Today's the day when a lot of people will be sitting across the breakfast table or the water cooler. Which Democratic candidate has the best policies? If one actually believed their surrogates on Sunday, there isn't much difference at all.
But the differences are vast--and if we don't face them right now, we'll be stuck with them into the future. The differences aren't about health care (which will be negotiated with Congress, and for which the only right choice--single payer--is off the table for the near future.)
The difference is the "mindset that gets us into wars." So it's time to talk Turkey...and Indonesia...and China...and Colombia.
The most important and most potentially devastating difference between these two candidates is their attitude toward the world. Here's Hillary Clinton in last Wednesday's ABC Debate:
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, said that the U.S. "should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel. Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States, but I would do the same with other countries in the region."
Were you listening? Or was the crunch of the snack mix you grabbed during the first hour of the debate so deafening that you didn't notice. Clinton is willing to go to war to protect the Saudi empire, from which most of the 9/11 hijackers came.
This is a continuation of a decades-long history of economic and political domination that the U.S. has conducted since the 1950s, and which was fully evident during the Clinton administration. To illustrate, I'm going to pull just a few quotes from a book everyone at this site must read, The Secret History of the American Empire by John Perkins:
First Africa:
The men and women who have been so intimately involved in shaping the last four decades of world history seem absorbed in activities on that continent...[Clinton's] 'African Renaissance' was a not-so-subtle ploy to support one ruthless strongman after another."
And Colombia:
Colombia...has maintained its position as Washington's surrogate. Shored up by massive U.S. taxpayer assistance and armies of corporate-sponsoredmercenaries, as well as formal U.S. military support, ithas become the keystone in Washington's attempt to regain regional domination. Although official justification for U.S. involvement centers on drug wars, this is a subterfuge for protecting oil interests against grassroots opposition to foreign exploitation.
Yes, that's the same Colombia where Uribe gave Bill Clinton a major award and he was paid ~$800,000 for speaking engagements.
Remember, it was during the Clinton administration that our CIA supported Peru in a border war with Ecuadorian indigenous people. The reason? Oil was found on the Ecuadorian side of the border, and it seemed in our economic interest to move the border a bit. Peru, of course, was rewarded with a CAFTA treaty.
The Clintons are trusted by the corporatocracy. Obama is not.
The corporatocracy makes a show of promoting democracy and transparency among the nations of the world, yet its corporations are imperialistic dictatorships where a few make all the decisions and reap most of the profits.
How better to describe Saudi Arabia?
So if you begin talking about primaries today, don't be fooled by the "cult of personality" or the meme that "the positions of these candidates are pretty much the same. I do trust Clinton to appoint intelligent SCOTUS judges, to do some improvements to health care coverage...but I don't trust her international policy. She simply will not be able to escape her corporate sponsors.
What do you think?