Barack Obama—following the mantra of plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin [see, inter alia, A Historian and Her Sources; Lynne McTaggart on Doris Kearns Goodwin; Doris Kearns Goodwin, Liar; Historians Rewrite History] to establish a “team of rivals”— has chosen his main competition for the Democratic nomination for president, Hillary Clinton, to be the next Secretary of State. With this appointment and other early foreign policy decisions, Obama’s theme of providing the “change we need” surely needs to be called into question.

Hillary Clinton spent the entire campaign last winter and spring boasting of her experience and her competence, in matters domestic and foreign. She claimed to have passed the “commander-in-chief threshold,” meaning that she could be entrusted with the nation’s security, that she would ably answer that frightening phone call at 3 A.M. as she claimed in an infamous campaign commercial [3 A.M. Ad]. More so, she pointedly attacked Obama [while praising the eventual Republican nominee, John McCain] for not passing that “commander-in-chief” test.

Clinton’s claims, however, can be tested. She consistently maintained that she had “35 years of experience,” so it is fair to assume that she was claiming that her time spent as First Lady was part of her resume to pass that “threshold” to be commander-in-chief, to attest to her foreign policy expertise. The Senator from New York also claimed to have privately advised her husband on all foreign policy matters. Accordingly, it is only fair to look at U.S. foreign policy in the 1990s to get a sense of Clinton’s likely approach to the world on substantive foreign policy issues.

First, there are insiders from the Clinton era who disputed her claims last spring when she first boasted of her foreign policy bona fides. Greg Craig, one of Bill Clinton’s counselors during his impeachment hearings and recently named White House Counsel by Obama, emphasized that “Senator Clinton and her supporters have in serious ways overstated, if not grossly exaggerated, the nature of her experience,” especially regarding her claims to have been responsible for the Irish peace process that led to the Good Friday Accords and to have helped resolve the Balkans crisis. Clinton had an “inflated résumé,” Craig said, “I think she is misleading the American public on the nature of her experience.” [See Craig's interview]. (And Craig is certainly no choir boy—currently he is representing Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, the past president of Bolivia, and his defense minister for government attacks in October of 2003 that killed 67 and injured 400, mostly Aymara Indians [http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2008-12-18/news/black-october-victims-of-a-bolivian-massacre-seek-justice-in-miami/1]).

So what is the basis for Clinton’s claims, inflated or real?

The Clinton years, which began as the Communist system in Eastern Europe fell apart, were not marked by harmony and stability, but by continued conflict and crisis. Indeed, many of the Clinton policies in the world laid the groundwork for the administration of George W. Bush.  There is as much continuity on key issues as there is disconnection. A few examples make that clear.

Clinton’s goal was to expand the economy through institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Now, over a decade later, the legacy of that “enlargement” is clear. The U.S. has made enemies of most of the world, the American elite—bankers, speculators, and industrialists—have made untold billions in higher profits while the government ignored their predatory practices and financial legerdemain like derivatives and collateralized debt [Wall Street had record profits throughout the Clinton years], while American workers have lost millions of jobs, particularly in traditional industrial areas.

Thus is was startling to hear Hillary Clinton, campaigning in Ohio, one of the states worst hit, criticize NAFTA, which was the linchpin of her husband’s economic program. Indeed, one can strongly argue that the most important and influential member of Clinton’s foreign policy establishment of the 1990s was Robert Rubin, the Secretary of the Treasury [or, if the government was sponsored like college football we'd call him "The Goldman Sachs Secretary of the Treasury"] who more recently has led Citigroup. On issues of global political economy, then, one can clearly expect the Obama-Clinton team to pursue similar financial paths, though no doubt constrained by the recent meltdown of the U.S. economy.

The Clinton commitment to democracy is likewise contradictory.

In 1996, the alcoholic leader of a teetering Russia, Boris Yeltsin, running for reelection, seemed likely to be defeated. Rather than allow a “democratic” election, Clinton rushed in with $14 billion in aid, and an onslaught of Democratic Party campaign consultants, and also promised loans to Russia, but with the proviso they would be withheld if Yeltsin lost. Not surprisingly, he prevailed, and the Russian slide into economic chaos and gangsterism continued. But the First Lady of the United States, as recounted by Ambassador Strobe Talbott, was upbeat, observing, “before we give up on Russia, we should look at Taiwan, or South Korea . . . Russia’s not really doing so badly when you compare it to Asia.” [http://www.arktimes.com/Articles/ArticleViewer.aspx?ArticleID=dc3ded60-31b3-4d31-a96e-a85c6b84797c].

Had the Clintons compared it to Haiti, an area that Bill Clinton boasted of as a foreign policy success, Russia would not have looked too bad either.  During the 1992 campaign, Clinton criticized the lack of support for President Jean Bertrand Aristide and efforts to remove him by the George H.W. Bush administration, but when he became president, the policy changed little. In fact, Clinton put up what amounted to a blockade on Haiti and allowed no Haitians into the U.S., despite the presence of vicious paramilitary groups and hit squads going after human rights and labor activists. U.S. trade there rose by 50 percent as U.S. corporations exploited Haitian labor. And in 1994, a coup led by Haitian generals ousted Aristide. News reports then revealed that U.S. oil companies were supplying petroleum to the junta. Clinton did later send U.S. troops in to restore Aristide to power, but a year later, the Americans forced him out of office, claiming that his five-year term was expired, even though he had spent three of those years in exile. For the Haitian people, slave-wage misery continued to be the norm. [See Noam Chomsky, "US-Haiti" and Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs, pp. 145-6]. The First Lady, with her self-touted sympathies for the world’s underprivileged, especially poor women, was silent throughout.

Haiti, sadly, paled in comparison to Rwanda. As Hutu committed genocide against Tutsi, the U.S. stood aside. Although Clinton would claim that he was not aware of the severity of the crisis there, declassified documents later showed that the CIA, diplomats, UN officials, aid workers and others had warned the administration that the Hutu were planning on wiping all Tutsis out. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/mar/31/usa.rwanda]. Amid the imminent slaughter, the U.S. not only did not intervene, but would not even jam Hutu radio signals that were being used to provoke the genocide. Indeed, Clinton would not even use the term “genocide” to discuss the massacre of perhaps a million Hutu, because, as one official told the president, the use of that word might compel the U.S. “to do something.” [http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/01/bill-and-chelse.html].

And, of course, Iraq was always front and center during the Clinton years, and remains so today. Clinton maintained sanctions in Iraq that led to the deaths of maybe one million Iraqis, mostly children, the elderly and the ill, and, with the British, dropped over 1.3 million pounds of bombs on the Iraqis, including a particularly intense bombing campaign that occurred mysteriously close to the date of the impeachment vote during the Lewinsky scandal, perhaps to divert attention from his domestic woes. These measures actually strengthened the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein, who used the sanctions and bombings to convince Iraqis that they had to support him against the likely American invaders.

Iraq remained a problem after Clinton left office, and as Hillary Clinton assumed her senate seat. During the crucial run-up to the Iraq War in 2002 and 2003, the Clintons—contrary to their own revised history—supported the Bush administration’s provocations. Hillary Clinton admitted she did not even read the intelligence analysis available to senators prior to her vote to authorize Bush to attack Iraq—a vote she now tries to explain away by claiming it was a vote for war only if diplomacy failed, an excuse virtually no one accepts. In February 2005, Clinton visited Iraq, said the insurgency was “fading” and claimed the occupation was “functioning quite well,” although she never left the fortified Green Zone [http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-02-19-iraq-senators_x.htm].  She also stressed that she agreed with Senator John McCain’s willingness to establish a long-term presence in Iraq—perhaps 100 years in McCain’s estimation.

During the campaign, she equivocated on Iraq, claiming to oppose the war but refusing to establish any detailed plan for withdrawal. And, potentially worse, she seemed willing to extend America’s wars in the Middle East. In September 2007 she voted for the Kyl-Lieberman bill, which threatened to use “military instruments” to contain Iran if it did not halt its nuclear program. Shortly after that, however, a CIA report was leaked which revealed that Iran had little or no military nuclear program.   Nonetheless, in a desperate attempt to forestall Obama’s nomination while campaigning before the Indiana primary, Clinton vowed to “obliterate” Iran if it somehow threatened Israel, though she did not issue her warning with a Beach Boys song [John McCain as Brian Wilson].   Again, she had dissembled.

On Israel and Afghanistan, the Obama-Clinton policies will almost certainly be “more of the same”—strong support for the continued repression of Palestinians and quite possibly and larger and more troubling intervention in Afghanistan, a point even conceded by one of the media’s biggest cheerleaders for Middle East wars and global power, Thomas Friedman. [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/opinion/14friedman.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=friedman%20afghanistan&st=cse].

Based on what we know, set aside from the rhetoric, Hillary Clinton had endorsed a foreign policy of militarism, markets, and repression. As Secretary of State, presumably she would follow the president’s directives on foreign policy. So either Obama shares her bad judgement on world affairs, or he is willing to appoint a rival who not only smeared him during the nomination process but holds divergent views on foreign policy from his. Either way, that’s not the type of change that so many millions of voters endorsed on November 4^th and in the Middle East, more bombs, if not shoes, will likely be flying through the air [Duck and Cover] [And some fun for the kids] .

Tags: Barack Obama, globalization, Haiti, Hillary Clinton, iraq, Rwanda

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