Senator Hilary Clinton has seemed as republican lately as President Bush when it comes to her ideas about foreign security policy, and even more republican than Senator John McCain. From threatening to "obliterate" Iran to her recent campaign ad, titled "Kitchen," which flashes a photo of Osama bin Laden, she's taken fear-mongering to a new level for democrats. Republicans can't even get away with language or fear tactics such as these, but she has embraced them.
Watching the democratic presidential debate this past week in Pennsylvania was painful, for many reasons, but nothing surprised me more than Senator Clinton's pledge to defend the whole of the Middle East against Iran. Both Senators Obama and Clinton have surprised me more than once during this campaign with almost republican-like ideas of foreign security policy, but this really went too far. We're trying to get away from Bush policy, not continue it for another hundred years, as McCain would have us do. With this, it sounds like Senator Clinton would have the same thing.
The Jerusalem Post states, "It is within the United States' power to destroy Iran if it attacks Israel, warned Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton in an interview on ABC television Monday night. 'In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them,' said Clinton." Further, she didn't stop at saying that the U.S. would attack Iran if they attacked Israel; she went on to say that we would attack Iran if they attacked any country in the Middle East. Here is her quote from the debate: "I think that we should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel. Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States, but I would do the same with other countries in the region."
Senator Clinton made this statement on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann: "If Iran were to become a nuclear power, it could set off an arms race. The countries in the region are not going to want Iran to be the only nuclear power." David Edwards of Raw Story, an online alternative news organization, responded to that statement: "Clinton's suggestion that Iran might trigger an arms race appeared not to take account of the fact that Iran's immediate neighbor, Pakistan already possesses nuclear weapons, as does India. Israel, which has refused to either confirm or deny whether it has a nuclear weapons program, is widely believed to have an arsenal of over a hundred warheads. Other nations in the region, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have also been reported as interested in obtaining nuclear capability." Her statement was incorrect, so was she ill-informed or intentionally trying to mislead the American people? Eight years of that has been enough.
She also stated on Countdown: "I think deterrence has not been effectively used in recent times. We used it very well during the Cold War." This speaks directly to the point made by Edward Said in his book, Covering Islam: "With the end of the Cold War [Iran], and along with it 'Islam,' has come to represent America's major foreign devil." Said also states, in his documentary titled "On Orientalism," that it is necessary for the U.S. to maintain the impression of having serious enemies, so that it can justify its sizable defense budget, which is more than twice that of any other country.
When Democrats try to keep up with the Republican Right on issues of foreign policy, it can only drive them further away from their base of support. She openly admits to doing this and so states on Countdown: "We're going to have to go toe to toe with John McCain on national security." This may have worked in Ohio and Pennsylvania where the majority of Democratic voters are not college educated (only 38% of Democratic voters in Ohio and 46% in Pennsylvania hold college degrees, according to CNN), but by and large, I don't believe that Democrats will respond well to this type of message.
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