Topic: Hillary Clinton Praised By Neo-Cons (Read 340 times)
Charles Koch: 'It's possible' Clinton is preferable to a Republican for president
Billionaire businessman Charles Koch said in an interview airing Sunday that “it’s possible” another Clinton in the White House could be better than having a Republican president.
Koch, the CEO of Koch industries, made the comment to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl for an interview airing on ABC’s This Week.
Koch and his brother, David, and their associated groups plan to spend nearly $900 million on the 2016 elections.
The comment came after Karl asked about former President Bill Clinton’s term, to which Koch said Clinton was “in some ways” better than George W. Bush.
“As far as the growth of government, the increase in spending, it was two-and-a-half times under Bush that it was under Clinton,” he said.
Karl followed up by asking about whether or not Koch could see himself supporting Hillary Clinton.
Koch hesitated before giving an answer that didn’t rule out the possibility.
“We would have to believe her actions would have to be quite different than her rhetoric, let me put it that way,” he said.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/charles-koch-hillary-clinton-republican-white-house-222349
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That is why we know the Uniparty is not a conspiracy theory anymore...
Neocons declare war on Trump
Prominent Republican hawks are debating whether to hold their noses and vote for Clinton instead.
By Michael Crowley
03/02/16 05:55 PM EST
Updated 03/02/16 09:51 PM EST
Donald Trump calls the Iraq War a lie-fueled fiasco, admires Vladimir Putin and says he would be a "neutral" arbiter between Israel and the Palestinians. When it comes to America’s global role he asks, “Why are we always at the forefront of everything?"
Even more than his economic positions, Trump's foreign policy views challenge GOP orthodoxy in fundamental ways. But while parts of the party establishment are resigning themselves or even backing Trump's runaway train, one group is bitterly digging in against him: the hawkish foreign policy elites known as neoconservatives.
Story Continued Below
In interviews with POLITICO, leading neocons — people who promoted the Iraq War, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable — said Trump would be a disaster for U.S. foreign policy and vowed never to support him. So deep is their revulsion that several even say they could vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump in November.
“Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin,” said Eliot Cohen, a former top State Department official under George W. Bush and a strategic theorist who argues for a muscular U.S. role abroad. Trump's election would be “an unmitigated disaster for American foreign policy," Cohen said, adding that "he has already damaged it considerably.”
Cohen, an Iraq war backer who is often called a neoconservative but said he does not identify himself that way, said he would "strongly prefer a third party candidate" to Trump, but added: "Probably if absolutely no alternative: Hillary."
In a March 1 interview with Vox, Max Boot, a military historian at the Council on Foreign Relations who backed the Iraq War and often advocates a hawkish foreign policy, said that he, too, would vote for Clinton over Trump. "I'm literally losing sleep over Donald Trump," he said. "She would be vastly preferable to Trump."
Cohen helped to organize an open letter signed by several dozen GOP foreign policy insiders — many of whom are not considered neocons — that was published Wednesday night by the military blog War on the Rocks. “[W]e are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head,” the letter declared. It cited everything from Trump’s "admiration for foreign dictators” to his “inexcusable” support for “the expansive use of torture."
The letter was signed by dozens of Republican foreign policy experts, including Boot; Peter Feaver, a former senior national security aide in George W. Bush's White House; Robert Zoellick, a former deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and Dov Zakheim, a former Bush Pentagon official; and Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former Bush State Department official.
Several other neocons said they find themselves in an impossible position, constitutionally incapable of voting for Clinton but repelled by a Republican whose foreign policy views they consider somewhere between nonexistent and dangerous — and disconnected from their views about American power and values abroad.
"1972 was the first time I was old enough to vote for president, and I did not vote. Couldn't vote for McGovern for foreign policy reasons, nor for Nixon because of Watergate," said Elliott Abrams, a former national security council aide to George W. Bush who specializes in democracy and the Middle East. "I may be in the same boat in 2016, unable to vote for Trump or Clinton."
Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, something of a dean of Washington neoconservatives, said he would seek out a third option before choosing between Trump and Clinton.
“If it's Trump-Clinton, I'd work with others to recruit a strong conservative third party candidate, and do my best to help him win (which by the way would be more possible than people think, especially when people — finally — realize Trump shouldn't be president and Hillary is indicted),” Kristol wrote in an email.
Kristol and Abrams have advised Florida senator Marco Rubio, the preferred choice of several neoconservatives, who admire his call for "moral clarity" in foreign policy and strong emphasis on human rights and democracy.
Alarm brewing for months in GOP foreign policy circles burst into public view last week, when Robert Kagan, a key backer of the Iraq War and American global might, wrote in the Washington Post that a Trump nomination would force him to cross party lines.
“The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton,” Kagan warned. “The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be.”
In an interview, Kagan said his opposition to Trump "has nothing to do with foreign policy."
"What it has to do with is the health and safety of American democracy," he added. "I don't even know what Donald Trump's foreign policy is. I don't think anybody does."
Though Trump's foreign policy views don't fit any familiar category, he has outlined several clear positions at odds with neoconservative doctrine.
While neoconservatives believe America plays a unique role in defending global order and Western values, Trump has long complained about America's military presence abroad and the protection the U.S. provides to prosperous allies like Saudi Arabia, Japan and South Korea.
Neocons depict Russian President Vladimir Putin as a sinister tyrant challenging America; Trump calls Putin a strong leader with whom he'd "get along very well" and proposes a more cooperative relationship with Moscow.
Neocons believe the U.S. must forcefully defend Israel. But while Trump insists his presidency would be "the best thing that could ever happen to Israel," he has alarmed pro-Israel Republicans with his pledge to be a "neutral" arbiter in talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Trump has shown little interest in the neoconservative cause of an interventionist foreign policy guided by principles like democracy and human rights. And he says the neocon project of invading Iraq may have been "the worst decision" in presidential history.
Some conservative foreign policy insiders opposed to Trump stop short of saying they would vote for Clinton, despite elements of her foreign policy record, such as her 2002 Senate vote to authorize force against Iraq, that they find appealing.
“I could never vote for Clinton under any circumstances,” said Abrams.
“I would ask Bob [Kagan] what job he thinks Sidney Blumenthal will have at the NSC before pulling the lever for Clinton,” he added — a reference to the longtime Clinton adviser and bete noir of the right.
Danielle Pletka, a defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute said she, too, would seek some alternative to Trump and Clinton.
"[W]hile I will never vote for a Democrat in wolf’s clothing like Trump, I will also never vote for a candidate as dishonest, as rapacious, as Hillary Clinton," she wrote in an email. "My vote is a precious thing, and while I will certainly go to the polls, if those are my choices, I will write someone in. And no, it won’t be Bloomberg.
"
The word "neoconservative" is subject to interpretation, and some conservatives consider it pejorative. Originally used to describe Democrats who adopted hard-line anti-Communist views during the Cold War, the word's colloquial meaning roughly amounts to “hawkish GOP foreign policy intellectual.”
Neocons have shown little enthusiasm for Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who has singled them out for scorn. Speaking to Iowa voters in December, Cruz bashed what he called the "crazy neocon invade-every-country-on-earth and send our kids to die in the Middle East” element of his party.
Cruz has also attacked Rubio in debates for supporting military action to topple Middle Eastern dictators in Libya and Syria, and has said the world was better off with former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in power.
But the neocons reserve special scorn for Trump.
"A Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America as a great power," Boot writes in the March 7 issue of the Weekly Standard, along with Council on Foreign Relations economist Benn Steill.
Steill and Boot — who also has advised Rubio — call Trump "singularly ill-equipped to manage the resulting turmoil" from his policies. They recall the September radio interview in which Trump confused the Kurds with Iran's elite military Quds force and admitted he was unfamiliar with the leaders of major Islamist terror groups.
Cohen also added that he doesn't oppose Trump solely on foreign policy grounds, calling the Manhattan mogul “the most dangerous demagogue in American politics in my lifetime.”
Several other prominent neoconservatives, including former Bush Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz and Liz Cheney, daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, did not respond to requests for comment.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-clinton-neoconservatives-220151#ixzz41pYL6Vf1
Prominent Republican hawks are debating whether to hold their noses and vote for Clinton instead.
By Michael Crowley
03/02/16 05:55 PM EST
Updated 03/02/16 09:51 PM EST
Donald Trump calls the Iraq War a lie-fueled fiasco, admires Vladimir Putin and says he would be a "neutral" arbiter between Israel and the Palestinians. When it comes to America’s global role he asks, “Why are we always at the forefront of everything?"
Even more than his economic positions, Trump's foreign policy views challenge GOP orthodoxy in fundamental ways. But while parts of the party establishment are resigning themselves or even backing Trump's runaway train, one group is bitterly digging in against him: the hawkish foreign policy elites known as neoconservatives.
Story Continued Below
In interviews with POLITICO, leading neocons — people who promoted the Iraq War, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable — said Trump would be a disaster for U.S. foreign policy and vowed never to support him. So deep is their revulsion that several even say they could vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump in November.
“Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin,” said Eliot Cohen, a former top State Department official under George W. Bush and a strategic theorist who argues for a muscular U.S. role abroad. Trump's election would be “an unmitigated disaster for American foreign policy," Cohen said, adding that "he has already damaged it considerably.”
Cohen, an Iraq war backer who is often called a neoconservative but said he does not identify himself that way, said he would "strongly prefer a third party candidate" to Trump, but added: "Probably if absolutely no alternative: Hillary."
In a March 1 interview with Vox, Max Boot, a military historian at the Council on Foreign Relations who backed the Iraq War and often advocates a hawkish foreign policy, said that he, too, would vote for Clinton over Trump. "I'm literally losing sleep over Donald Trump," he said. "She would be vastly preferable to Trump."
Cohen helped to organize an open letter signed by several dozen GOP foreign policy insiders — many of whom are not considered neocons — that was published Wednesday night by the military blog War on the Rocks. “[W]e are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head,” the letter declared. It cited everything from Trump’s "admiration for foreign dictators” to his “inexcusable” support for “the expansive use of torture."
The letter was signed by dozens of Republican foreign policy experts, including Boot; Peter Feaver, a former senior national security aide in George W. Bush's White House; Robert Zoellick, a former deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; and Dov Zakheim, a former Bush Pentagon official; and Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former Bush State Department official.
Several other neocons said they find themselves in an impossible position, constitutionally incapable of voting for Clinton but repelled by a Republican whose foreign policy views they consider somewhere between nonexistent and dangerous — and disconnected from their views about American power and values abroad.
"1972 was the first time I was old enough to vote for president, and I did not vote. Couldn't vote for McGovern for foreign policy reasons, nor for Nixon because of Watergate," said Elliott Abrams, a former national security council aide to George W. Bush who specializes in democracy and the Middle East. "I may be in the same boat in 2016, unable to vote for Trump or Clinton."
Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, something of a dean of Washington neoconservatives, said he would seek out a third option before choosing between Trump and Clinton.
“If it's Trump-Clinton, I'd work with others to recruit a strong conservative third party candidate, and do my best to help him win (which by the way would be more possible than people think, especially when people — finally — realize Trump shouldn't be president and Hillary is indicted),” Kristol wrote in an email.
Kristol and Abrams have advised Florida senator Marco Rubio, the preferred choice of several neoconservatives, who admire his call for "moral clarity" in foreign policy and strong emphasis on human rights and democracy.
Alarm brewing for months in GOP foreign policy circles burst into public view last week, when Robert Kagan, a key backer of the Iraq War and American global might, wrote in the Washington Post that a Trump nomination would force him to cross party lines.
“The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton,” Kagan warned. “The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be.”
In an interview, Kagan said his opposition to Trump "has nothing to do with foreign policy."
"What it has to do with is the health and safety of American democracy," he added. "I don't even know what Donald Trump's foreign policy is. I don't think anybody does."
Though Trump's foreign policy views don't fit any familiar category, he has outlined several clear positions at odds with neoconservative doctrine.
While neoconservatives believe America plays a unique role in defending global order and Western values, Trump has long complained about America's military presence abroad and the protection the U.S. provides to prosperous allies like Saudi Arabia, Japan and South Korea.
Neocons depict Russian President Vladimir Putin as a sinister tyrant challenging America; Trump calls Putin a strong leader with whom he'd "get along very well" and proposes a more cooperative relationship with Moscow.
Neocons believe the U.S. must forcefully defend Israel. But while Trump insists his presidency would be "the best thing that could ever happen to Israel," he has alarmed pro-Israel Republicans with his pledge to be a "neutral" arbiter in talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Trump has shown little interest in the neoconservative cause of an interventionist foreign policy guided by principles like democracy and human rights. And he says the neocon project of invading Iraq may have been "the worst decision" in presidential history.
Some conservative foreign policy insiders opposed to Trump stop short of saying they would vote for Clinton, despite elements of her foreign policy record, such as her 2002 Senate vote to authorize force against Iraq, that they find appealing.
“I could never vote for Clinton under any circumstances,” said Abrams.
“I would ask Bob [Kagan] what job he thinks Sidney Blumenthal will have at the NSC before pulling the lever for Clinton,” he added — a reference to the longtime Clinton adviser and bete noir of the right.
Danielle Pletka, a defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute said she, too, would seek some alternative to Trump and Clinton.
"[W]hile I will never vote for a Democrat in wolf’s clothing like Trump, I will also never vote for a candidate as dishonest, as rapacious, as Hillary Clinton," she wrote in an email. "My vote is a precious thing, and while I will certainly go to the polls, if those are my choices, I will write someone in. And no, it won’t be Bloomberg.
"The word "neoconservative" is subject to interpretation, and some conservatives consider it pejorative. Originally used to describe Democrats who adopted hard-line anti-Communist views during the Cold War, the word's colloquial meaning roughly amounts to “hawkish GOP foreign policy intellectual.”
Neocons have shown little enthusiasm for Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who has singled them out for scorn. Speaking to Iowa voters in December, Cruz bashed what he called the "crazy neocon invade-every-country-on-earth and send our kids to die in the Middle East” element of his party.
Cruz has also attacked Rubio in debates for supporting military action to topple Middle Eastern dictators in Libya and Syria, and has said the world was better off with former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in power.
But the neocons reserve special scorn for Trump.
"A Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America as a great power," Boot writes in the March 7 issue of the Weekly Standard, along with Council on Foreign Relations economist Benn Steill.
Steill and Boot — who also has advised Rubio — call Trump "singularly ill-equipped to manage the resulting turmoil" from his policies. They recall the September radio interview in which Trump confused the Kurds with Iran's elite military Quds force and admitted he was unfamiliar with the leaders of major Islamist terror groups.
Cohen also added that he doesn't oppose Trump solely on foreign policy grounds, calling the Manhattan mogul “the most dangerous demagogue in American politics in my lifetime.”
Several other prominent neoconservatives, including former Bush Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz and Liz Cheney, daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, did not respond to requests for comment.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-clinton-neoconservatives-220151#ixzz41pYL6Vf1
Hillary Clinton Praised By Neo-Cons
Brandon Turbeville
BrandonTurbeville.com
March 1, 2016
Proving that there is no discernible difference between Republican and Democratic administrations (as if the Bush-Obama years were not proof enough), Hillary Clinton’s dramatically pro-war, Zionist, and police state policies are earning her the support (or at least the lack of public opposition) from noted Neo-Con figures who typically play the role of the right-wing Republican side of the dialectic.
Consider Jacob Heilbrunn’s article in the New York Times entitled “The Next Act of the Neocons,” where he argued that many hawkish Neo-Cons are considering the possibility of crossing over from the GOP to the Hillary Clinton camp. While the ideology of the Neo-Cons is scarcely discernible from other factions in the US ruling class, there are minor differences in terms of the presentation of that ideology. This presentation has been carefully crafted by the ruling class for years for the purposes of dividing and ruling the American people. The fact that a seemingly “conservative” movement would thus be so open about supporting a seemingly “liberal” candidate is extremely telling.
Heilbrunn’s article tends to focus on the possibility that neo-cons like Robert Kagan are considering open support for Clinton. He writes,
Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy. . . . .
It’s not as outlandish as it may sound. Consider the historian Robert Kagan, the author of a recent, roundly praised article in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto.[1] He has not only avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department.
Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he’s a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that citadel of liberalism headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article “magisterial,” in what amounts to a public baptism into the liberal establishment.)[2]
Jason Horowitz, also writing for the New York Times, quotes Kagan as being comfortable with Clinton in terms of her foreign policy. Horowitz writes,
“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”[3]
Heilbrunn also points out that Kagan is not the only well-known Neo-Con who is open to public support for the Clinton campaign. Max Boot has also expressed respect for Clinton when he described her tenure as Secretary of State.[4] He describes Clinton by saying, “it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya. Later she urged arming the moderate opposition during the early days of the Syrian civil war—advice that, if Obama had taken it, might well have short-circuited the violent disintegration of Syria, which is far advanced today.”
Heilbrunn also writes that former Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, a Neo-Con in everything but official title, echoes the sentiments of Boot and Kagan and that measure of support for Clinton might also be expected from his camp.
Journalist Robert Parry summed up Clinton’s history of pro-Neo-Con positions in his article, “Is Hillary Clinton A NeoCon-Lite?” by writing,
Based on her public record and Gates’s insider account, Clinton could be expected to favor a more neoconservative approach to the Mideast, one more in line with the traditional thinking of Official Washington and the belligerent dictates of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As a U.S. senator and as Secretary of State, Clinton rarely challenged the conventional wisdom or resisted the use of military force to solve problems. She famously voted for the Iraq War in 2002 – falling for President George W. Bush’s bogus WMD case – and remained a war supporter until her position became politically untenable during Campaign 2008.
Representing New York, Clinton rarely if ever criticized Israeli actions. In summer 2006, as Israeli warplanes pounded southern Lebanon, killing more than 1,000 Lebanese, Sen. Clinton shared a stage with Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman who had said, “While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim.”
At a pro-Israel rally with Clinton in New York on July 17, 2006, Gillerman proudly defended Israel’s massive violence against targets in Lebanon. “Let us finish the job,” Gillerman told the crowd. “We will excise the cancer in Lebanon” and “cut off the fingers” of Hezbollah. Responding to international concerns that Israel was using “disproportionate” force in bombing Lebanon and killing hundreds of civilians, Gillerman said, “You’re damn right we are.” [NYT, July 18, 2006]
Sen. Clinton did not protest Gillerman’s remarks, since doing so would presumably have offended an important pro-Israel constituency.[5]
Of course, in this sense the term “pro-Israel constituency” can easily be translated to mean “neo-con constituency” since, in reality, that is exactly what it is. Clearly, Clinton was not going to offend the Neo-Con leadership not because she is simply courting campaign funds but because Clinton herself is a Neo-Con.
Brandon Turbeville’s new book, The Difference It Makes: 36 Reasons Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President is available in three different formats: Hardcopy (available here), Amazon Kindle for only .99 (available here), and a Free PDF Format (accessible free from his website,BrandonTurbeville.com).
[1] Kagan, Robert. “Superpowers Don’t Get To Retire.” Foreign Policy. May 26, 2014. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117859/allure-normalcy-what-america-still-owes-world Accessed on September 4, 2015.
[2] Heilbrunn, Jacob. “The Next Act Of The Neocons.” New York Times. July 5, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clinton.html Accessed on September 4, 2015.
[3] Horowitz, Jason. “Events In Iraq Open Door For Interventionist Revival, Historian Says.” New York Times. June 15, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/politics/historians-critique-of-obama-foreign-policy-is-brought-alive-by-events-in-iraq.html?src=twrhp&_r=1 Accessed on September 4, 2015.
[4] Boot, Max. “Why Is Robert Gates Angry?” New Republic. February 26, 2014. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116500/duty-memoirs-secretary-war-reviewed-max-boot Accessed on September 4, 2015.
[5] Parry, Robert. “Is Hillary Clinton A Neo-Con Lite?” Consortium News. April 23, 2015. https://consortiumnews.com/2015/04/23/is-hillary-clinton-a-neocon-lite-2/ Accessed on September 4, 2015.
Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 650 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST atUCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.
http://www.brandonturbeville.com/2016/03/hillary-clinton-praised-by-neo-cons.html
Brandon Turbeville
BrandonTurbeville.com
March 1, 2016
Proving that there is no discernible difference between Republican and Democratic administrations (as if the Bush-Obama years were not proof enough), Hillary Clinton’s dramatically pro-war, Zionist, and police state policies are earning her the support (or at least the lack of public opposition) from noted Neo-Con figures who typically play the role of the right-wing Republican side of the dialectic.
Consider Jacob Heilbrunn’s article in the New York Times entitled “The Next Act of the Neocons,” where he argued that many hawkish Neo-Cons are considering the possibility of crossing over from the GOP to the Hillary Clinton camp. While the ideology of the Neo-Cons is scarcely discernible from other factions in the US ruling class, there are minor differences in terms of the presentation of that ideology. This presentation has been carefully crafted by the ruling class for years for the purposes of dividing and ruling the American people. The fact that a seemingly “conservative” movement would thus be so open about supporting a seemingly “liberal” candidate is extremely telling.
Heilbrunn’s article tends to focus on the possibility that neo-cons like Robert Kagan are considering open support for Clinton. He writes,
Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy. . . . .
It’s not as outlandish as it may sound. Consider the historian Robert Kagan, the author of a recent, roundly praised article in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto.[1] He has not only avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department.
Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he’s a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that citadel of liberalism headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article “magisterial,” in what amounts to a public baptism into the liberal establishment.)[2]
Jason Horowitz, also writing for the New York Times, quotes Kagan as being comfortable with Clinton in terms of her foreign policy. Horowitz writes,
“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”[3]
Heilbrunn also points out that Kagan is not the only well-known Neo-Con who is open to public support for the Clinton campaign. Max Boot has also expressed respect for Clinton when he described her tenure as Secretary of State.[4] He describes Clinton by saying, “it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya. Later she urged arming the moderate opposition during the early days of the Syrian civil war—advice that, if Obama had taken it, might well have short-circuited the violent disintegration of Syria, which is far advanced today.”
Heilbrunn also writes that former Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, a Neo-Con in everything but official title, echoes the sentiments of Boot and Kagan and that measure of support for Clinton might also be expected from his camp.
Journalist Robert Parry summed up Clinton’s history of pro-Neo-Con positions in his article, “Is Hillary Clinton A NeoCon-Lite?” by writing,
Based on her public record and Gates’s insider account, Clinton could be expected to favor a more neoconservative approach to the Mideast, one more in line with the traditional thinking of Official Washington and the belligerent dictates of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As a U.S. senator and as Secretary of State, Clinton rarely challenged the conventional wisdom or resisted the use of military force to solve problems. She famously voted for the Iraq War in 2002 – falling for President George W. Bush’s bogus WMD case – and remained a war supporter until her position became politically untenable during Campaign 2008.
Representing New York, Clinton rarely if ever criticized Israeli actions. In summer 2006, as Israeli warplanes pounded southern Lebanon, killing more than 1,000 Lebanese, Sen. Clinton shared a stage with Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman who had said, “While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim.”
At a pro-Israel rally with Clinton in New York on July 17, 2006, Gillerman proudly defended Israel’s massive violence against targets in Lebanon. “Let us finish the job,” Gillerman told the crowd. “We will excise the cancer in Lebanon” and “cut off the fingers” of Hezbollah. Responding to international concerns that Israel was using “disproportionate” force in bombing Lebanon and killing hundreds of civilians, Gillerman said, “You’re damn right we are.” [NYT, July 18, 2006]
Sen. Clinton did not protest Gillerman’s remarks, since doing so would presumably have offended an important pro-Israel constituency.[5]
Of course, in this sense the term “pro-Israel constituency” can easily be translated to mean “neo-con constituency” since, in reality, that is exactly what it is. Clearly, Clinton was not going to offend the Neo-Con leadership not because she is simply courting campaign funds but because Clinton herself is a Neo-Con.
Brandon Turbeville’s new book, The Difference It Makes: 36 Reasons Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President is available in three different formats: Hardcopy (available here), Amazon Kindle for only .99 (available here), and a Free PDF Format (accessible free from his website,BrandonTurbeville.com).
[1] Kagan, Robert. “Superpowers Don’t Get To Retire.” Foreign Policy. May 26, 2014. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117859/allure-normalcy-what-america-still-owes-world Accessed on September 4, 2015.
[2] Heilbrunn, Jacob. “The Next Act Of The Neocons.” New York Times. July 5, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clinton.html Accessed on September 4, 2015.
[3] Horowitz, Jason. “Events In Iraq Open Door For Interventionist Revival, Historian Says.” New York Times. June 15, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/politics/historians-critique-of-obama-foreign-policy-is-brought-alive-by-events-in-iraq.html?src=twrhp&_r=1 Accessed on September 4, 2015.
[4] Boot, Max. “Why Is Robert Gates Angry?” New Republic. February 26, 2014. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116500/duty-memoirs-secretary-war-reviewed-max-boot Accessed on September 4, 2015.
[5] Parry, Robert. “Is Hillary Clinton A Neo-Con Lite?” Consortium News. April 23, 2015. https://consortiumnews.com/2015/04/23/is-hillary-clinton-a-neocon-lite-2/ Accessed on September 4, 2015.
Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 650 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST atUCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.
http://www.brandonturbeville.com/2016/03/hillary-clinton-praised-by-neo-cons.html
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