Most candidates who run for President are merely aspiring criminals. But Hillary Clinton has always been exceptional. She has the nearly unique distinction of having already been party to numerous criminal acts, some of which are so serious that just a lifetime ago she would have been hanged for less.
In the 1980s, Hillary and her husband Bill Clinton, then Arkansas governor, illegally supported the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, going as far as to allow the CIA to use an airstrip to funnel gun and drug shipments in and out of the US. Once she attained more direct power as Senator, Clinton voted to support the internationally illegal Iraq War in 2003. She still supports the PATRIOT ACT, the use of torture and warrantless surveillance. But her most serious crime occurred in 2011 when as Secretary of State she lobbied President Obama to launch an unjustified war against Libya.
To put it bluntly, the Obama administration’s invasion of Libya was the legal and moral equivalent of Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939.
Domestically, it was a violation of the US Constitution. Only Congress can declare war, and the US-imposed no fly zone over Libya was clearly an act of war. It also violated the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires congressional approval for any military action committing US troops for longer than 60 days. Congress gave no such authority and Under the War Powers Act, the President can only take immediate military action during “a national emergency.”
As a Senator, President Obama himself argued, “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” And yet his administration did exactly that.
The war also violated international law. Though the attack was given UN approval, the resolution did not allow for the overthrow of the Libyan government or the killing of it’s leader Muammar Gaddafi. If the US intention to topple the government of Libya was clear from the outset, Russia certainly would not have abstained from the vote and denied the US the political cover it wanted.
If you believe the “buck stops with the president,” then he owns the war and it’s consequences. But it was Hillary Clinton who pushed for military action over the objections of other members of the administration and the Pentagon.
The State Department insinuated that Gaddafi was committing a genocide powered by Viagra-fueled rape squads, a claim they argued warranted international action, but like the invasion of Iraq, the intelligence was based on rumors from unreliable sources. Gaddafi’s bombing of civilians may have never occurred. Even Human Rights Watch said there was no evidence that the war had risen to “genocide-like levels.” The propping up of poor intelligence to justify an attack bears an eerie resemblance to the invasion of Iraq nearly a decade earlier.
Released emails from Hillary Clinton’s compromised email server show that Clinton knew the US backed rebels were linked to al Qaeda and were committing war crimes. Death squads were ethnically cleansing Libyan civilians and killing surrendering army troops outright.
Gaddafi’s government even offered to surrender, step down and permit a transitional government. All he asked was that the Libyan government continue to exist to fight the al-Qaeda backed rebels, but Clinton was having none of it. The Washington Times reports:
Mrs. Clinton ordered a general within the Pentagon to refuse to take a call with Gaddafi’s son Seif and other high-level members within the regime, to help negotiate a resolution…
“Everything I am getting from the State Department is that they do not care about being part of this. Secretary Clinton does not want to negotiate at all,” the Pentagon intelligence asset told Seif Gaddafi and his adviser on the recordings.”
In an email to Clinton, French President Nicholas Sarkozy identified five specific motives for the invasion, including the seizing of Libyan oil and improving Sarkozy’s reputation in France. It also stressed the need to stop Gaddafi’s plans to launch a gold-backed African currency to compete with the French Franc, still used there. The need to protect civilian lives was absent from the discussion.
A report by the Washington Times notes that the Pentagon had previously warned Clinton that Libya posed no threat to US interests and that toppling the government might destabilize the region. Indeed, by dismembering the Libyan government, Obama and Clinton made the area a ripe training ground for what would soon become ISIS. A UN report noted that weapons from the war were being transfered to other battlefields including Syria and Egypt. As of 2015, ISIS has established a fortress in the Libyan city of Sirte.
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If Secretary Clinton and President Obama were charged under the Nuremberg trials, they would surely be hanged. Sadly, their unpunished crimes are not anomalies. Noam Chomsky famously argued that every president since World War II has been guilty of war crimes that would have warranted a death sentence in the post-war court.
Meanwhile, talking heads in the media tell us to fear the demagogue Donald Trump. It’s true that Trump has fascist tendencies. He has said that he “love[s] war,” is “the most militaristic man in the room,” would use waterboarding and “a hell of a lot worse” to stop threats against the US. These are all very disturbing positions and reflects his assumption that violence solves problems.
Still, it’s a laughable to call Trump a fascist when we compare his stupid stump speeches against the ongoing murder spree of America’s ruling class. Conservatively speaking, their actions have resulted in the deaths of well over a million of innocent people since 9-11.
Like the ancient Romans who promised rule of law and civilization to those they conquered, the US oligarchs have their own brand of propaganda; they promise to spread freedom and democracy around the world. Of course, this has always been a code for global domination. All those who oppose the centralization of power under Washington DC’s iron grip are labeled terrorists or gangster states. Evidence is concocted from rumors. Negotiation is irrelevant. Clinton and other like minded leaders operate from a belief that total domination is the only acceptable outcome and that violence is preferable to peaceful cohabitation.
Americans are slowly becoming educated about the imperial nature of US foreign policy. We widely opposed President Obama’s plans to escalate the war in Syria and Ukraine over the last three years. The rise of Trump, who has an anti-imperialistic and anti-nation-building attitude, is evidence of this growing discontent. So perhaps there is hope after all. Maybe there is another less violent, less antagonistic, and less imperialistic foreign policy possible, even without a total revolution, but it sure isn’t going to occur if we have a President Hillary Clinton.
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