And as former member Liberal loved reminding us, “liberal” had a different meaning back when knighthood was in flower. Words mean things, to quote Aaron Sorkin, but those meanings change.
Neo-conservatism seeped out of the left like poison from a vulnerable wound, but it’s long since abandoned its roots. Modern neocons are Wolfowitz, Cheney, Kristol, Feith, Perle, Libby, and the whole AEI / PNAC cabal–and these are Republicans, full stop. They pushed aggression and imperialism and didn’t need 9/11 to do it, although they knew realistically it would take a long time to prepare for such action barring some catastrophic event. The specific tragedy of 9/11 was unforeseen but once it occurred, it was as good a reason as any to push their agenda forward.
Compare this with Hillary. God knows I haven’t been a fan of hers since that Iraq vote, but even I don’t believe she’d have taken us into this mire without 9/11 and the resulting hawkish political atmosphere. She voted the way the majority of Democrats in the Senate and House did, because she’s a political animal.
Since 2006 she’s stated she regrets that Resolution vote and claims she wouldn’t have voted that way if the Senate had been told the truth about the intelligence (or lack thereof) on WMDs in Iraq. I vacillate on whether I believe her, but how many neocons would make such a claim at all? Even many regular rank-and-file Republicans still refuse to admit (or perhaps, granting that some are sincere, believe) that decision was wrong, Colin Powell notwithstanding.
No. Clinton may suck up to the Likud lobby like so many do (interestingly, more than most of us Jewish Americans), she may be tough and more hawkish than some other Democrats, but I can’t tar her with the neocon brush.
FWIW, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle actually worked for Scoop Jackson.
It may be argued that the term ‘neoconservative’ is now meaningless as it has been applied by the Left as a pejorative for anyone who was for the Iraq War. However, the OP’s indication seemed to look at the traditional use of the term, as I don’t think there is anyone in the world who thinks Hillary Clinton is against, for example, universal health care.
The old liberal term applied 150 years ago. Neoconservative in the traditional sense existed through the 1980s (Daniel Patrick Moynihan for one) - a bit of hyperbole to claim it had long outlived the old use.
Hillary Clinton can be referred to as an aggressive Wilsonian if you would rather.
One former DINO (and a dinosaur, at that) among an array of Republicans-and-always-were doesn’t prove your point.
Geeze I hope you don’t get a splinter on all that straw you’re using in that sculpture. Seriously, I don’t know very many, if any, progressives who called everyone who voted for the resolution a Neocon, and I used to be a raging DUer from its conception until about 2009 or so–so I know what the leftiest lefties were saying. I’m sure you’d get about the same number of righties who’d call Hillary a pinko subversive.
A week is a long time in politics. I would say 30 years is a significant amount of time for a label to morph. The biggest Neocon movers and shakers are most assuredly Republicans, and have been since Bush I.
In any event the semantics don’t really matter to the main point. Hillary has no imperialist agenda the way the Neocons do, and I don’t believe she’ll go to war under any pretext the way the Neocons would and did. She’s no dove, and I’m pretty nauseated by her suckling at Netanyahu’s teat (oy, what an image), but she’s not a psycho, oil-thirsty hawk who’ll drench the Middle East in blood to make way for American domination.
I can’t help but view this as more of the infamous Clintonian triangulation that Hitchens wrote about. Say just enough to entice the moderate republicans but not so much that will upset the democrats.
I want to like her because I like the idea of a first US woman president. But every time I see her interviewed, I just get the urge to have a hot cleansing shower.
And I’d argue most neo-conservatives wouldn’t either. Iraq’s invasion was, contrary to some lefties (but not all) conspiracy theories, not to claim oil fields, but based on a theory that a democratic Iraq would lead to a “flourishing of democracy” across the Middle East. It was the NeoCons who were the most excited about the Arab Spring - if they were simply in it for an imperial oil grab, they most definitely would not have been.
Clinton’s more aggressive position on Syria, as well as her position on intervening in Libya, seems to indicate some neoconservative tendencies in her foreign policy thought (Progressive friends of mine also get unsettled by how much Hillary Clinton and John McCain got along in the Senate). I agree that she wouldn’t have invaded Iraq like George W. Bush did, but that’s because she wouldn’t have been as naive as the neocons around Bush II who thought a democratic Iraq would be some sort of beacon to the rest of the Middle East.
But even still, the differences between McCain and Clinton are significant. Hillary basically said that the U.S. should have armed the opposition, McCain/Graham/Kristol/etc called for an extensive U.S. bombing campaign on Syria.
Clinton apparently supported rather limited U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011, while McCain advocated regime change in Libya in 2000.
Look, guys, it’s clear that Hillary isn’t a neocon, and it doesn’t even make sense to compare her to them.
You can find about as many “reasons” for the 2003 invasion as there were figures in the Cheney-Rove cabal, but only the most naive were motivated by helping democracy. This is clear from the aftermath, where Iraqis were disappropriated to enrich Western companies in a Friedmanist experiment. Only in a mentality where “democracy” means dog-eat-dog capitalism could this be considered assisting “democracy.”
Most of the cabal eventually admitted that WOMD was a lie to appeal to Americans, but they never arrived at a consensus of what the war’s real purpose was.
Henry Kissinger (a key unpaid Bush advisor) stated in as many words that the purpose was “to humiliate radical Islam – Afghanistan wasn’t enough.” (Nevermind that Iraq was secular; I guess humiliating one group of Arabs was as good as another.)
Condoleeza admitted that Iraq was chosen because it would be easier than real enemies like Iran or North Korea. Oil, and other economic benefits to America, certainly played a big role in the thinking of some, especially Cheney.
Richard Haass who served as an important advisor or envoy under Reagan, Bush-41 and Bush-43, and was the most intelligent neocon (though he avoided that description after the 2003 travesty) indicated that he didn’t know why Bush went to war.
But G.W. Bush was, at one point, very clear on the purpose of the 2003 invasion. He was battling Gog and Magog in fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. :eek:
Whatever one’s opinion of Hilary, to lump her with the Bush-Cheneyian neocons is ludicrous.
All you are proving though, is that Hillary Clinton is different in degrees, not in the concept of using force to affect change. Clinton is far more careful and smart about when to use force, but she doesn’t appear to be shy about wanting using it when conflicts result. And actually that she just may be different in initial response - I could see her bombing Syria after the arming of rebels would’t have prevented Assad’s regime from decimating his civilians.
As far as Libya, Hillary’s comments in the Goldberg interview (in the OP) seem to indicate that you’re view of her position is not accurate: “But you know, we helped overthrow [Libyan leader Muammar] Qaddafi.”. The result was the same, but in a more intelligent and cost-effective manner.
Though, I don’t think its all that bad of a thing that Clinton would be more aggressive than Obama in some ways (though her comments on Israel are way too much). In the discussion with Jeffrey Goldberg, she didn’t seem to shy away from throwing around American weight ‘to do good’, especially in combating (in the words in the interview) “expansionist jihadism”.
Hillary is trying to thread a needle between the last two Presidents and their views of foreign policy, but when you have this exchange:
and this (in a response by Clinton to a question on a middle ground between Bushism and Obamaism):
(FWIW, I can hear Dubya say something like that, can’t you?)
I don’t think it’s all that crazy of an opinion to think she may be on the more interventionalist side. She’ll likely be more interventionist than her husband.
If you read closely, you’ll note Clinton isn’t saying going into Iraq was stupid by itself, she’s saying it was stupid to go in without a plan about what to do after we went in.
Clinton is certainly hawkish, but there are more varieties of hawks in the world than neocons. She doesn’t want to remake the Middle East in America’s image or engage in preemptive warfare. She will aggressively defend American interests and intervene in cases where genocide is ongoing.
“Don’t do stupid stuff” is far from the worst imaginable strategic framework one can follow. We would all be better off if Dubya had followed it, for instance.
The problem is, if you actually ARE stupid, as Dubya undoubtedly is, you don’t recognize stupid stuff, that’s why you do it. Dubya thought he was doing the smart thing, the right thing. He was led by the nose by a bunch of PNAC neoconservative ideologues, most notably, Cheney and Rumsford. Plus of course, Cheney had economic motives: in starting a war in Iraq, he was justifying the $34 million going-away bonus that his former employer Halliburton gave him when he left them to run for Vice President.
I think Hillary is smart, but at heart a neocon on foreign policy. We’ve seen where neocons get us: in the middle of disastrous wars in the Middle East.
It’s basically “do no harm”. And yeah, we’d be better off if Bush had done no harm. But a smart guy like Obama can and should show a little more boldness. And most importantly, make quick decisions and have confidence in those decisions.
Seriously, I don’t know very many, if any, progressives who called everyone who voted for the resolution a Neocon, and I used to be a raging DUer from its conception until about 2009 or so–so I know what the leftiest lefties were saying. I’m sure you’d get about the same number of righties who’d call Hillary a pinko subversive.