With today’s victory in the New York Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton has reversed the momentum Bernie Sanders achieved with his recent string of wins. In her victory speech this evening Secretary Clinton essentially declared victory, and all but declared she will be the Democratic Party nominee. She called for Sanders supporters to join her campaign because the real danger is, of course, the Republican ticket. If she does become the next President of the United States, I predict that under Hillary Clinton’s Presidency we will have have to fighter her on several issues – such as Fracking, and ill-advised military adventures in regime change.
A meme that’s gone around recently neatly sums up the choice we’re facing:
Trump stands for Fascism, Cruz for Theocracy, both of whom would sadly subvert America. However, the suggestion in this image is that Hillary Clinton stands for Oligarchy, or government that’s dominated by the privileged elite. The proof of which is all her connections to the megazillionares of the world.
America pretends it’s different from other countries in the world. We have higher ideals, we supposedly do Great Things, simply because its the Right Thing to do. In practice however America’s actual actions don’t quite fit those ideals. In this years State of the Union speech, President Obama spent 10 minutes bragging about how powerful America is, we can put military forces anywhere on the planet, and we can stomp on any other country any time we want. Okay, he said it much more nicely than that, but that’s the essence. Hillary Clinton is very much in that mode of thinking.
With Bernie Sanders we have someone calling for America to live up to the Ideal of what this country is.
But what I want to do is go over some examples of Hillary Clinton policies we’ll have to fight, if she is elected President.
Hillary Clinton’s support of Fracking
A couple months ago, Clinton claimed to be against Fracking and said there’s a list of requirements she’ll institute which will make it essentially impossible for frackers to frack.
The sad truth is that Hillary Clinton’s State Department set in motion efforts to cause every frackable country in the world to subject themselves to oil company fracking operations. Namely, the State Department set up an office called the Global Shale Gas Initiative, which was later called the Unconventional Gas Technical Engagement Program. Both of these were under the Bureau of Energy Resources, and engaged with every country containing frackable shale deposits to ensure laws and agreements were underway allowing the frackers to operate.
Just a few days ago Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders met in a CNN-organized Debate in Brooklyn. During the debate Clinton was asked about this, that her State Department supported Fracking. Her answer talked about the idea that Natural Gas is a bridge fuel, and that it’s cleaner than Coal or Gasoline. So therefore, Fracking lets “the world” wean itself off of dirty fossil fuels ….
Uh… The problem with that is … It keeps “the world” dependent on fossil fuels … Fracking causes a host of other problems from poisoned ground water, to removing huge amounts of water from the hydrological cycle, to earthquakes, to the use and application of dangerous toxic chemicals, and on and on and on.
In short, expect us to have to fight President Hillary Clinton on Fracking.
Hillary Clinton’s support of ill-advised regime change operations
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton worked hard to get support for overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi, the long-time head honcho of Libya. As a result, Gaddafi’s government was overthrown, and Gaddafi was hunted down and killed.
Since that, Libya did not have a renaissance and enjoy the fruits of Democracy. Instead it has become a failed state full of anarchy.
An enlightening bit of reporting on this is a two-part article in the NY Times, in February 2016, going over what Secretary Clinton did: Hillary Clinton: ‘Smart Power’ and a Dictators Fall, A New Libya with very little time left.
Read these two pieces … and I dare you to come away from it confident that Regime Change is a good idea.
The real geopolitical problem we’re facing in the world isn’t precisely that “Arabs Hate the U.S.A.” .. instead it’s that the Islamic world is fighting back against decades of meddling in their affairs for geopolitical power games purposes. The Middle East has the largest supply of fossil fuels in the world, and therefore is the biggest prize for geopolitical power.
The U.S. and European powers have — for decades — been acting to keep control over the Middle East for that very purpose. It’s obvious. The Iraq War was obviously about control over oil supplies, for example.
Way back in 1951 the CIA and British Intelligence overthrew a moderate Democracy in Iran, to install the Shah of Iran, who became a hated dictator overthrown by his own people in the late 1970’s. Why was that done? Iran had reneged on agreements allowing a British oil company to operate in Iran. For which purpose The West overthrew the duly elected government of a moderate democracy in the Middle East, to install a brutal dictator, causing decades of pain and suffering, and the later overthrow of that brutal dictator ushered in an Islamic Theocratic government that supports terrorist organizations, and itself is causing quite a lot of pain and suffering.
That’s the sort of policy we can expect President Hillary Clinton to follow. She’s made it abundantly clear that’s where her mindset is, and that she is quite willing to order more meddling in the affairs of other countries.
What’s Next?
By no means is this election over. It’s possible Bernie Sanders can still navigate his way to the Presidency, and we won’t be in the position of having to fight President Clinton over the issues I’ve just outlined. Even if it’s Clinton who wins, she’d be a zillion times better than anybody the Republicans are putting forward. I’m really frightened at the prospect of a Fascist or Theocrat getting into the President.
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David,
You’ve written that “The real geopolitical problem we’re facing in the world isn’t precisely that “Arabs Hate the U.S.A.” .. instead it’s that the Islamic world is fighting back against decades of meddling in their affairs for geopolitical power games purposes. ”
I fundamentally disagree: the problem is indeed exactly that Arabs — the active ones, who count, because the passive ones don’t count — do indeed expressly hate us.
How many anti-American Islamic actors will it take for us to finally understand that they just don’t like us? Al Nusra? Al Qaeda? Al Shabab? Boko Haram? Hamas? Hezbollah? Iran? ISIS? Muslim Brotherhood? Suffis? Taliban? There are plenty more, but this should make the point. Ultimately, this is all about 1. Shiites v. Sunnis; 2. fundamentalists v modernists; 3. haves v have-nots. It is not per se about us, but we are the target of ire because we are the fulcrum of each of their schisms.
Here is where you and I expressly agree. While the West is obliged to defend its citizens at a tactical level, from a strategic perspective, the single best thing for the West to do is let the Islamic battles rage inward where they belong, and to starve the combatants of money and arms and motivation so that the battles are quieter. For these reasons — as well as equally important domestic economic reasons and even more important global environmental reasons — the single best thing the West can do is to stop buying oil from the Middle East and to produce its own domestic renewable energy. Ultimately, domestic renewable energy is the most efficient approach not only to the ills of the Islamic world, but also to the ills of the West.