Yesterday Hillary defended her threat to totally obliterate Iran. Obama, god bless him, described this as GWB-style "saber-rattling." It's all political. As Hillary's biographer Sally Bedell Smith said on C-Span the other day--and wrote last year:
in 1993 she talked her husband out of getting involved in the war in Bosnia because she thought it would be like Vietnam and would harm the chances for her health care plan. Two years later, after being secretly tutored by a State Department official, she became an advocate for the use of force in Bosnia because she feared Bill's inaction was harming him politically.
On TV, Smith said the State Department tutor was Richard Holbrooke. And Smith suggested that Hillary was also against Rwanda intervention. I see Michael Crowley of TNR has picked up on the same issue.
All American policy on Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and Yugoslavia in general seems to have been uninformed.
It turned into a disaster because GHWB and Clinton ran on auto-pilot and allowed Germany to take the initiative.
With proper engagement Serbia need not have become dominated by ethnic fundamentalists, and there need not have been so much killing and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or Croatia.
See link to eaazi.blogspot.com
. Check out the comments.
There was a very interesting dynamic in the USA over Bosnia in that the progressive left opposed intervention for good and bad reasons while the Neocons in their desperate quest to find pro-Israel Muslims supported intervention for the wrong reasons, and of course, Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo remain a mess.
My backgrounder on Kosovo is probably also worth reading: link to eaazi.blogspot.com
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Check out "Making Sense of Kosovo" in the link section. Robert Linday expanded on my post: link to robertlindsay.blogspot.com
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For fun take a look at: link to tinyurl.com
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Israel has a dispersed gigaton arsenal — so there isn't a scenario in which they couldn't annihilate Iran. Although Israel would probably respond coventionally to a non-nuclear attack by Iran.
My analysis is that Hillary's truculence was mostly a money shot: At this phase of her campaigh she needs to have as much $$$ as possible to try to hang in there with the hope that Obama self destructs. And partly, she's using this issue to pressure Obama into a misstatement or misstep so she can pounce on him.
Hillary did not act for the benefit of the American people or American strategic interests, only her husband's political career.
Pig.
Some cable TV pundits are saying she was speaking directly to
all the US mommys afraid for their sleeping kids at night. Nobody ever asked the obvious follow-up question, "So, what's she thinking, they sleep at night in Israel? Does Chelsea?"
Her motives for obliterating Iran must include gaining the vote
of delegates, super-delegates.
Her public statement must scare the s…t out of the rest of the world. Since we have no mutual defense treaty safeguards, but only Clinton's 1998 Memorandum Of Understanding with Israel
the right wing regime could provoke Iran and attack it on a contrived pretext, and Hillary would then just attack Iran.
She assumes the constitutionality of the unilateral Executive that's been disasterous ever since Truman started it.
We have no checks and balances. Congress is a disgrace.
Just a blank check to our President as Commander In Chief, and a blank check to Israel.
How to win grass roots approval of public campaign finance reform, elimination of super-delegates?
Get the word out to the best of one's ability.