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It Takes A Village to Start World War III
On September 26, 2007, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton voted yes on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment that effectively labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a "terrorist organization." The Revolutionary Guard Corps is the largest branch of the Islamic Republic of Iran's military. It is unprecedented in American history that the armed forces of a sovereign nation have been named "a terrorist organization." In response to the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, Iran's Foreign Ministry and parliament have designated the U.S. Army and CIA as terrorist organizations.
Clinton was the lone Democratic presidential candidate to support this legislation that many view as giving President Bush authority to launch an air war against Iran. Senator Chris Dodd, in explaining his negative vote, said, "We learned in the run up to the Iraq war that seemingly nonbinding language passed by this Senate can have profound consequences. We need the president to use robust diplomacy to address concerns with Iran, not the language in this amendment that the president can point to if he decides to draw this country into another disastrous war of choice." He added, "We shouldn't repeat our mistakes and enable this President again."
In her statement released the same day as the vote, Clinton claimed, "I voted for this resolution in order to apply greater diplomatic pressure on Iran. This resolution in no way authorizes or sanctions military action against Iran and instead seeks to end the Bush Administration's diplomatic inaction in the region."
Does this sound familiar? It is an uncanny echo of statements Clinton had made about her 2002 Iraq War authorization vote. At the time she said, "So it is with conviction that I support this resolution as being in the best interests of our nation. A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President and we say to him - use these powers wisely and as a last resort. And it is a vote that says clearly to Saddam Hussein - this is your last chance - disarm or be disarmed."
As we now know, and some of us recognized at the time, there were no weapons of mass destruction. The President used the powers granted to him by Senator Clinton and her colleagues neither wisely nor as a last resort. He instead plunged Iraq and the United States into an illegal and catastrophic war and occupation that has cost, in human terms, over a million Iraqi lives, displaced over four million Iraqi civilians, killed over 3,800 U.S. troops and injured over 26,000 of them.
In December 2006, Hillary Clinton said of the War Authorization vote, "Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote, and I certainly wouldn't have voted that way.'" When the bombs start dropping on Teheran, without Congressional authorization, what will Hillary Clinton say then? "That is not what I intended by my vote, that is not what I intended at all. Who knew the President would abuse his power and misread the will of Congress and the people?"
On October 1st, in a characteristic move of playing both sides of an issue, Hillary announced, "Given recent reports about Administration military planning toward Iran and to ensure that Congress plays a proper role in the authorization of any potential military force, today I have added myself as a co-sponsor of a bill introduced by Senator Jim Webb which prohibits the use of funds for military action in Iran without authorization by Congress." Hillary is the first and only co-sponsor of Webb's bill more than six months after its introduction, making its passage unlikely and her co-sponsorship a largely symbolic gesture designed to quiet criticism of her Kyl-Lieberman vote.
Indeed, if Clinton were determined to keep Bush from starting the next war with Iran, it would be simple for her, as one of the most powerful people in the Senate and the Democratic Party, to get the bill onto the Senate floor. But as she made clear as far back as January 2005 in a now-infamous speech at Princeton, "...we cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current leadership of Iran."
Last month Hillary Clinton announced via her campaign web site that the number one reason to support her for President was "To end the war in Iraq." But what exactly does this mean?
In a March 2007 interview with the New York Times Hillary foresaw a "remaining military as well as political mission" in Iraq; she stated that if elected president, she would keep a reduced military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and support the Iraqi military. The implication is that there will be "enduring" bases and American boots on the ground in Iraq far beyond the 2008 elections if Hillary becomes president. In fact, in June 2006 in a piece on NPR, Ted Koppel reported that an anonymous senior military advisor quoted Hillary as having predicted a U.S. "military presence"-read occupation-in Iraq through her second Presidential term.
Not since Lyndon Baines Johnson have the Democrats had an "anti-war" presidential candidate so hell-bent on continuing-and perhaps catastrophically expanding-a disastrous war.
Nancy Kricorian is part of the national staff and the coordinator for CODEPINK NYC. In addition to working with CODEPINK, Nancy is a writer and an award winning novelist. She is a member of PEN USA and on the board of the Armenia Tree Project. She started CODEPINK's "Listen Hillary" Campaign that has meticulously monitored Clinton's actions as New York Senator and presidential candidate.
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64 Comments so far
Show AllIt's silly to blame Hillary for going along with the panicky mob of voters who were giving Bush approval ratings around 90% after 9/11.
The vast majority of the American public is too abjectly stupid and uninformed to understand anything about national or international politics, and yet the relatively well-informed and intelligent posters on sites like CommonDreams aren't quite intelligent and well-informed enough to understand that the relatively well-informed and intelligent 5% of the public can't elect anybody to anything.
Personally, I favor a modified voting system, with a little pop quiz for prospective voters. Of these 50 dots on a map of Iraq, which one is Fallujah? The three or four people in each Congressional district who answer correctly can decide the election, and the rest of the morons get a good beating.
But as long as anybody can vote, the only way to get elected is by pandering to the dummies, and it's pointless to blame Hillary for playing the only game in town.
It Takes A Village Idiot to Start WW3.
Jacob Freeze October 12th, 2007 6:08 am
"It's silly to blame Hillary for going along with the panicky mob of voters who were giving Bush approval ratings around 90% after 9/11."
The article isn't about Hillary's vote to authorize Bush to go to war against Iraq. It's about her vote to authorize Bush to take military action against Iran.
"On September 26, 2007, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton voted yes on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment that effectively labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a "terrorist organization.""
"Clinton was the lone Democratic presidential candidate to support this legislation that many view as giving President Bush authority to launch an air war against Iran."
Lobo Gris
#
Nanoo October 12th, 2007 7:54 am
"It Takes A Village Idiot to Start WW3."
A village in Maine has lost it's idiot, and for 15 years we have been begging them to come and get him and take him home.
Lobo Gris
Ron Paul is the only candidate democrats can look at without feeling betrayed.
Hillary lost her voice as a reformer.
The re-occupancy of the White House points at a personal obsession rather than political vision. To use of the law for illegal purposes dejavu, Hillary. We all want change.
Next please.
Isn't Hillary in some ways a greater danger to the future of the world and to progressive values than any Republican because she might be a competent fascist and warmonger, as opposed to a completely incompetent and transparent one like any Republican is likely to be? And there is also the problem that a Hillary presidency would to some extent redefine the American left to be somewhere to the right of Mussolini.
Hillary may be allowed to have a more centrist domestic policy, but foreign policy must remain on course with a neocon/hawkish/hard-right (and anachronistically failed) policy of empire. At least, this seems to be a pre-requisite for being allowed to get elected.
It's sad, really, and totally indicative of the fact that D.C. politicians are not serving We The People. They're clearly serving someone else.
There's another ugly twist lurking in the passage of Kyl-Lieberman that needs to be addressed.
Since when did the US Senate, or the US President for that matter, get the right to declare that some of the soldiers in another sovereign nation's armed forces are not really soldiers, but rather are terrorists?
Sure enough, the knee jerk reaction of the Iranian Parliament to Kyl-Lieberman was to pass its own mirror image, equally adolescent resolution, declaring that the US Army is a terrorist organization.
All this posturing jingoism would be largely farce, but for the dirty background fact that George Bush and Antonio Gonzales gutted the historic protections of the Geneva Conventions by coining the term "enemy combatants". That neither-fish-nor-fowl label was then applied to suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured and held by American troops, specifically to deny those detainees Geneva POW status rights under international law.
Heaven forbid that the lame duck Bush/Cheney junta proves reckless and blood thirsty enough to launch a bombing attack on Iran before surrendering the keys to the White House in January, 2009, committing a new war crime that many knowledgeable people within the DC beltway inner circle warn is now in its final planning stages.
Worse yet, what happens next, when Iran retaliates against the vulnerable US ground forces hunkered down with their supply lines exposed inside Iraq?
Again, heaven forbid.
But if we're ever subjected to the spectacle of a captured American GI being beheaded in the snuff video of some Shiite militia, Senator Kyl, Senator Lieberman, and yes, Senator Clinton, should be held politically accountable for fomenting that demented, predictable act of reprisal.
Like chickens, chicken hawks too can come home to roost.
Bill from Saginaw
Member, Veterans for Peace
Hillary/Lieberman in 08!
Well America will have two major neocon candidates in '08. Hillary and either Giulani or Romney at this rate. Why do Americans allow such idiocy like that to happen? For the Ron Paul critics: the man is opposed to the US war of genocide against Iran as well as Iraq. He believes that America should mind it's own damn business. He is also opposed to the war on drugs. Why can't people just agree to disagree with the man if he says something that certain "progressives" disagree with. I think it's a great to have a Republican that tells fascists like Giulani and Romney where to get off. Some of these "progressives" are behaving like the Khmer Rouge with their ideological purity litmus test and will bully anyone on these boards who utter positive words about Ron Paul. If the progressives on these boards are going to behave like Pol Pot, then Peace Out!!!!
The US is the problem (in Iraq)----duh...
The American mainstream-media & press have been distorting the Iraq-facts for years, compliments of government moles/plants. The Wall Street Greed-Gestapos have now had their way with the American Armed Forces with the blessings of Congress and the Bushies. Like the tyrant Joseph Stalin, human life means nothing to these investor-predators. Loyal Americans are sucked into the patriotic-whirlpool-delusion, like so many pliable, blind-sheep, or lemmings, thanks to our sham/media's skillful, yet subtle strangulation of ideas, eg. its tactic of lying by omission (censorship).
We are running out of volunteers to prop up a diminished military. Many deep injustices are being perpetrated, domestically and abroad, in the once respected name of America. Our own government has sacrificed its modern, legitimate role as an agent for peace and security. Meanwhile, our demagogues hypocritically claim that they believe in some lofty mandate of peace. (Excuse me while I barf).
The whole thing now stinks to high heaven, and the rest of the world can smell the stench. Is America morphing into a corrupt, corporatized, royal tyranny? True Americans hate tyrannies. Good Luck GOP in 2008!
Enough said.
Caratacus et al., re: who else is there?
Yes, Ron Paul strongly opposes the war in Iraq and also opposes action against Iran. But he also wants to abolish the income tax & replace it with a consumption tax. Since rich people spend only a tiny fraction of their income (and invest the rest to gain more income that won't be taxed unless spent) and the poor and middle classes must spend most of theirs each year, it is obvious that the poor & middle classes will pay a huge percentage of their incomes while the rich pay almost no percent. The retail industry would become the nation's tax collector. If he's following the plan as described in the last congress's S-25, only new goods would be taxed. Therefore, if a billionaire bought something like the VanderBilt mansion for $200,000,000, s/he would pay no tax on it. If you/I bought a new $250,000 condo or $350,000 house, we would pay the 23-25 percent consumption tax. His views on other national problems (health care, education, etc.) are also exceedingly idiosyncratic and potentially harmful. I fear that young anti-war voters will vote without being aware of his extremely radical libertarianism.
Kucinich, Richardson, Edwards, Dodd (and perhaps any of the other Dem candidates): These are the others who could help lead us back out of the fascist jungle in which we find ourselves.
So, Hillary votes in favor of a resolution sponsored by two Senate hawks which further empowers the most hawkish president and vice-president in US history, and she can't understand how her motives and intentions could be so widely misinterpreted.
Everything in the article is true, but it doesn't go far enough in condemning Clinton(s). She is not condemned as a war monger, a captive of almost all of the powerful special interests, a heartless person who regurgitates the same answers to no matter what the question, sometimes with what William Pfaff calls an inhuman laugh . Only fools would believe that she would leave Iraq or roll back the unconstitutional powers Bush has grabbed. Articles such as this display her as a misguided person rather than what she actually is: A power hungry, authoritarian, cold-blooded person.