Chris Jepson: My problem with Hillary

My problem with Hillary Clinton as president centers around her “history” of supporting American aggression abroad. I fear that if elected she will involve America in more Middle East interventions.

The issues Republicans have identified as indicative of her unacceptability to be president ring particularly hollow for me. She can’t be trusted they assert. Does anyone seriously believe that had Hillary Clinton known that militants were over running the diplomatic compound in Benghazi that she would not have immediately acted to save the life of Ambassador Christopher Stevens? And, yes, she used a private computer server to conduct American diplomatic affairs. So? Any number of previous, key Republican presidential appointees have owned-up to the practice. Where’s the indignation and congressional investigations over those Republican transgressions?

Undeniably, America has been an aggressive, imperialistic power since the Mexican-American War of 1848. We’ve been militarily meddling in foreign nations virtually nonstop for 150 years. There was a brief hiatus between the two 20th-century world wars but even during that period American troops, sailors or Marines were active in (a partial list includes) Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Turkey, China and Russia.

The question becomes to what end has American militarism benefitted the nation? I am not commenting on the damage done to the nations and populations on the receiving end of American imperialism, just the moral, human and financial costs to America.

We’ve been sold a bill of goods, folks, that America’s exceptionalism (our constitutional history of representative democracy, our secular institutions, our “rich” diversity and our protection of minority rights) somehow makes American imperialism radically different from British or Soviet aggression. Our motives, it is suggested, are purer.

Some, however, see American foreign policy more in accordance with Jack the Ripper than any delusional image America has of itself as Snow White.

No one is impugning the discipline, effectiveness or patriotism of the men and women of America’s armed forces. They do as ordered. The question becomes, “Why was a foreign invasion of Iraq greenlighted in the first place?” It’s become quite clear today that evidence supporting the Iraqi war was scrubbed clean of any reasonable countervailing arguments to the contrary. Some trillions of dollars later, with thousands of dead and maimed Americans as well as decades of future PTSD claims and the accompanying horrendous medical bill, American foreign policy remains “send in the troops.”

We, America, created ISIS. That is on us. We did it to ourselves. We destabilized a region (Iraq) that today is sending tens of thousands of refugees streaming into Europe. America did that. With “our allies.”

We played a role in overthrowing Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, further destabilizing North Africa, fueling yet more refugees. We argued that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad must go, such that large parts of Syria today are now under the control of ISIS and guess what, America is sending in yet more American military advisers, a precursor to what I anticipate will be a substantial deployment of American forces in 2017.

President Eisenhower warned the nation in 1961 as he was leaving office, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.” War and profiteering, in other words. Consider: Dick Cheney and Halliburton.

For 150 years, we’ve been told that our safety as a nation at home is dependent on our military aggression abroad.

It’s a lie and one I fear that Hillary Clinton unequivocally subscribes.