I suspect that this passage from Joseph Mussomeli’s op-ed at the Washington Post will cause smoke to pour out of the ears of many of Sec. Clinton’s supporters:
It’s quite an irony: The ostensibly more reckless, infantile, inexperienced and bombastic candidate may actually be more mature, level-headed and reasonable on foreign policy than his critics, who, against all the good advice our parents gave us as children, pout and refuse to talk to those they don’t like, escalate arguments to violence when they are upset, lack any remorse for the harm caused by their past opinions and actions, and fail repeatedly to see that there might be two sides to any disagreement.
There are, however, some points that I would hope there’s no disagreement about. In possession of the same information as the other senators and the administration itself, then Sen. Clinton voted in favor of the invasion of Iraq. And Sec. Clinton was one of the advocates if not the main advocate of ousting Moammar Qaddafi from Libya. Is she, as Mr. Mussomeli claims, just an ordinary garden variety neo-conservative in foreign policy? I honestly don’t think her foreign policy convictions run that deep.
I don’t think she is a committed neocon either. She supports their agenda as a means to getting elected. OTOH, you have Trump who has zero foreign policy experience and little knowledge. He has said he is going to hire neocons to run his foreign policy. To be fair, neocons dominate GOP foreign policy and he won’t have much choice. So either you vote for the candidate who will place neocons in top positions in his admin and follow their advice, or you vote for the candidate who only supports neocon ideology to get elected, who will put some neocons in her admin, along with a mix of liberal interventionists and others. If you want to use the Obama admin and compare that with the Bush, it means that if you put Trump in office we invade countries, lose trillions of dollars and thousands of lives and leave countries in chaos. Put in Clinton and you get a cheap war that leaves the country in chaos. With Trump you get an admin that actively tries to start trouble with Russia. With Clinton you get an admin that talks badly about Russia but doesn’t do much against them.
Steve
A certain amount of ambiguity can be useful in foreign affairs. I think that it served Ronald Reagan well in both the Iran hostage situation and that supposed gaffe where he said “The bombing start in 5 minutes” into an open microphone. Come on. The man spent 50 years in front of microphones. Mistake my patootie.
In the vernacular it is “We’d best be careful. We don’t know what that crazy bastard might do next”.
As a thought, maybe that’s what’s behind Mr. Trump’s puzzling success in his campaign.