Are The War Drums Sounding? Will Hillary Heed Their Beat? If So, We Should NOT Elect Her

Clinton the new neocon itching for war

Posted on October 26, 2016 by John Myers

The neoconservatives are tired of sitting on the sidelines over these past eight years. They are even willing to adopt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to lead the military back into the Middle East.

Apparently she sees herself as an expert on the region. “I have to admit that a good deal of what my husband and I have learned has come from my daughter who took a class last year in Islamic history.” Chelsea Clinton was 14 at the time.

How is it we elect politicians with no understanding of history? Clinton should know of T.E. Lawrence, a man who fought for the British during the Arab Revolt a century ago. It is essential reading because the tribalism in the Middle East is unchanged and only remained harnessed by brutal dictators.

This fact is lost to the group calling itself the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), which is more than a think tank because it has growing influence on Congress and presidents. This was fully on display during the George W. Bush administration.

Their stated goal is for the United States to use its military and economic power to promote freedom in other nations, at the end of an M16 if necessary. The FPI believes it is essential to remove regimes hostile to American interests and values and preserve and extend international order that will adopt American principles. It didn’t work 100 years ago and, frankly, it is never going to work. Fourteen hundred years of Islamic tribalism will not change because American neocons think it should.

All of which is lost on Clinton, who voted for the invasion of Iraq.

Her performance as Secretary of State during the Arab Spring was an unqualified failure as it removed the cornerstones that hold Arab nations together — their leaders. The anarchy in Libya is the result of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s death. It is the same story in Iraq without Saddam Hussein and Egypt without Hosni Mubarak. It is a fantasy to believe that the removal of Bashar al-Assad in Syria will result in stability. It will just create another vacuum that is in a constant state of war.

What happens when brutal leaders are murdered is at odds with what the FPI thinks should happen. It has been demonstrated time and again and to the extent that what the neocons want is not governments friendly to America, but friendly to a single, global government. At least some Americans understand that fighting on Arab sand will lead to more blood on American streets. Before Trump was stating the obvious, The National Interest ran this headline: Hillary Clinton’s Foreign-Policy Performance: The Worst. Ever.

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a cheerleader for those overthrowing governments friendly to the United States (such as in Egypt). These governments ended up being replaced with the Muslim Brotherhood, dictatorship and chaos. The Arab uprisings, combined with the ham-fisted withdrawal from Iraq, led to the formation of ISIS, which subsequently took over much of Iraq and Syria.

Clinton will be the new neoconservative president. The left has ignored this going into the election but will be unable to shrug off Clinton’s betrayal.

Robert Kagan, cofounder of the FPI, holds regular meetings with a group called, “foreign policy professionals for Hillary.” They organized a fundraiser for Clinton last July that raised $25,000.

Kagan is a close friend of Henry Kissinger and has associations with John Podesta, the chairman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and John Kerry, Secretary of State. Kagan wrote an article for the Atlantic titled In Defense of Henry Kissinger.

According to the July 25, 2016, issue of The Intercept, “Kagan played a leading role in pushing for America’s unilateral invasion of Iraq and insisted for years afterward that it had turned out great.” Never mind the 4,500 dead American service men and women and the $2 trillion cost. Unbelievably, Kagan insists U.S. foreign policy over the last 25 years has been “an extraordinary success.”

The Intercept wrote that two rising stars in the Democratic foreign policy establishment, Amanda Sloat and Julianne Smith, hope Clinton will escalate tension with Russia and double down on military forces in the Middle East when she becomes president.

Smith is a former national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden and said last summer that Clinton “understands the importance of deterring Russian aggression.”

Clinton has made it clear she hates Russian President Vladimir Putin. She has spoken of collusion between Trump and Putin, claiming Putin wants to see that Trump is elected. There is also a growing rift between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine.

It is not so clear that Washington is honest about Ukraine. The former government of the country was democratically elected and was overthrown, some believe with Washington’s help. There is no question that since the fall of the Berlin Wall the United States has used its influence to corner the Russian Bear. Putin’s reaction is muted. Imagine Washington’s response if China or Russia armed an anti-American government in Mexico. That would be impossible right now, but the world is changing.

America is broke

The American oligarchy has a big problem on its hands. The nation’s debt load of $20 trillion is certain to grow under Clinton’s guns-and-butter budgets.

Empires collapse from internal rot. Rome was broke long before its legions broke. Russia cannot have a standup war with the United States. But Putin has been making war with the United States for over a year. Between April 2015 and April 2016, Russian holdings of U.S. Treasury bills fell to $66.5 billion from $116.4 billion.

Russia’s central bank announced that it plans to add 200 tons of gold this year, almost as much as the 208 tons of gold bought in 2015. Many more, including Saudi sheiks, will be net sellers of dollars and buyers of gold, especially if Clinton believes America can afford to follow the foreign policy guidelines of the Foreign Policy Initiative.

If we couldn’t afford the Vietnam War by 1967, how the hell can we afford a new war in 2017?

The simple answer is we can’t. And it won’t be because of the Russian Backfire bomber. It will be from the explosion caused by the banking backfire. Interest rates will begin to soar in 2017. The too-big-to-fail banks will still exist, but America is now a nation too broke to rescue any institutions, even itself.

They say generals always prepare to fight the last war, not the war that is coming. Neocons should pay attention. Their focus is on foreign wars. The big war will be America’s second civil war.

Yours in good times and bad,

— John Myers