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Why Clinton voted with hawks
Political reasons seen in declaring Iran corps ’terrorist’
By Helene Cooper,
New York Times
(10-14) 04:00 PDT Washington —
Sens. Joseph Biden and Chris Dodd voted against it. Sen. Barack Obama said he would have voted against it if he had voted. Former Sen. John Edwards implied he would have voted against it if he could have voted.
And Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton? She voted in favor of the measure in question, which asked the Bush administration to declare Iran’s 125,000-member Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. Such a move - more hawkish than even most of the Bush administration has been willing to venture so far - would intensify America’s continuing confrontation with Iran, many foreign policy experts say.
Part of the reason for Clinton’s vote, some of her backers say privately, is that she already has shifted from primary mode, when she needs to guard against critics from the left, to general election mode, when she must guard against critics from the right.
That means she is trying to shore up her national security credentials against Republican candidates like Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, and is trying to reassure voters that she would be a tough-minded commander in chief.
By supporting the bill - sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Jon Kyl of Arizona - Clinton also is solidifying crucial support from the pro-Israel lobby.
Clinton voted along with 75 other senators in favor of the bill "in order to apply greater diplomatic pressure on Iran," according to a statement she put out after the vote. "The Revolutionary Guards are deeply involved in Iran’s nuclear program and have substantial links with Hezbollah."
Speaking at a town hall meeting Saturday with some 300 people at a high school in Florence, S.C., Clinton again defended her vote on the bill. She said the vote is consistent with her negotiating strategy.
"They are supporting sending weapons into Iraq right now that are used against our troops," she said, adding that the resolution gives an opening to future penalties and "leverage when we negotiate with them."
But Clinton has come under withering criticism for her vote from many Democrats, who say she is implicitly supporting what they see as an attempt by the administration to build a case for war with Iran. And her vote also has set off a debate among foreign policy experts about how best to put pressure on Iran, with some of them saying that Clinton, along with a big majority of the Senate, has gone too far.
"What Sen. Clinton and the other legislators who voted for this bill don’t seem to realize is that the Revolutionary Guards are not al Qaeda," said Karim Sadjapour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "They’re not a group of voluntary jihadists signing up to fight the United States. Many are conscripts taken from the regular army."
Sadjapour, an Iranian American, and some other experts argue that the rank and file of the Revolutionary Guards are far more representative of Iranian society than most Americans realize. So labeling Iran’s elite fighters as terrorists is a move that is more likely to drive the Iranian population closer to the country’s hard-liners.
Even within the Bush administration, there is debate about whether designating the entire Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization is a good idea.
While some White House officials and some members of Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff have been pushing to blacklist the whole Revolutionary Guard, administration officials said, officials at the State and Treasury departments have been pushing a narrower approach that would list only the Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force and, perhaps, companies and organizations with financial ties to that group.
The designation would make it easier for the United States to block financial accounts and other assets controlled by the group. But most of America’s partners in a big diplomatic push to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions don’t like the idea at all, arguing that it might hamstring any number of business ventures with the country. In addition, some European diplomats argue that the move could further alienate the Iranian population.
Clinton has come under attack from the anti-war flank of her party. Among their objections, her opponents say the vote could be used by the White House to justify a military strike on Iran. In a column in the New Hampshire Union Leader, Obama, who did not vote, called Clinton "the only Democratic presidential candidate to support this reckless amendment."
Biden was milder but still critical of the bill.
"I do not think the suggestion that the president designate an arm of the government of Iran as a ’terrorist’ entity provides any authority to do anything - after all, it is a nonbinding measure," he said on the Senate floor before opposing the bill Sept. 26. "But this administration has an unduly broad view of the scope of executive power, particularly in time of war."
In the statement she released after the vote, Clinton spoke of the need for "robust diplomacy" with Iran and warned Bush that he should not think that "the 2001 resolution authorizing force after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in any way authorizes force against Iran. If the administration believes that any use of force against Iran is necessary, the president must come to Congress to seek that authority."
Clinton concluded: "Nothing in this resolution changes that."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
– http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c...
– http://internationalnews.over-blog....
This article appeared on page A - 6 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Forum posts
16 October 2007, 16:01
NO SHIT! Not only is she as hawkish as any of the neocon Repukables, she is just as power hungry as they are. Look at her voting record for crying out loud!!
This woman represents the worst of our political class, she is nothing but a money grabbing pathological liar.
Ditto Giuliani, ditto McClain. I see no difference between the choices we are facing as voters next year. Now, more than ever, the American people need to get organize and make political alternatives a reality. Otherwise we will continue to go on this road to hell we’ve been on, a road to hell amply paved by both treacherous parties.
Ms. Clinton is proof positive that this country has no viable ’left’ alternative at all.
The so-called left in this country, as they are represented by the Democrats, have done nothing whatsoever to slow down the Bush administration’s repeated assaults on our constitution, they have done nothing whatsoever to put a stop to this godforsaken and insane war.
There is no loyal opposition in this country, all we have are pretenders who back down from their positions as soon as they utter them. They are nothing but spineless prostitutes.
This country needs desperately real leaders, for we have had enough of spineless, money grabbing whores.
American politics is nothing but a billion dollar Punch & Judy show where practically every politician running for president believes in absolutely the same things as this lawless administration:
First & foremost they ALL believe in Keynesian socialism, an economy totally driven by government demand pegged primarily to the military industrial complex, an economy whose secondary beneficiaries are the bankers of Wall Street. This has been the case in this country since WWII.
This ill-disguised form of militaristic socialism is not capitalism, my friends.
Second they all believe in this disastrous and false ’war on terror’ (a misnomer, this war is actually a war for terror) for the same reason that they believe in a militaristic Keynesian economy since this war’s only winners are the giant multinationals of the military industrial complex, as well as the oil industry, who have contributed enormously to their political campaigns and their careers. Our politicians are all creatures of the Federal Government and its masters and they will forever support its continuous expansion at the expense of the American middle class, at the expense of our future.
They will forever support more American intervention throughout the planet, even though American interventionism has done nothing but create more enemies for our country, which suits the military industrial complex just fine, since they obtain more wealth and power at our expense with this interventionism racket, while the American middle class stagnates and flounders.
In effect American interventionism is an extortion racket no different than Tony Soprano’s or John Gotti’s.
Another term for a Keynesian socialist society whose primary beneficiary is the military and their parasitic contractors is a fascist state.
After all, Mussolini & Hitler also created national economies driven by large military machines.
A nation that spends nearly half of its revenue on defense and the military can only be described as fascist, it cannot be described as ’peace loving’. Go to Global Security.org. See the list of defense expenditures world wide. What other country spends this much on defense?
The Dimocrats who idolize Hillary are no different than the Repukables that idolize their demented ’Decider’. These people are all about cult personalities and pep rallies. They care nothing about articulating and addressing real issues. They care more about ’reality’ TV shows and soap operas then they care about their own country.
They view politics like they view a football game. Root for you home team!
What utter nonsense. Politics is not a game folks. The people we place in power do have power over us, they have the power to ruin us and our future at a whim.
They are basically ruining us as I write this vent.
Here’s a new chant you Dimocrats should start singing:
Hillary Peron, La Santa Peronista!
17 October 2007, 10:46
You’re at least 98.3% correct and you should spread the word from one coast to the other. Your litany illustrates, for me at least, not how pathetic the political system has become. That’s been all too obvious since Jerry Brown denounced the standard, corrupt way of doing business 30 years ago. But, moreover, how pathetic the American masses are, who buy Hillary’s snake oil; who pretend she’s liberal; who are eager to elect a woman because, supposedly, as one woman recently suggested in New Hampshire while asking the candidate a question, the lack of testosterone will produce a more sane, peaceful government. What inanity! What a delusional constituency!
What a frigging joke the left has become. Let’s be serious here. Since W’s reign I’m as far left as I can be, if for no other reason than to run away from the Neocon strategists who aim to rule the world. But where is there, truly, to run? Pelosi? Lieberman? Kennedy? Sorry to inform those of you who might still have a scintilla of hope about the Democratic hopefuls, particularly regarding the worst candidate of the bunch, Hillary: Expect the same old same old.
Face it, leaderhip, like Dylan’s Answer, is blowing in the wind, at 30 knots, and you’ll never catch it. Not in this day and age of the Focus Group Politician hoping to lead only as far as public opinion will allow. Look at those few who have attempted to lead: Feingold, Hagel, Kucinich, Paul, and to a lesser extent, Richardson, Gravel, Obama, and poor Joe Biden, whose 3-state solution is closer to becoming an inevitability. The first two read the tea leaves and decided not to run; Kucinich and Paul are rewarded with consistent neglect; Obama’s rapidly slipping and Richardson barely has double digits. And what do you have left? Hillary - the one time Republican who hasn’t fundamentally changed over the years, punctuated by clever carpetbagging and mastering the fine art of mass hyponsis.
Is this the best the American public can do? Well if it is, if you’re going to insist she’s smart and capable and will change the world for the better, then it’s probably time for me to find myslef a new home where the people at large aren’t so eager to lie to themselves. It was one thing to support W and the "War on Terror" under the auspices of right wing politics. But, now, when Hillary pretends to offer a distinctly more enlightened Administration, but in actuality is set to perpetuate what her friend Joe Lieberman has fought so hard for - Neocon Dominion - why that’s even worse than W. At least W played to his base, and other than lying to substantiate his cause, he was at least true to his aim. Hillary is deception personified, pretending for the hard of thinking to be a true liberal while in fact defending the staus quo.
They used to say, once Reagan was elected the second time, "It’s the government the people deserved." That may’ve been true. But the same isn’t the case for Hillary since the stakes are so much higher. The country doesn’t deserve nor can afford Hillary’s candicacy. First, because her negative ratings are so high she’s simply unelectable at the national level. And second, if the Republicans blow the election - and if they can’t beat Hillary then they will have blown it - then America, having hoped for a change will instead experience a bitter, transformative event - A fox in sheep’s clothing; a Neocon pretending to be a humanist; a dreadfully ambitious individual incapable of seeing beyond her own personal ambitions.
Please, for God’s sake, or at least for your own, Delegates at large, primary voters, organizational leaders, civic minded-souls with an eye for making the world a better place for humanity, Don’t whatever you do, even if you’re influenced by high volumes of drugs and alcohol, support or vote for Hillary. Not if you truly expect the kind of change America needs so desperately.