Were the relationship between press and politics in the
United States as adversarial as it is claimed to be, and were the American population as
savvy and intelligent and incredulous as the dignity of that great country demands,
or treated, by the talking heads on news networks, as though they had some
dignity of their own, we would not now be forced to endure the facile and
almost uniformly subservient 'debate' surrounding the prospect of Hillary
Clinton running for president in 2016.
This discussion, as presented, would have us consider nothing more than the two possible outcomes: Either Ms Clinton will run, or she will not.
But, as with the equally misleading hand-wringing about whether she would or
would not accept the position of Secretary of State, it entirely misses the
most salient point: Should Clinton be
allowed to run in the first place?
Or, to put it another way: Why is it that Clinton is seen not only as a viable
candidate by the DNC (not to mention large swathes of voters on both sides of
the supposed political divide), but as a front
runner?
If the world were as
it should be, her prospective candidacy would have been ruled
out by her involvement in the numerous, shameful affairs which should have led
to disbarring and eventual impeachment of her disgraceful
husband. Or, failing that, with the conclusion of his worthless second term.
That she is being considered as a candidate, and treated in some circles as the
next in line to the White House, is a damning indictment of America's
increasingly dynastic political system, and of those who fail to hold it to
account.
More lenient critics might accuse her only of adopting the
same 'blank slate' strategy which was used to great effect by the independent
candidate Ross Perot in 1992, briefly at the expense of Ms Clinton's husband.
(Ross Perot's decline began when people belatedly began filling in that slate
on his behalf, resulting in a dirtied picture of a nasty man with a paranoid
fear of black people and the CIA.) I
would go further, and suggest that there is already enough colour on Hillary's
canvas to rule her out of the race.
The four most recent disgraces take the form of an
embarrassingly incompetent fabrication concerning her role in Bosnia during the
last years of the Clinton administration, and of the flagrant and apparently
shameless deployment of the 'race card' against Barack Obama in her 2008
campaign, and of her ludicrous claim that her family was "broke"
after leaving the White House (the falsity of which should be obvious even if
one does not care to delve into the murky world of the Clintons' financiers), and
finally, of her 'stance' on foreign policy and foreign intervention - one might
describe this as being the stance of a bipolar hawk - which has, during the
last few weeks, resulted in overtures to her 'good friend' Henry Kissinger; a
man whose singular accomplishment has been to avoid indictment as a war
criminal whilst maintaining his image as a respected foreign policy guru.
These are all current issues, and they are relatively well
known (though they have been treated uncritically by most whose opinions could
matter). Her claims about coming under fire in Bosnia, presumably alongside the
moral boosting entertainment troupe that accompanied her, are especially
amusing. These will be covered in more detail later in part two. But first, I
intend to revisit some of the unpleasant truths that her unwise supporters,
both Democrat and Republican, have regarded with wilful blindness for over two
decades.
To draw up a list of 52 cards to complete this deck of lies
would be to take liberties with the patience of both the editor and the reader.
(Though any deep investigation of the Clintons would almost certainly turn up
far more than 52 unsavoury and unflattering facts.) And so, I will do my best
to limit my charges to a list of ten points; enough, if you like, for a quick
game of 10 card rummy.
1) As a 27 year old attorney, Hillary Clinton defended a man
accused of raping a child; a man she allegedly knew to be guilty.
This story was revived during the 2008 presidential
campaigns and flaunted by the most extreme right wing media outlets for all the
wrong reasons. The facts of the case are damning enough without the hysterical
and false addendums made by her political enemies. She was, of course, obliged
to either do her job as a defence attorney or to stand aside on principle.
Principle is not something which comes easily to Ms Clinton, and so, she
undertook to do her job, and to provide the best legal defence that she could.
And, in her qualified opinion, the best legal defence amounted to an entirely
unfounded attack on the victim.
From a write-up of this case published in The Atlantic in
2008:
"I have
been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to
seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing," wrote Rodham, without
referring to the source of that allegation. "I have also been informed
that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they
had attacked her body."
"Dale Gibson, the investigator,
doesn't recall seeing evidence that the girl had fabricated previous attacks."
The girl was just 12 years old at the time, and one is left to wonder
at the cynicism shown by the young Clinton. If, in your best judgement, the
defence of the accused will be best served by seeking to assassinate the
character of the child he has allegedly raped, you deserve any derogatory label
subsequently applied to you.
That this episode was apparently lost to history until 2008 hints at a
number of unpleasant truths about American justice and its relationship with
politics, and also speaks to the political nous and knack for manoeuvring
possessed by both Hillary Clinton and her husband.
2) The
commencement of a decade of 'support'.
Those
who tend to focus a little too much on Bill Clinton's sex life have proffered
the thesis that his long term affair with Gennifer Flowers did more than
anything else to propel him toward the White House. This seems to me to be a
little too simplistic, as his 'expert' handling of the scandal was part of a
much wider methodology. But it cannot be denied that, as governor and later as
president, Bill Clinton succeeded in turning allegations of sexual misconduct
to his advantage until long after he admitted that he had, in fact, had
sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.
Whether he was supervising the execution
of a lobotomized black man in Arkansas (described by Christopher Hitchens as "...the first of many times that Clinton would
deliberately opt for death as a means of distraction from sex,") or taking the
executive decision to bomb a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, he has an
impressive record of keeping a smug and apparently handsome face above very
troubled waters.
And
yet, this might not have been possible had it not been for the public support
of his wife, and her more covert involvement in smear campaigns against people
- Flowers, Lewinsky, Willey, and Broaddrick (who made the much more serious
charge of rape against the President) - who should, if their allegations are
true, as we have many reasons to believe that they are, quite properly be known and referred to as
Clinton's victims.
Hillary
Clinton's bizarre claim, made in 1999, that her husband's sex addiction stemmed
from abuse at the hands of his own mother, is only one of the ways (albeit the
one which displays doublethink in all its glory) in which she contributed to
restoring and sustaining an image of family integrity which remains to this
day.
(I will not dirty this article with the pointless and, as far as I am
aware, unfounded insinuations, made by some of the more disreputable of the
Clintons' critics, that Hillary's reputation as being good on 'women's issues'
stems more from her personal/sexual than it does her professional life.)
Her
work on behalf of the President's image had the added bonus of giving her
leverage over her husband, which undoubtedly contributed to...
3)
She pressured Bill Clinton to delay taking action to halt the campaign of
ethnic cleansing being carried out in Bosnia.
To
quote a passage from Sally Bedell Smith's book For Love of Politics:
"Taking
the advice of Al Gore and National Security Advisor Tony Lake, Bill agreed to a
proposal to bomb Serbian military positions while helping the Muslims acquire
weapons to defend themselves—the fulfillment of a pledge he had made during the
1992 campaign. But instead of pushing European leaders, he directed Secretary
of State Warren Christopher merely to consult with them. When they balked at
the plan, Bill quickly retreated, creating a "perception of drift."
The key factor in Bill's policy reversal was Hillary, who was said to have
"deep misgivings" and viewed the situation as "a Vietnam that
would compromise health-care reform." The United States took no further
action in Bosnia, and the "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs was to
continue for four more years, resulting in the deaths of more than 250,000
people."
This shameless
regard for her own political image, and the disgraceful number of casualties of
which it is a direct cause, gained the American public exactly nothing in
return. The Clinton healthcare plan failed to limit the parasitic effects of
big business on the HMO, and served only to introduce the worst elements of the
bureaucracy with which many Americans associate the public health provisions of
'socialist' countries.
4) She lied about her own name.
During a tour of Asia in 1995, she was fortunate enough to
meet Sir Edmund Hillary. In a minor and yet revealingly dishonest episode, she
claimed that her mother had in fact named her after this great adventurer and
philanthropist. Ms Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund's most famous
mountaineering expedition (the one which first caught the eyes of the world)
did not take place until 1953, requiring us to believe that Hillary Clinton was
not given a name until she was 6 years old.
5) With the help of her husband, she tried to make us forget
her support for the Iraq war.
For the record, I should state that I have never been
opposed to the argument for intervention. It should have been carried out in
1991. This is not a debate on the merits of those arguments, or of the (often
shambolic and criminally incompetent) handling of the occupation that followed.
I am solely concerned - as anyone who views foreign policy and national
security as being important issues should be - with Hillary Clinton's record on
the issue.
This disturbingly successful attempt to alter history was
carried out with a view to gaining a little more support in the Iowa caucuses.
She had initially taken the position that a conflict with
Saddam Hussein was inevitable. By extension, we are supposed to assume that she
viewed continuing coexistence with Saddam and his regime to be impossible, and
that he represented a grave threat to the security of the United States and its
allies. If this had been her view, she would have been perfectly correct. But
her willingness to compromise on what should have been a deeply held conviction
(compromise might be putting it too politely) suggests that, much to the
surprise of no one who has followed her career, the hawk has never flown from
its nest for anything other than a few easy-won votes.
(Incidentally, the hawk/dove dichotomy is both stupid and
inaccurate. Compared to doves, hawks have superior vision and intelligence).
I fear I have trespassed too long on your good graces, dear reader. To conclude part one:
I find it astounding that many democrats and
self-described liberals in the United States are gleefully awaiting the
anointing of a woman who sits to the right of many Republicans.
Those who have criticized Obama's foreign policy as
being too 'hawk-like' should, if they are consistent, be apoplectic with rage
at the prospect of a commander in chief who believes Kissinger has made moral and worthwhile contributions to US policy. This is a
man who should have scribbled his latest empty text from a prison cell.
Clinton apparently earned her place in the senate by
performing admirably in the arduous task of covering for her lecherous,
conniving, lying husband. Anyone who criticizes the United States for adopting
a principal that is morally equivalent to the hereditary succession it had once
railed against will be further vindicated if she succeeds to the office of
president.
I mean, really. It would be akin to electing Francis
Urquhart's wife.
