Yesterday, Hillary Clinton's questioning by the Benghazi committee turned out to be a worse than expected fiasco. Eleven hours of questioning by Republican Congressmen only resulted in showing how trumped up the "scandal" was. As Kos himself noted yesterday, even conservatives began to tweet their disgust with the proceedings.
Although I am not a supporter of Hillary Clinton, I was still glad to see the hearing degenerate into a Republican train wreck. The hearing represented a waste of Congress's time (not that they do much with it anyway) and the public's tax dollars. There are far more important issues the nation should be focused on.
However, I cannot join in the post-questioning coronation that much of the media seems to be holding for Hillary Clinton. As writer Elizabeth Schulte pointed out recently, there are real Clinton scandals that the American public should be aware of.
Normally, I end the introductions of my diaries with a gut reaction, but here I believe it would be best to cite an editorial in today's edition of The Guardian:
The whole circus is a classic GOP move: they take an actual scandal – in this case, why was the US involved in Libya – and turned their investigation into a complete farce. Lost in the minute details of that one night in Benghazi is the much more critical question of why we ever decided to bomb Libya and remove Gaddafi in the first place, given the chaos and destruction that has followed. While Clinton’s Benghazi emails have been a hallmark of this presidential campaign, everyone seems to either forget or conveniently ignore that Clinton was the driving force behind yet another military intervention disaster by the US. And yet even in a more than five-hour hearing about the country, only one or two questioners even brought the subject up.
Analysis below the fold....
Hillary Clinton's militarism has been a running issue throughout her political career. During her time as a senator, she voted for the American invasion of Iraq. One would think after that fiasco she would be a bit more circumspect about endorsing American interventions overseas, especially in the Middle East. Nevertheless, as Secretary of State under President Obama, she was a prime advocate of intervening in the Libyan Civil War, and has continued to defend her aggressive stance on Libya even after it has become a failed state. Speaking during the recent Democratic debate, she tried to put a nice spin on Libya, even while acknowledging "the turmoil that followed": "The Libyan people had a free election the first time since 1951. And you know what, they voted for moderates, they voted with the hope of democracy."
Conor Friedersdorf, writing for The Atlantic, has a somewhat different take on Libya's fate:
That is about as misleading as summarizing the Iraq War by saying that the Iraqis had a terrible leader; they had a free election after the war; and they voted for moderates. It elides massive suffering and security threats that have occurred in postwar Libya.
Since the overthrow of Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya has descended into anarchy. Islamic State controls significant parts of the country, and most of Libya's neighbors have had to close their borders with the country. Refugees desperate to flee the turmoil have taken to the Mediterranean on flimsy rafts, many dying in the process. This is the result of the intervention Secretary Clinton pushed.
Secretary Clinton also gave aid and comfort to military governments installed by coups. In Central America in 2009, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by his country's military and sent into exile. Although the Obama administration condemned his overthrow, Clinton, as she has described in her book Hard Choices, used her role as Secretary of State to assist the coup plotters in their goal of driving Zelaya from power:
“In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico,” Clinton writes. “We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”
Secretary Clinton took this course of action in spite of calls from Latin American leaders and the United Nations General Assembly for Zelaya to be restored to power. Although Clinton emphasized the elections that followed, she failed to mention that the government "elected" was closely allied with the coup leaders, giving many of their supporters top posts.
As Zelaya himself described on Democracy Now:
On the one hand, they condemned the coup, but on the other hand, they were negotiating with the leaders of the coup. And Secretary Clinton lent herself to that, maintaining that ambiguity of U.S. policy toward Honduras, which has resulted in a process of distrust and instability of Latin American governments in relation to U.S. foreign policies.
And how did all this turn out for Honduras, you may ask? Well, the country is now saddled with an oppressive government, with opposition leaders, LGBT activists, and peasant activists being killed. Honduras in general has the world's worst murder rate, having skyrocketed since the coup, and the worst income inequality in Central America. It is also
receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance from the American government The Honduran military regularly participates in training and anti-drug exercises with American soldiers. One suspects Secretary Clinton chose her course because the coup leaders and their supporters were perceived as more willing to cooperate with the US than the leftist Zelaya.
Hillary Clinton obviously does not bear sole responsibility for these policies. President Obama also shares much of the blame for taking these courses of action. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party should think twice before nominating someone with this foreign policy history for president. If we do, we have little right to criticize the Republicans for their warmongering.