The most cold-blooded calculation that HRC has made in her quest for the Presidency is the decision to be an aggressive advocate for the use of American military force. I believe that this decision does not arise from any consideration other than political expediency. A woman candidate for high office in America is vulnerable to the charge of lacking “toughness” and martial valor. Male candidates for the Presidency are considered handicapped if they do not have a record of military service. For a woman, this is an even greater hurdle. Note that some of the younger women in Congress (Tammy Duckworth, Martha McSally, Tulsi Gabbard) have won election on the strength of their military service.
I believe that HRC pressed for military intervention in Libya because it would burnish her credentials as a politician willing to commit American forces to combat. Similarly, she has advocated aggressive intervention in Syria. As President, she would likely continue this interventionist policy to deflect criticisms of being soft on defense. This means more war, more casualties, and more wasteful military spending — to say nothing of the chaos and ruin in the countries which we bomb and invade.
Clinton partisans are strangely silent on her war hawk stance. It seems that they have forgotten the whole miserable history of America’s Global War on Terror, and that Clinton’s tender concern for child welfare neutralizes her advocacy for bloody foreign interventions. Do they believe she is just putting on an act and will release the doves of peace as soon as she takes office? No, they just don’t care. Their single-issue fixations render her foreign policy record and positions irrelevant. It will not be irrelevant to the soldiers who die in Clinton’s next military adventure.