Earth Hangs in the Balance
A recent poll shows that 25% of Sanders supporters will never vote for Hillary Clinton. I am one of those people. Here are some of my reasons.
The two transcendent issues, as I see it, in the current presidential campaign are climate change and war avoidance.
Climate Change
It is not too hard to find cogent materials (and I leave this up to you) explaining Clinton's ominous record on fracking and other policies that are wreaking havoc, irreversibly it seems, on the planet. Her sorry pro-corporate record on this score, though not unmixed, would be reason enough alone never to vote for her.
At least forty years have been squandered since the environmental crisis became visible. Very little time, if any, remains. Although I am a passionate Sanders supporter (who sends him as much money as I can), I believe that as things now stand Clinton is likely to be our next president. I cannot vote for her, because I believe that her environmental policies, incremental and deeply conflicted, too little, too late, would spell doom. Opposing any such catastrophic candidate -- Democrat, Republican, or both -- is, for me, a matter of conscience.
War Avoidance
Less well known is the looming danger of nuclear war. Former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, for example, hardly a flaming pacifist, has recently been sounding the alarm. "The danger of a nuclear catastrophe today," he states, "is greater than during the Cold War." Based on her very troubling Kissingeresque foreign policy record, and her equally troubling statements, I believe a Clinton presidency will only serve to exacerbate our nuclear peril.
I have found Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer and currently executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, to be one of our most able and level-headed foreign policy analysts. His articles are readily available on the internet, and I commend them to anyone who may be interested. He is deeply concerned, as I am, about war avoidance.
Near the beginning of a recent article (April 5, 2016), he sets the context.
Given today’s geopolitical realities, a new war would mean either substantially increasing involvement in an ongoing conflict or a completely fresh initiative either with a current adversary or with an over-the-horizon competitor. The expansion of an ongoing conflict might derive from the “war on terror” and/or regime change in Syria/Iraq, though it would also have to include Iran as all the candidates but Bernie Sanders have specifically targeted that country on behalf of Israel. The current adversary with whom war might become a distinct possibility would be nuclear armed Russia and the over the horizon threat would be China.
He then comments on all the presidential candidates, including Sanders and Clinton. Here are his remarks on Sanders.
Bernie Sanders does not speak much about foreign policy as his primary focus is domestic but it is clear that his instincts are to avoid war, particularly any conflict in which the United States has to take the lead. He believes that ISIS presents a serious threat but also thinks that local countries most affected by it should do the heavy lifting in opposing it. He supports the nuclear agreement with Iran. He opposed both the first and second Iraq Wars but he did vote for what he perceived as the “humanitarian intervention” in Libya. He approves of the use of sanctions against Russia over Ukraine but opposes lethal assistance to the government in Kiev and would not escalate U.S. involvement. He opposes further expansion of NATO. He has taken no position on China. One assumes based on his track record and inclinations that he would instinctively resort to diplomacy in a crisis rather than saber rattling and war itself would be a last option only when vital American interests are at stake.
He then turns his attention to Clinton.
Bernie is admittedly unlikely to become the Democratic Party nominee. That honor, unless she is derailed by emailgate, will go to Hillary Clinton. Hillary is an unreconstructed hawk, her inclinations invariably tending towards using military force whenever in doubt. Whether this derives from her desire to assert herself as a woman in a male dominated government or a paternalistic view of the U.S. global role really doesn’t matter as the result is consistently to favor the military option in support of perceived interests. Hillary supported toppling Saddam Hussein and as Secretary of State she played a major role in the disastrous occupation and democracy building that effectively destroyed Iraq, a series of missteps that have produced many of the ills being experienced in the region to this day. She reportedly convinced a reluctant President Barack Obama to intervene in Libya, another foreign policy disaster.
Hillary would provide lethal aid to Ukraine and would expand NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia, a direct challenge to Russian national security. Her protégé at the State Department for dealing with Russia was and still is leading neocon hawk Victoria Nuland, who would likely show up in a senior position in a Clinton administration. Hillary has endorsed no fly zones in Syria, which would increase U.S. involvement and risk of conflict with Russia and other participants in the fighting. She demands regime change to eliminate President Bashar al-Assad as a precondition for a peace settlement. Hillary accepts the nuclear agreement with Iran but she talks of strict enforcement of it, coupled by threats to reinstate sanctions. She calls Iran a threat to the entire region. Of all the candidates, she is genuinely closest to Israel and has repeatedly pledged taking the bilateral relationship to a “new level” while also deferring to Benjamin Netanyahu on issues claimed to be related to Israel’s security.
Hillary would heighten tension with Russia and increase involvement in Syria and Iraq. She would rebuff any attempted normalization with Iran and would endorse and directly support any and all moves made by Israel in the region, to include attacks on neighbors to include Lebanon that would inevitably involve Washington. She would continue the “longest war” occupation of Afghanistan.
This analysis, which I believe to be essentially correct, fills me with almost endless sorrow and dismay. I have been a democratic socialist and an anti-war activist for my entire adult life. I never expected to see anyone like Sanders emerge on the American political scene. He is already, it seems, the most successful progressive candidate in American history.
Not that I think he is without flaws. To me his socialism is not socialist enough, nor are his foreign policy statements everything that one might hope. But he has surrounded himself with advisors like Col. Lawrence Wilkerson and Joe Cirincione, names that can only bring hope to anyone who cares about the fate of the earth.
All the more reason for me to tremble for my beloved country, for my children, and for my grandchildren, and for the fate of the earth, when I reflect on any of the sorry names of those, incuding Hillary Clinton, who could well become our next President.
