Friday, August 17, 2007

Hillary said what?!

A lot of people who are fairly progressive are in support of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. I fear many of her supporters are unaware of some of her more radical positions. In some respects she seems to embody some of the neoconservative foreign policies. Here is an interesting quote from an interview from the Jewish Press in October of 2006.
Sen. Clinton: First, I don't think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake.
If we were going to push for an election, we should have made sure we did something to determine who was going to win instead of signing off on an electoral system that advantaged Hamas.

So is all about democracy as long as we support who wins, right? This type of nation building is not what America needs to restore its credibility in the rest of the world.
And from the same interview:
In this new type of war, we have several big tasks ahead of us. First, we must do everything possible to prevent any of them – Iran, Al Qaeda and the like – from getting nuclear weapons or other types of weapons of mass destruction. That's the ballgame.
This "by any means necessary" attitude is also harmful to diplomacy and peaceful solutions.
Then earlier this month she refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against "terrorists," such as Osama Bin Ladin and others in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but i imagine this group also includes Iran.
What a great way to discourage other countries from developing nukes, using them for intimidation when dealing with other countries. Sorry, only the U.S. can use this as leverage in diplomacy, no one else...
And as for the bogus "War on Terror" (War of Error, War of Terror, etc) she disagrees with John Edwards' contention that the war on terror is simply a political slogan and said in the June 2007 Democratic debate that she believes Americans are now "safer than we were."
I couldn't disagree more (as does the Senate Intelligence Report). Does anyone really think the War on Terror will be any more effective than the War on Drugs? If anything its easier to stop a boat full of cocaine from entering the country than to prevent a fanatic from blowing up himself and some others anywhere in the world. Read the docket from almost any court in the country and you'll most likely see at least one person, usually more, there for possession of some type of cocaine. Interesting side note, the war in afghanistan has resulted in the 95% cut in opium production under the Taliban to a whopping 1500% increase. In 2006 Afghanistan broke its own world record for opium production... but i digress.
Then there is also the refusal of Clinton Library archivists to provide documents regarding Hillary's time as first lady, more than 1,000 pages of which relate to healthcare. Has executive privilege been expanded to the First Lady? I suppose if she were to claim to not have been part of the executive branch, it would be more believable than Cheney's similar claim.
Suffice it to say I won't be supporting Hillary, and I think electing her would further our country's twisted amalgamation of McCarthyism, Eckbom Syndrome and Munchausen by proxy disorder in our foreign policy.

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