Hillary Clinton - More Belligerent Than Bush?

Hilary has been campaigning well to the right of Obama on national security issues for the whole of the campaign, but she seriously upped the ante today, promising to 'obliterate' Iran if it attacked Israel. Even more than that, she seemed to suggest that if elected president, she will attack Iran regardless of its behaviour towards the Jewish state

The Times

If this is how she's campaigning when looking for the Democratic nomination, one can only wonder how far right she'll go if up against McCain in the autumn

radicalcleric wrote:

Hilary has been campaigning well to the right of Obama on national security issues for the whole of the campaign, but she seriously upped the ante today, promising to 'obliterate' Iran if it attacked Israel. Even more than that, she seemed to suggest that if elected president, she will attack Iran regardless of its behaviour towards the Jewish state

The Times

If this is how she's campaigning when looking for the Democratic nomination, one can only wonder how far right she'll go if up against McCain in the autumn

Easy answer bud - serious Jewish population in the urban areas of Pennsylvania and Hill is going to need very vote she can get.

This is part of her problem. More and more are coming to the realisation that she will say anything at all if she thinks it will get her more votes. Most politicians care only about themselves but in her case it is glaringly obvious. The only good thing about her is the fact that she is about 80 IQ points higher than McCain. NDS is a big fan of hers and we may well hear happy sounds from him later when the polls close in 40 minutes

It did sound a bit careless of her the way she threw it out alright - a bit casually apocalyptic. Has Obama said anything of the sort?

These guys change every day. In one debate the 2 said that they would have troops in Iraq to Jan 2003. A short later in a peace start they were going to have most of the troops out in jig time. It is so absurd that nobody asks would not a much reduced force not get massacred. Obama wants to bomb Pakistan. And now Hillary wants to nuke Iran. If by some chance Cynthia McKinney who will be the Green candidate gets a chance to ask either a few questions it will be worth watching.

youngdan wrote:

These guys change every day. In one debate the 2 said that they would have troops in Iraq to Jan 2003. A short later in a peace start they were going to have most of the troops out in jig time. It is so absurd that nobody asks would not a much reduced force not get massacred. Obama wants to bomb Pakistan. And now Hillary wants to nuke Iran. If by some chance Cynthia McKinney who will be the Green candidate gets a chance to ask either a few questions it will be worth watching.

This reminds me of the other Clinton who signed a death warrant to get elected. He also had a record of sending in the bombers:-

Clinton bombs Aspirin factory

Clinton bombs Iraq

As to the small US force youngdan, my guess is they would be located in a bunker next to the airport

Bill Clinton was probably the worst president ever. He was worse than Carter and Bush combined. He timed those attacks to deflect media attention when the Monica issue got sticky. He decides to fire alot of tomahawks at Osama but tells the Pakistanis in advance so that these fools won't think it is the Indians firing nukes at them. The Pakistanis needless to say told Osama to duck. Bill Gertz wrote a few books on how Clinton allowed Lorel to go to China and give them the rocket guidance technology that was restricted by law. He had one of the 2 women secretaries of state make a deal with Kim Kum Dung whereby he built 2 reactors for him and gave him a few billion. So big surprise later when they have a nuke. It was either Madeline Halfbright or Warren Christopher. Hillary's win tonight was expected but she should finally be sent packing in 2 weeks time

This sounds like a rash remark rather than a thought-out policy. No one's contemplating attacking Iran nowadays, even Charles Krauthammer seems to have backed down:
Only deterrence plus missile defence can curtail nuclear threat

From the above report it's clear that her spin-doctors have been back-pedalling furiously. It won't do her any good in the long run but I think this is a bit of a non-story.

Obama once said he would agree to meet Ahmahinejad without pre-condition. THat's about as far as he got in Iranian controversies. Of course, for many it was far worse than saying he would nuke the country.

Incidentally, she won the Pennsilvania thingy last night. Good work Hillary.

905 wrote:

This sounds like a rash remark rather than a thought-out policy. No one's contemplating attacking Iran nowadays, even Charles Krauthammer seems to have backed down:
Only deterrence plus missile defence can curtail nuclear threat

From the above report it's clear that her spin-doctors have been back-pedalling furiously. It won't do her any good in the long run but I think this is a bit of a non-story.

Obama once said he would agree to meet Ahmahinejad without pre-condition. THat's about as far as he got in Iranian controversies. Of course, for many it was far worse than saying he would nuke the country.

I think I remember reading somewhere that "deterrence" is short hand for first strike capability 905. Anyone got a link?

Well this from the Krauthammer article:

Quote :

Deterrence. It worked in the two-player Cold War. Will it work against multiple rogues? It seems quite suitable for North Korea, whose regime, far from being suicidal, is obsessed with survival.
Iran is a different proposition. With its current millenarian leadership, deterrence is indeed a feeble gamble, as I wrote in 2006 in making the case for considering pre-emption. But if pre-emption is off the table, deterrence is all you've got. Our task is to make deterrence in this context less feeble.
Two ways: begin by making the retaliatory threat in response to Iranian nuclear aggression so unmistakable and so overwhelming that the non-millenarians in leadership would stay the hand or even remove those taking their country to the point of extinction.
But there is an adjunct to deterrence: missile defence. Against a huge Soviet arsenal, this was useless. Against small powers with small arsenals, ie, North Korea and Iran, it becomes extremely effective in conjunction with deterrence.

Frankly, I'd need to know what 'first-strike capability' is first.

yes deterrence is strike capibilty and you can only strike when you have missiles to defend the response, so the defense shield is an attack shield

Israel changes tune on Iran

Israeli views on Iran

Great timing.

Good job with the links, lostexpectation. Let's hope all this is a turn for the better, Hillary notwithstanding.

905 wrote:

Well this from the Krauthammer article:

Quote :

Deterrence. It worked in the two-player Cold War. Will it work against multiple rogues? It seems quite suitable for North Korea, whose regime, far from being suicidal, is obsessed with survival.
Iran is a different proposition. With its current millenarian leadership, deterrence is indeed a feeble gamble, as I wrote in 2006 in making the case for considering pre-emption. But if pre-emption is off the table, deterrence is all you've got. Our task is to make deterrence in this context less feeble.
Two ways: begin by making the retaliatory threat in response to Iranian nuclear aggression so unmistakable and so overwhelming that the non-millenarians in leadership would stay the hand or even remove those taking their country to the point of extinction.
But there is an adjunct to deterrence: missile defence. Against a huge Soviet arsenal, this was useless. Against small powers with small arsenals, ie, North Korea and Iran, it becomes extremely effective in conjunction with deterrence.

Frankly, I'd need to know what 'first-strike capability' is first.

First strike capability means you have the means of delivering nuclear warheads in enough quantity in a manner that would evade all your opponents defensive capability and hit them so hard that they would be unable to respond in any significant way to your attack and compromise your "victory".................... from what I can remember from my "nuclear strategy" lectures in Politics in UCD many moons ago.

In short - Deterrence only works when both sides are aware that neither has a first strike capability or means of deflecting or neutralising the responding counter attack - thats why MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) kept the Cold War cold in a nuclear sense for so long - It has been argued, mostly by the neo con lobby and fellow travellers it must be said, that Reagan's Starwars initiative (the fact that it didn't work was of no consequence) convinced the Soviets to throw in the towel as there was no way that they could afford to outspend the Yanks in a race to develop a defensive shield and make MAD obsolete.

Its all very facinating in a "I've got fk all else going on in my life at the moment" kind of way if you start reading into it.

Alternatively you could get a copy of Kubricks "Dr Strangelove or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb" out on DVD and learn all you ever needed to know about the idiocy of nuclear weapons and get a good nights LOL entertainment into the bargain.

Right, well that's that.

Does anyone actually think Iran is millenarian or is it just Krauthammer? I thought they were quite rational myself.

Khamenei has said nuclear bombs are un-islamic, i think thats what clinton was referring to, when to her credit said she didn't think
iranians who out to martyr themselves, there were so many ifs in that question and answer in the olberman interview, via the times link, she said she didn't want iran to start an arms race and bring nuclear weapons to that area, eh hello israel has done that and bought the tshirt.

"hello israel done that and bought the tshirt."

So they did.

Krauthammer wants a war. He wanted the Iraq war and whatever Irish paper is running his spiel should run the ones he wrote in the run up to the Iraq war side by side

youngdan wrote:

Krauthammer wants a war. He wanted the Iraq war and whatever Irish paper is running his spiel should run the ones he wrote in the run up to the Iraq war side by side

That would be the good ole' Irish Times. Don't make the mistake of thinking anyone in the IT actually take Krauthammer seriously, they're far more fond of the Guardian version (or New York Times to you) of reality.

We don't need his Iraq articles to see what an idiot he is, that's pretty self-evident.

it just incredible im sure you've seen headlines about iran and negotiations going and sttutering agreements with IAEA, what hillary said is so far from the grain of even what the bush admin is saying today as we can seen from above. wtf is she on... the height of the rectoric was 6 months ago, i can imagine george W ringing her and saying hey don't make things worse!

Lads, does the phrase "election promises" mean anything to you??

None of 'em has enough money to do anything about Iran. Don't lose any sleep. And I gather the Iranian economy isn't the peachiest either (although given the oil price currently, this surprises me)

I forecast a lot of spurious rhetoric from all parties and no action

Hope I'm right......peace is good

expat girl wrote:

Lads, does the phrase "election promises" mean anything to you??

None of 'em has enough money to do anything about Iran. Don't lose any sleep. And I gather the Iranian economy isn't the peachiest either (although given the oil price currently, this surprises me)

I forecast a lot of spurious rhetoric from all parties and no action

Hope I'm right......peace is good

I hope your right too, but Bush's last budget that increased military spending and cut welfare would not encourage optimism. Does the US have any other global strategy other than acquisition of resources at the end of a gun?

I'd completely agree with expat girl. This was electoral rhetoric. Superheated, not at all to Clinton's credit, but no more than that. A depressing discourse all too familiar in US politics...

On the Topic

Heres a very good Article by Simon Jenkins

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/23/iraq.uselections2008

Quote :

...............Americans still do not travel abroad, and rely on television news
for their knowledge of foreign places, which they continue to regard
with bizarre suspicion. Hence a world view is lumped in with defence
and security in a collective paranoia. And a candidate's stance on
foreign policy is a proxy for his or her character. To this the
candidates must pander. Hence Clinton emphasises her "role" in Kosovo
and her "mis-remembered" landing in Bosnia under fire. Obama stresses
his links to three world continents and a seminal visit as a young man
to Karachi. McCain trumps them by having been tortured by the
Vietnamese, a sanctification whose only drawback is that it recalls his
age (71).

All must appear trigger happy. McCain may distance
himself from the unilateralism of George Bush and remark that Americans
must show "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind" (in Bush's
America the remark was worth reporting). But his team is penetrated by
such neocons as Robert Kagan and John Bolton, on the basis that "if we
can't beat him, we can persuade him". The only thing to be said with
confidence about McCain is that his position on everything is
uncertain. Desperate not to be outflanked on defence, Clinton
said yesterday that she would "totally obliterate" Iran if Iran bombed
Israel. Last week she offered an astonishing nuclear-shield guarantee
for neighbours of a nuclear Tehran. Obama duly chided her as "Annie
Oakley with a gun". Yet he has tended to follow her positions with a
ready me-tooism, as on Tibet. He offered to bomb Pakistan terrorist
hideouts on the basis that even if that country's President Musharraf
"won't act, we will". He wanted two more brigades sent to Afghanistan.

Everywhere
is on display the conundrum described in James Sheehan's The Monopoly
of Violence, subtitled Why Europeans Hate Going to War. A more
realistic title would be Why Americans Love It........................