[Peace-discuss] Why Dems shouldn't get the presidency

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Hillary as Hawk
	By Paul W. Lovinger

When Senator Hillary Clinton voted on October 11, 2002, to turn over to 
President George W. Bush the power that the Constitution vested in her 
and congressional colleagues to decide whether or not to wage war — or, 
quoting House Joint Resolution 114, whether an attack on Iraq was 
"necessary and appropriate" — she appeared to have a conflict of interest:

Her husband, Bill, was of course the former chief of the executive 
branch. And during her eight years as first lady, Mrs. Clinton never 
objected to Bill's eight wars, attacks, or interventions: in 
Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, Haiti, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and 
Yugoslavia. He bombed Iraq in 1993 soon after taking office, again in 
1996, and from 1998 till he left office. For a time, he was dropping 
bombs on Iraqis and Yugoslavs simultaneously in 1999.

None of those acts of war were authorized by Congress. The House of 
Representatives even voted its opposition to the undeclared bombing war 
on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, i.e. Serbia and Montenegro 
(4-28-99). Bill paid no attention and carried on his one-sided warfare 
for eleven weeks.

Mrs. Clinton had been instrumental in persuading Bill to attack 
Yugoslavia, according to multiple writers. Biographer Gail Sheehy wrote 
in "Hillary's Choice" (p. 345): "On March 21, 1999, Hillary expressed 
her views by phone to the president. 'I urged him to bomb 
[Yugoslavia].'" Bill was indecisive. She invoked the Holocaust, alluding 
to claims of mass killings by Milosovic and his men, and asked, "What do 
we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?" (Originally it was 
to defend western Europe against a possible Soviet attack.) Days later 
the president gave the go-ahead for war, thereby usurping the 
constitutional prerogative of Congress.

The Milosovic-massacre tale (which Senator Clinton repeated in her 2002 
Senate speech) was subsequently debunked by several European 
pathological teams. The Clinton-NATO air raids, however, killed a couple 
of thousand civilians. A year later Amnesty International charged that 
international law was violated by indiscriminate bombings.

Calls aggression defense

Speaking in behalf of the Iraq war resolution Senator Clinton praised 
her husband's bombing of Iraq and argued that "undisputed" facts linked 
Saddam Hussein to weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear 
weapons program, and to ties to Al-Qaeda. But such a contention was 
indeed disputed by facts presented by the International Atomic Energy 
Agency, the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, buried stories in the leading 
papers, and many Internet sites. She denied that the resolution amounted 
to a rush to war, though it came from the White House, which had already 
decided to wage war on Iraq.

When Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003, Senator Clinton called it defense. 
Even after the supposed facts about WMD and terrorist ties were exposed 
as monstrous lies, the senator defended her vote for war, never 
renouncing it. She claimed it was just to support negotiation, but the 
resolution said nothing about negotiation. And she claimed she had been 
given incorrect intelligence, but cited no details. She opposed any 
timetable for withdrawal and advocated more troops and permanent U.S. 
bases in Iraq.

As of last September, that supposed defensive war was estimated, by the 
British polling agency Opinion Research Business, to have taken 1.2 
million Iraqi lives.

Even if the lies she fell for had been proven true, the senator's lack 
of concern for international law would still stand revealed. The Charter 
of the United Nations, which as a U.S. treaty has the force of law, says 
(in Article 2): "All Members shall refrain in their international 
relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial 
integrity or political independence of any state...."

The North Atlantic Treaty — the basis for the organization that Bill 
Clinton, with his wife's encouragement, perverted from a defensive to an 
aggressive force — echoes that principle (in Article 1): "The Parties 
undertake ... to refrain in their international relations from the 
threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of 
the United Nations."

Furthermore, before there was a UN or a NATO, there was the 
Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, renouncing war as an instrument of 
national policy. It was used to convict Nazis of crimes against peace, 
and it remains in effect as a U.S. treaty.

Threatens Iran and others

Just as Senator Clinton accepted Bush and Cheney's fiction about danger 
from Iraq and supported the 2003 aggression against that country, she 
tends to accept their drive for an encore against Iran. At Princeton 
University in January 2006, she said, "A nuclear Iran is a danger to 
Israel, its neighbors and beyond. The regime's pro-terrorist, 
anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric only underscores the urgency of 
the threat it poses."

In her own, anti-Iranian rhetoric, she threatened a nation that had not 
attacked anyone for centuries and that — U.S. intelligence now states — 
had given up its atomic bomb program three years earlier: "We cannot 
take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current 
leadership of Iran -- that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear 
weapons." Three months later, Bush used nearly the same expression when 
asked if he planned a nuclear attack on that country: "All options are 
on the table" (AP, 4-8-06).

Last September 26, Senator Clinton voted for a Senate resolution urging 
Bush to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a major branch 
of the Iranian armed forces, as a foreign terrorist organization. She 
has echoed the proofless Bush charges of support for Iraqi insurgents 
(mostly Sunni) by Iran (Shiite).

She has refused to rule out presidential use of nuclear weapons, 
notwithstanding the 1996 World Court ruling that use of the weapons 
violates international humanitarian law because they blindly strike 
civilians and military targets alike. And she voted to end restrictions 
on countries violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Senator Clinton has called for more toughness on Syria and leftist 
regimes in Latin America, supported arms and training for various 
repressive dictatorships, opposed bans on land mines and cluster-bomb 
exports, and advocated even more military spending than Bush requested. 
More contributions from war contractors have reached Hillary for 
President than any competing campaign.

The senator boasts of her experience. She is indeed experienced in 
jumping to bellicose conclusions on the basis of meager facts and false 
information. If she wins, I expect her to follow the pattern of husband 
Bill in shooting from the hip in actions abroad, to ignore both the 
Constitution and international law, and to try to prove that a woman 
president can be just as warlike as any man.

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Paul W. Lovinger, of San Francisco, has been a journalist, author, and 
antiwar activist. He was a newspaper reporter and columnist for over 20 
years. His last published book was "The Penguin Dictionary of American 
English Usage and Style." (E-mail: paulwlo at hotmail.com.)

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