If I learned anything from the viral destruction of the Bush presidency, it's that you can only judge a politician by his or her actions, not words. ("Compassionate conservative?)
I want to trust Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) who has managed to cultivate the aura of inevitability. But a tipping point for me was her recent vote designating Iran's 125,000-member Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization.
Even when the Bush administration announced new sanctions against Iran, they were focused on the Quds, an elite unit within the Revolutionary Guard, not the entire Guard Corps itself. She outdid the hawks in hawkishness. Never mind that Bush himself strengthened Iran's hand by invading Iraq and removing Iran's greatest antagonist, Saddam Hussein, de-Baathified the entire country and had Shi'ite politicians "elected" to run the country.
Why would she provide cover for a Bush/Cheney pre-emptive military strike against Tehran? She denies doing that. She issued a statement after the vote regarding the need for "robust diplomacy" with Iran and warned President Bush that he shouldn't think that "the 2001 resolution authorizing force after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in any way authorizes force against Iran. If the administration believes that any use of force against Iran is necessary, the President must come to Congress to seek that authority." Kind of like shutting the barn after the cows run free. She gave him Congressional authority. Not de jure, but de facto.
Her vote was a calculated political ploy to shore up her Commander-in-Chief credentials, to show she has as many brass testicles (no va-jay-jay here) as Giuliani, and to solidify support from the powerful pro-Israel lobby. Indeed, Israel was very happy with Bush's sanctions. The Israeli ambassador, Sallai Meridor, called them "a major diplomatic step in the effort to prevent Iran--a global menace and leading sponsor of terrorism--from obtaining nuclear weapons, which threatens international peace and security." The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency is very worried. He says that Iran is several years from completion in its nuclear project and there is no evidence that Iran is planning to use nuclear power to build a weapon. He does not want a unilateral military action based on what we think Iran might do, rather than strict evidence. After all, wasn't the mushroom cloud raised over Saddam's head?
I believe she voted that way because she heeds the advice of Mark Penn, her chief strategist. Penn is also the worldwide CEO of Burston-Marsteller, a large, highly influential PR firm which is part of the more gigantic PR empire of WPP. Burston-Marsteller's clients include Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal industrial accident in India, where thousands of people were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, and Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of egregious human rights violations in Nigeria.
Burston-Marsteller (B-M) invented "astroturfing", which is creating phony grassroots organizations funded by corporate money to wage stealthy attacks against environmental and consumer organizations.
B-M assisted in some of the most controversial anti-union tactics in recent history. In 2003, when two large unions, UNITE and the Teamsters, attempted to organize 32,000 garment workers and truck drivers at Cintas, the country's largest and most profitable uniform and laundry supply company, management fired workers sympathetic to the unions under false pretenses, vowed to close plants and showed anti-union videos.
But Cintas' most powerful weapon came from B-M, who devised Cintas' slogan, "The right to say yes, the freedom to say no", thus cementing the image of the union as strong-arming workers. The union has won two NLRB rulings against Cintas (during the Bush years!) yet Cintas has managed to hold off the organizing campaign to this day.
Penn's strength as campaign strategist is to slice and dice micro-constituencies into categories such as "soccer moms", "wired workers" and "office park dads", and separate them from class struggle. As Penn wrote, "Outdated appeals to class grievances and attacks upon corporate perfidy only alienate new constituencies and ring increasingly hollow." He has a long-time association with the Democratic Leadership Council, the well-known "centrist" organization that is underwritten by Penn's corporate clients like Eli Lilly, AT&T, Texaco and Microsoft.
What does this have to do with Clinton's Iran vote? Penn is marketing her through a concept he invented called "triangulation", which is basically to adopt some of your opponent's ideas in order to co-opt them and render yourself impervious to attacks on that issue. He led President Bill Clinton to welfare reform, tax cuts and the balanced budget, all Republican issues.
He is also trying to position her as a "populist", someone who cares about the issues of the working and middle classes; the problem of affording health care, worries about job loss, and caring about the people who are serving in Iraq. Many know someone personally who is over there.
So why, in order to win the Presidency, does she virtually authorize a strike against Iran? Who is going to fight that new conflagration anyway, or pay for it? Just to win the Presidency? Why do these pandering candidates want to be President anyway?