Hillary Clinton mistakenly committed United States military force to bring down the Libyan government of Muammar Ghaddafi. This was a serious error of foreign policy because there was no coherent political opposition to the Ghaddafi regime, and the country has descended into a chaos of contending factions, one of which is a branch of ISIS. According to the detailed account in today’s New York Times, her role was decisive in persuading Obama to commit military force. She claims that she believed that the Libyan politicians representing the opposition were giving her accurate information about the readiness of the country to organize a competent new government. The same alleged “mistake,” believing the false claims of local politicians, was made in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
In Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the United States has consistently failed to correctly understand the complexities of local cultures and politics. The result has been to spread death and destruction and to squander trillions in economic resources. Like an arrogant and ignorant tourist, our foreign policy approach to a lack of understanding is to shout louder - with military force. Why do we not learn from these blunders, and why do we elect politicians who repeat these catastrophic errors?
I believe that the most fundamental reason for our failure to learn is that our national culture is militaristic and violent. Waging war abroad is good politics because the public thrills to the spectacle and any collateral damage is excused and forgotten. For a successful politician, war is almost always a winning policy. (For soldiers and other victims it is another matter. ) Thus, these bloody interventions are not really “mistakes” that could have been averted if better information had been available. There has always been the opportunity to listen to dissenters and to look deeper into the problems. (Where are the WMD?) The inescapable, ugly truth is that these adventures have been pursued for political gain — from Kennedy right through Clinton.
Supporters of HRC simply don’t care that she is intent on repeating the mistake of Libya in Syria - and possibly the Ukraine and the South China Sea. The US can easily continue to shoot up the world, and the public will continue to enjoy nightly images of death and destruction rained on our “enemies” from above. For Clinton, I believe there is an additional political impetus to resort to violence: to defend herself from accusations of feminine “weakness,” she has decided to be conspicuously hawkish.
America will remain trapped in an endless cycle of foolish and destructive foreign military adventures until we suffer a major military reverse, economic collapse, or until militarism burns itself out in our culture. Hillary Clinton is just the latest manifestation of a foreign policy politically committed to the violence that is a fundamental part of our exceptional national character.