Is it possible for the Democrats ever to put forward a presidential candidate who’s not in hock to Israel and who might actually show a little actual leadership?
Avedon Carol gives me even more reason to think that Hillary Clinton is definitely not that candidate:
Okay, here’s Hillary’s statement on Iran (and here’s where you can tell her how you feel about it). Hillary says, “No Military Action On Iran Without Congressional Authority.” Think about that. Don’t do anything completely insane without getting our permission, first. Now, I do think it’s important that the point be made – strongly – that Bush does not have the authority to use military force against Iran, no matter how he’d like to pretend that some previous legislation granted him that power. But that isn’t how it’s being phrased – they sound more like, “We might let you do something completely insane only if you get our permission first.” That’s not good enough, the emphasis is all wrong. And the reason Clinton is getting the emphasis wrong is that she’s trying to be really macho about Iran and doesn’t dare say that there are worse things than Iran getting nuclear power, and one of those things would be using military force against Iran. And she apparently does not understand that nothing makes Iran want nuclear power like the constant belligerence from the United States against Iran. So just shut up about Iran and tell Bush flat out that he can’t go there. Draw up the articles of impeachment right now and hold them up on television and swear to God that if there is the slightest inkling that Bush is moving against Iran, impeachment proceedings start in the morning.
But Hillary won’t do that. She’ll never do that. Political caution and triangulation is so ingrained in her she can longer operate in any other way. I’m sure she’s assiduous in ministering to her constituents in NY State and advancing its interests, but at national level, on her record she’s incapable of bold and decisive political action because she’s beholden to other interests.
Can anyone show me where she’s actually demonstrated real leadership against this warmongering administration at any point at all during the last 6 years? Has she rallied her fellow Democrats to act in concert against government wrongdoing, or has she just done what’s currently expedient to advance her career?
She’s actually in an advantageous position electorally at the moment, what with Edwards holed below the waterline already, Obama bang in the sights of the rightwing media race hate machine and somewhat hors de combat as a result. So is she taking advantage of the lull and out there making her case for the leadership of a nation that’s crying out for it?
Dream on.
No, she’s wittering on about giving Bush permission to go to war, as though it were still the nineties and he weren’t a dangerously unstable man who’s already devastated one country and who’ll take no notice whatsoever of what those hippies in Congress say, because he is beyond the law, and all his lawyers say so.
Why is she doing this? Hillary Clinton’s a bought and paid for creature of AIPAC and the Israel Lobby:
If neither strategic nor moral considerations can account for America’s support for Israel, Mearsheimer and Walt ask, what does? Their answer: the “unmatched power of the Israel Lobby.” At its core is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is ranked second after the National Rifle Association (along with the AARP) in the National Journal’s 2005 listing of Washington’s most powerful lobbies. AIPAC, they write, serves as “a de facto agent for a foreign government.” The lobby, they say, is also associated with Christian evangelicals such as Tom DeLay, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson; neoconservatives both Jewish (Paul Wolfowitz, Bernard Lewis, and William Kristol) and gentile (John Bolton, William Bennett, and George Will); think tanks (the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute); and critics of the press such as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
She should never be President because when it comes down to it she’ll puts the interests of another country above her own
Clinton’s close involvement with AIPAC and the Israel lobby makes any statement of hers at all viz Iran, Israel or the Middle East generally, suspect. She is answering to another constituency altogether and its not Democratic; it has much more money, much better connections and much more influence on her thinking than those boring nobody small voters ever could:
Watching Hillary Clinton’s speech at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference on Tuesday was a chance to observe a political master in action. In her usual stone-faced way, the senator set out to present herself as a stalwart supporter of Israel and of America’s alliance with Israel — and judging by the audience’s reaction, she succeeded brilliantly. Many of the several thousand people gathered in Washington’s Convention Center — AIPAC says there were over 5,000 participants at the conference overall — stood to applaud her at both the beginning and the end of her speech, and interrupted her several times in between. Hillary was a huge hit….
[…]
Her introducer set the stage by recalling Clinton’s efforts as senator to press the International Committee of the Red Cross to admit Israel’s Magen David Adom, and her defense of Israel’s security fence after the International Court of Justice declared it illegal. And Clinton’s speech hit exactly the right notes for the AIPAC crowd: She spoke about Israel as a “beacon of what democracy can and should mean.” She said the United States must “demand that President Abbas dismantle the structures of terror.” She condemned, at some length, “the barrage of hate and incitement that is still officially sanctioned by the Palestinian Authority.” (She got particularly strong applause when she said that “using children as pawns in a political process is tantamount to child abuse.”) Finally, she took on Iran, a topic of significant concern throughout the conference: “A nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable, but it is not just unacceptable to Israel and the United States. It must be unacceptable to the entire world, starting with the European governments and people.” That last bit brought her a standing ovation from many in the audience.
That’s from the NRO, hardly a hotbed of pro-Hillary sentiment.
How completely is she AIPAC’s creature? From the NY Review of Books review of “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” by professors John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government:
Democrats, though, still get most of the pro-Israel dollars. Among AIPAC’s staunchest backers in Congress are such well-known liberals as Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, Jerrold Nadler, and Howard Berman. Steny Hoyer, the House minority whip, is so reliable that “he might as well be on the AIPAC payroll,” a congressional staffer told me. Hillary Clinton is equally dependable. Still attempting to live down her 1998 declaration of support for a Palestinian state and the kiss she gave Suha Arafat in 1999, Clinton has sought to compensate by voting AIPAC’s way on almost every issue. In the current election cycle, she has received $80,000 in pro-Israel money—more than any other congressional candidate.
Partly as a result of such giving, says one Hill staffer, “We can count on well over half the House—250 to 300 members—to do reflexively whatever AIPAC wants.”
[My emphasis]
Clinton is acting, as so many others in Washington are, as the agent of a foreign power’s interests within her own government. That’s why she won’t move to take any options off the table, or condemn Bush – everything he’s doing is fine and dandy with the Israel lobby so it’s fine and dandy with her too. Clinton’ll never criticise what AIPAC wants, she’ll never impeach and she won’t stop a war on Iran.
What is with the damned Democrats? They’re making the basic electoral mistake of taking their base for granted while pandering tpo special interests; they seem to think because a vast swathe of US voters will do anything to get rid of Bush, then those votes are a lock and can be safely banked.
They either don’t realise or choose not to see just what very crucial issues to the electorate the impeachment of Bush and the stopping of another disastrous and illegal war are.
It would be completely naive of me to hope that any of the Democratic frontrunners might set personal ambition aside and start acting decisively on the war with Iran and impeachment: this reluctance to take a stand, not to speak out, to keep all the options on the table, boils down to nothing but plain old moral cowardice in all three, but with Clinton ( and to a lesser extent but still significantly, Edwards) it’s a moral cowardice fueled by pure ambition and propelled by Israeli money.
