Home > IRAN : HILLARY CLINTON VOTES FOR WAR - AGAIN !!!

IRAN : HILLARY CLINTON VOTES FOR WAR - AGAIN !!!

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 29 September 2007
6 comments

Edito Wars and conflicts Parties USA

by David Bromwich

Yesterday, by a vote of 76-22, the Senate passed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment in support of military actions against Iran. This is the second such endorsement of the president by a senate majority in just three months. In July, the Lieberman amendment to “confront Iran” passed with the far stronger majority of 97-0.

The original draft of Kyl-Lieberman had asked U.S. forces to “combat, contain, and roll back” the Iranian menace within Iraq. But the words “roll back” were all too plainly a coded endorsement of hot pursuit into Iran; and the senators did not want to go quite so far. To assure a larger majority the language was accordingly trimmed and blurred to say “that it should be the policy of the United States to stop inside Iraq the violent activities and destabilizing influence of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies.”

The inclusion of Hezbollah deserves some notice. It is part of a larger attempt, already apparent in the Lebanon war of 2006, to manufacture an “amalgam” of all the enemies of Israel and the United States throughout the region, and to treat them all as one enemy. Those who believe in the amalgam will come to agree that many more wars by the United States and Israel are needed to crush this enemy.

More provocative is a secondary detail of the amendment, which received less notice from the mainstream media. Kyl-Lieberman approves the listing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Now, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard is the largest branch of the Iranian military. By granting Vice President Cheney’s wish (a distant dream in 2005) to put the Iranian guard on the U.S. terrorist list, the Senate has classified the army of Iran as an army of terrorists. The president, therefore, as he follows out the Cheney plan has all the support he requires for asserting in his next speech to an army or veterans group that Iran is a nation of terrorists.

It was said during the Vietnam War that “a dead Vietnamese is a Viet Cong.” It will assuage the conscience for U.S. bombers of Iran to know that a dead Iranian is a terrorist. The Senate, by this classification, has absolved the bombers in advance.

Hillary Clinton voted in favor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to press the army toward war with Iran. This was an important step, for her, and a vote as closely considered as her vote to authorize the bombing and occupation of Iraq.

Here are the senators who voted against Kyl-Lieberman:

Biden (D-DE) Bingaman (D-NM) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Byrd (D-WV) Cantwell (D-WA) Dodd (D-CT) Feingold (D-WI) Hagel (R-NE) Harkin (D-IA) Inouye (D-HI) Kennedy (D-MA) Kerry (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Leahy (D-VT) Lincoln (D-AR) Lugar (R-IN) McCaskill (D-MO) Sanders (I-VT) Tester (D-MT) Webb (D-VA) Wyden (D-OR)

John McCain and Barack Obama did not vote.

It is a remarkable fact that the war meditated against Iran, like the war on Iraq, is sought most keenly by a vice president and president who went further than most of their generation to avoid serving their country in Vietnam. The fact becomes the more remarkable in view of the contempt shown by both men for those who did not cheer and avoid, but opposed the Vietnam war by conscientious dissent. The same is true across the range of non-combatant neoconservative war architects and propagandists. Psychological compensation of an astonishing kind (to say no more) is at work in this display of rashness disguised as courage in the later careers of our war leaders behind the lines. For several years now, the mainstream press and media have said as little as possible about it.

Two votes against Kyl-Lieberman were issued from veterans with considerable experience and firsthand knowledge of war, Chuck Hagel and Jim Webb. If these two men were now to sharpen their dissidence, if they could make their reasons articulate and see the present as a time that calls them to the sustained work of opposition– we might have the beginnings of a potent resistance which will never come from Harry Reid.

What of the absence of Barack Obama? In a speech in Iowa on September 12, he addressed by anticipation the matter before the Senate in Kyl-Lieberman: “We hear eerie echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq in the way that the President and Vice President talk about Iran. They conflate Iran and al Qaeda. They issue veiled threats. They suggest that the time for diplomacy and pressure is running out when we haven’t even tried direct diplomacy. Well George Bush and Dick Cheney must hear–loud and clear–from the American people and the Congress: you don’t have our support, and you don’t have our authorization for another war.”

It is baffling that a man who spoke those words two weeks ago could not find the time or the resolve to cast his vote in a conspicuous test for authorizing war on Iran. This seems to be one more demonstration of Obama’s tendency never to take a step forward without a step to the side. As for his own message about Iran, it has not been “loud and clear,” but muffled, wavering, experimental.

With Hillary Clinton, we know where we stand. Yesterday she voted to bring the country a serious step closer to war against Iran. And she did so for the same reason that she voted to authorize the war on Iraq. She thinks the next war is going to happen. She hopes the worst of its short-term effects on America will have died down before the election. She suspects the media and voters will show more trust for a candidate who supported than for one who opposed the war. She wants a ponderous establishment of American troops and super-bases to remain in the Middle East for years to come. If she wins the presidency, she will inherit the command of that army and those bases, and she believes she can manage their affairs more prudently than George W. Bush.

Hillary Clinton is consistent. Every move is calculated, her actual intentions are masked, but the total drift is easy to comprehend. It is not so with Obama. How can he expect anyone to back a man who will not back himself?

David Bromwich teaches literature at Yale. He has written on politics and culture for The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and other magazines.

© 2007 Huffington Post
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/28/4181/

Forum posts

  • Excellent analysis. The picture is worth more than 1,000 words. Forget 9/11 conspiracies or the notion of the Illumanti or the Elders of Zion stealing your toasters and candy. The real issue here - the paramount concern for the continuation of this Neocon nightmare - is the next election. And if Neocon Thompson or surrogate Guliani are defeated because the Republicans can’t mount sufficient support, then there’s always Hillary to continue the Neocon strategy. Either way, both sides are covered from a Neocon point of view.

    The odds are slim that Hillary will win. Aside from being a woman, which unfairly works against her, a humorless personality, an annoying character, and a resoundingly unsuccessful legislator, she’s simply more of the same: A defender of the status quo, which this latest vote makes imminently clear. But somehow, the public, and liberals in particular, don’t seem to catch on. Or do they?

    Amazingly, Obama has lost support in the polls, as had Edwards, especialy in Iowa where he was recently ahead. Richardson’s having a hard time getting double-digit support and Dodd and Biden are essentially out of the running, not to mention Gravel and Kucinich who remain at the edge. Yet any one of those candidates would be better for the Democrats and for the country.

    Somehow, despite Hillary’s enormous negative ratings, she remains at the top, gaining ground. How could that be? On virtually every liberal site, ranging from Salon to Kos, from Huffington to the Washington Monthly, Hillary is the target of many negative comments. Clearly, even her supporters are less than passionate in their loyalty. Yet, every "expert" will tell you, as well as Castro and Bush, that she’s going to be the nominee. Never before in the history of modern politics has a candidate been chosen this far in advance with such assurance. Am I the only one smelling something fishy?

    Certainly, the Israeli lobby wants her, as do the corporate heads who saw how gently she handled the insurance and health related industries during her Healthcare initiative. This is a woman who was a registered Republican in Arkansas, who, having realized the potential of riding to the top with Bill, swicthed allegiances for the sake of raw ambition. And she’s been acting like a Democrat ever since, but performing like a Republican. Her basic do-nothing record, or her do-something-when-it-no-longer-matters record is something she should run from, not on. And yet, her supports claim, "she’s experienced." Yeah? At what? Carpetbagging? Fooling most of the people most of the time? Engendering the sympathy votes because of her experiences in the White House? Supporters insist she’s smart. Prove it. Where’s the evidence? What has she really done? More importantly, how much damage has she prevented, or tried to prevent? Just about none.

    Sadly, her greatest support, aside from polls that may be rigged in her favor, is the nostalgia factor. Because of W’s rank incompetence, and immoral "leadership", Bill appears like a genius in retrospect. Oh boy, if we could only get Bill back in the White House, even as a spouse, then just maybe everythng will be OK. This is a grave miscalculation and an erroneous version of history. Was Bill better than W? Hell, Daffy Duck would’ve been better than W.

    The truth is, Bill Clinton was a slave to the focus group (check out Joe Klein’s reportage if you’re in doubt) and the prevaling sentiment was tipping right, past moderate. So he embraced Newt’s Contract with America - a Republican plan that stripped government of traditional services, such as welfare and affirmative action, and greased the skids for Turbo Capitalism. Greenspan’s tongue-in-cheek comment about Bill being a good Republican president was no joke. Think back for a second: NAFTA, outsourcing, massive IPOs, more than a few based on Ponzi schemes, LBOs, trimming labor forces for the sake of immediate profitability, low credit, bad loans - a few which are now quite obvious, increased military spending, much higher corporate welfare, etc.
    Add it up and you get a middle class under seige, an economy based on military-industrial hardware, oil, and financial instruments like hedge funds and derivatives - none of which add to the true welfare of a country at large.

    Is that what you want more of when you support Hillary? Well, my friends, that’s what you’re going to get - that and a free introductory bottle of the famous Clinton Snake Oil to put on all those hurting places you’re going to experience if she wins the White House.

    In the end, if it’s a choice between Thompson and Hillary, pick Thompson. That way, at least, the Republican party will take the hit for having done this country wrong instead of a mediocre thespian acting like a Democrat. Then maybe the country will be ready to turn to more humane values.

    • Never will a woman or a black man be the Commander in Chief in the USA. This is just a matter of fact and not a racist/sexists view of myself.

      Nevertheless Hillary will not come out of the primary election as a possible Democratic presidental candidate. She is frightening everybody in her base.

  • Ms. Rodham-Clinton is no Blll Clinton. She reached out to support her friend Lieberman after he lost the faith of the Democrats in Connecticut. She lost that one; Lieberman stayed out of the U.S. Senate. Ms. Rodham-Clinton backed her friend Madeleine Albright for Secretary of State. When interviewed by Leslie Stahl, Secretary Albright admitted that sanctions against Iraq in the mid-1990s resulted in the death by cholera and dysentery of 400,000 children in Iraq, and stated, "The death of one Saddam Hussein is worth the lives of 400,000 children." Ms. Rodham evidently is not on the side of children when it comes to politics. Lady Bird Johnson was appalled at the coffins she saw in 1967 returning from Vietnam, and she pressured LBJ to stop the carnage. First Lady Rodham-Clinton evidently does not think that the 3200 deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is enough, she voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment on September 26 in the U.S. Senate authorizing U.S. military action in Iran. Like Secretary Albright, another 3200 or 32,000 U.S. deaths in the Persian Gulf are worth the price of... getting rid of Ahmadinejad? The C.I.A. estimates Iranian military capabilities as 12th in the entire world, with 11,000,000 National-Guard-like soldiers ready to go to battle, and the worlds’ 6th best-equipped air command. Within hours of a U.S. attack on Iran, our soldiers in Iraq would be annhiliated. Oh well, once you have killed 3200, is 32,000 more such a sin? Do not fool yourself, Senator Rodham-Clinton is no Bill Clinton: she voted against Biden and even GOP hawks like Lugar on Kyl-Lieberman. Senator Rodham-Clinton would make a great Republican, wouldn’t she? Why does the U.S. mainstream press like her? For the same reason they liked Bush until late 2007. Does that tell you something?

    • Lieberman stayed out of the Senate? If only that was true. Maybe you didn’t get the memo but he won as an independent, in part thanks to Hillary’s support. Again, voters of Connecticut, thanks for contributing the leading Neocon rep in the Senate, Supreme Zionist Leader, Joe Lieberman.

    • Is it REALLY possible that HILLARY CLINTON could reside in the White House with a convicted felon. Bill Clinton was convicted and is not allowed to reside in the nation’s capital.

      This whole Democratic race is a laugh. Hillary flies off the handle and treats everyone with no respect. Is she due respect from the people? Everyone I have talked to thinks not!

      Hillary Clinton NOT for President.

    • While I agree with you that I would hate to see Shillary invade the White House, I think there are much much greater reasons than her proximity to Bill that you mentioned. It’s LIKELY IMO Diebold (S)election FRAUD is going to be used to put here in the Big Seat by the SAME Elitists Financiers that use BOTH parties (and installed Bush) to carry on further their destruction of the Republic and potentially much more of the world. Both the Bush’s AND the Clinton’s HATE the Bill of Rights as it appears to stand in the way of them achieving their Orwellian Dictatorship over EVERY aspect of citizens lives. As Bush chopped the Tree of Liberty from the so called ’right’ look for Shillary to chop it from the so called ’left’ with FORCED gov ’Health Care’ which will take away further one’s right for any HEALTH FREEDOM of choice and for her to further the Gun Grabber Agenda to help make citizens even less able to provide their own self defense and make them even more reliant on Big Brother’s all knowing, all seeing, all deciding, Eye of Whore-US.

      Perhaps though nobody will even have to be concerned with ’voting’ by the end of 08, as the Neo-Con Nazi War Machine may have the country and world so engaged by that time in endless fighting, turmoil, and bloodshed, that voting will either be impossible or citizens will no longer care enough to stop their actvities for simple SURVIVAL. In any case The Game will be rigged anyways as it has in the last several s-elections between Elitist Puppet A or Elitist Puppet B both working in true Hegelian fashion to destroy any last vestiges of The Founders vision and in it’s place set up an Orwellian Nightmare, one even Mr. Orwell couldn’t have fully envisioned.