actually worse. It demonstrates Hillary Clinton’s willingness to argue with conviction when she in fact doesn’t know what the heck she is talking about. Sound familiar? Echoes of her rabid reasoning for going to war perhaps?

As I mentioned before, I can’t really get behind Ron Paul because of his social conservatism, but if Hillary is unable to retain or acquire simple facts — we’re not talking about hard math or subtle international intrigue, we’re talking about whether a candidate voted “yes” or “no” — how will she do when faced with the difficult questions this world can pose? Plainly, she’ll suck.

Hillary Clinton claimed that voting to let Bush got to war with Iraq was one of the hardest decisions she ever had to make. I don’t buy it, but first, listen to her words:

It wasn’t a hard vote — it was a calculated vote. Hillary was worried that if she ran for president, she would be considered “too soft”. In response, she decided to swallow Bush’s lies about Iraq hook line and sinker. Had she really been interested in diplomacy, she would have at the very least voted for the Levin Amendment. The Levin Amendment would have required one more shot at the diplomatic process. By voting against it, Hillary proved herself to be a bloodthirsty warhawk.

Even more importantly, Hillary could have taken a moment out of her day to go read the classified October 2002, National Intelligence Estimate (”NIE”). Contrary to Bush’s blowhard pronouncements of doom, the NIE report was a bit more balanced, including dissenting opinions and admissions regarding the weakness of the evidence. Instead, as you just heard if you listened to the Youtube clip above, Hillary parroted Bush’s lies and became one more blood soaked player in the Iraq debacle.

Finally, Clinton adviser Terry McAuliffe recently admitted that the reason Hillary will not apologize for her vote to go to war is because she is a woman:

“Hillary is going to get elected,” [McAuliffe] proclaimed, “and I’ll tell you why folks, because of women.” …. Garden-Monheit said she disliked Clinton’s war vote. McAuliffe declared that under no circumstances would she take back her vote. “A woman?” he almost yelled. “Can you imagine?”

It takes no great leap of common sense to think that if Hillary is afraid of apologizing for her war vote mistake, she probably meant to make that vote. She was thinking ahead to her future presidential prospects and did not want to be labeled “weak” on foreign policy. Forget what is true — forget what is right — forget rationality. Hillary wanted to be able to appeal to thugs and rednecks. Throw in her recent Iran vote, and it’s obvious: A vote for Hillary is a vote for bloodshed.

If you have always had a sense that Hillary is a bit on the calculating side, that she is a politician who bases her actions on whether they will advance her career as opposed to whether those actions are right and just, you must listen to PRI’s (now defunct) Radio Opensource episode: Hillary Clinton’s War Vote. By the end of the discussion, it is easy to identify where those feelings about Hillary arise.

I am a democrat. I’ve never voted for a republican in my life. If Hillary makes the democratic ticket, I cannot in good conscience vote for her. Fact is, Hillary is a warhawk and she should keep her bloody fingerprints off the democratic ticket.