“If Hillary gets elected we will have WWIII”

Diana Johnstone wrote a biting biography of Hillary Clinton published by Zambon. We already wrote about this book. In tonight’s Supertuesday, Clinton won four States in New England, while last week she gained victory in New York. She is facing triumph.Before discussing the current events (specifically, the Us elections), I would like to understand who is Hillary Clinton. How did she form up? What are her cultural references?She was born in 1947 into a conservative middle class Republican family dominated by a demanding father who seems to have passed along some of his own unrealized ambition to his daughter.  Her basic philosophy has always been the aggressive individualistic side of the American dream: if you try hard enough, you can get ahead.  That implies little respect for those who fall behind. She is comfortable with billionaires, and they seem comfortable with her.  Raised as a Methodist, she displays her religiosity, but it is largely religion as a self-help device.  Her first political engagement was as an avid supporter of the far-right Republican Senator Goldwater.While she was Secretary of State, Clinton opened one of the fiercest periods of American foreign policy, starting with Libya. What has been her role in the destabilization of the Middle East?Her role has been consistent.  If there is a military option, she is for it.  She voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She is proud to claim responsibility for the disastrous Libyan war, because it got rid of a “dictator” – and if things went wrong, it is because the United States should have done more not less.  She has consistently demanded more aggressive intervention against the Assad government in Syria.  Her hostility to Iran is boundless. All this has endeared her to her pro-Israel backers such as billionaire Haim Saban.  In short, she has totally adopted the “neocon” position that any enemy of Israel is an enemy of the United States, and should have its regime changed or be broken into pieces.  Her Middle East policy is in total alignment with Israel, which does not prevent a close attachment to Saudi Arabia, thanks to her Saudi-raised assistant Huma Abedin.Hillary Clinton is notable for her strongly anti-Russian policy. Where does this ideological approach come from? It is the foreign policy side of the aggressive American dream.  America is the best, it is the strongest, and it is sure to prevail if it tries hard enough.  She is a foreign policy “activist”, because she believes that if America acts, it is bound to win. As for Russia, she has totally subscribed to the dominant Washington view that the United States “won the Cold War”.   That creates an arrogant assurance that having “won” World War I, then having “won” World War II, and finally having “won” the Cold War, the United States is destined to keep winning the big ones.  The United States Armed Forces are there to do the job.  Hillary’s ideology perfectly serves the interests of the military-industrial complex and the financial interests that profit from it. Her hostility is in part a holdover from the Cold War, when US military force was built up with Moscow as the enemy.  But I think it is much more a product of innate hostility to whatever is not American or does not recognize American hegemony.  Russian President Boris Yeltsin was totally subservient to US President Bill Clinton during the 1990s, and the arrival of a Russian leader primarily concerned with Russia interests was felt in Washington to be a betrayal of history.  We won, didn’t we?  They lost, didn’t they?  Then who is this nonentity calling for a “multipolar world”? Vladimir Putin is a clear obstacle to the tacit (but demonstrated under Yeltsin) policy of gaining US economic control of Russia’s vast resources.  The nice, well-dressed US leaders are thinking (but not saying) things like, “Why should 140 million Russians have all those resources when we would make so much better use of them?” And then there is the strategic explanation for hostility to Russia, spelled out by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard”: namely, that US hegemony depends on preventing unity between Western Europe and Russia.  If it doesn’t accidentally lead to nuclear war, the present US foreign policy is designed to erect a new “Iron Curtain” meant to isolate Russia, especially from its natural trading partner, Germany. Ideological, economic, psychological and strategic reasons all combine to produce an anti-Russian propaganda campaign that is all the more frightening for having no serious factual base.  Calling Russia a “threat” is total fantasy.  But the NATO buildup on Russia’s borders is real.  And Hillary Clinton is ardently attached to both.While I was in New York , some Americans I met spoke of Clinton as of a ” liar” . What lies did she tell to the Americans? She is just obviously someone who says what she considers useful, regardless of the truth.  I suspect she may have developed that habit as a child trying to satisfy a hard to please father. Perhaps her most notorious lie was the story she told audiences during her first campaign for the Democratic Party nomination in 2008.  Repeatedly, she regaled audiences with the tale of how she had to “duck and run from sniper fire” when she landed for an official visit to Bosnia several months after the war ended.  In this case the lie was exposed by eyewitnesses and news footage showing her peaceful arrival, greeted by children with flowers.   Her excuse when cornered by journalists was that, as someone who utters such a huge number of words, it is only natural that a certain percentage should be “misspoken”. That was an outright full-fledged gratuitous lie, not a casual “misspeaking”.

Often she lies by omission. Or by evasion.  It is notorious that the Clintons have been supported by Goldman-Sachs throughout their career, receiving millions of dollars in various forms.  But she defends herself by asking rhetorically: “Just give me one example of how support from Wall Street has changed my vote.” This disingenuous answer distracts from the fact that her whole career has been in harmony with the desires of Wall Street. Most frequently she lies about her political record.  Hillary Clinton used to be strongly opposed to gay marriage.  Now she is strongly for it.  Any implication that she changed her position for political reasons is “flat wrong”, she insists.  She denies the documented fact that she approved the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  Often she evades difficult questions by laughing or coughing. The scandal surrounding her illegal use of private email while Secretary of State has been the occasion to reveal more lies.  A small lie was her claim that a huge portion of the emails were private communications with her husband Bill, while he is shown saying that he never uses email.  A bigger lie is her official explanation of the 11 September 2012 murder of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi. She spread the word that the murder was the result of spontaneous Muslim protests against a cheap Hollywood movie that insulted the Prophet.  However, she wrote in a recently disclosed email: “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film.  It was a planned attack”. And on and on.  But it seems that her ardent supporters do not use Internet, where all of this is clearly shown.If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, which scenarios would open up for the US?Considering how much she lies about her past, there is no reason to believe what she claims she will do in the future.  But what she says is quite alarming: threats to escalate US intervention against Assad in Syria at risk of conflict with Russia, reversal of any normalization of relations with Iran, total support of Israel against the Palestinians, uncompromising hostility toward Russia. The future is always full of surprises.  A US President has limited power and must satisfy the dominant oligarchy. However, Hillary Clinton is supported precisely by that oligarchy and will be surrounded by neoconservatives and liberal interventionist who found Obama too cautious and are likely to encourage her most warlike impulses. What is most to be feared about Hillary Clinton as President is that her “activism”, her readiness to use military force instead of diplomacy, her dualistic view of the world as divided between “friends” (those who follow the US lead) and “enemies” (any one else, depending on circumstances) will continue the aggressive NATO military buildup against Russia to the point where some incident may trigger World War III. I am not predicting this.  I am only trying to warn people of the danger – especially in Europe, whose rejection of US war policy could make a difference.