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| Students protest U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Lahore, Pakistan |
incessant wars
Editing, ending comment by Carolyn Bennett
Most reckless element denied: war as only response in foreign
relations
Following a Sunday Sixty Minutes performance by U.S. President
Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, journalist Don
Debar observed in an interview today with Press TV: “The United States is now at war with more nation states than it has
been since 1945.
“A
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| Muslim women protest U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton |
nd whether you consider drone attacks and active war under
the old rules, certainly drone attacks are taking place in countries that are
not included in that total ─ so the world is more at war than it’s been since
1945
In terms of the number of people
who die every day,
In terms that they get blown up,
In terms of assertion of one
extrinsic national interest over other national interests on the ground.
Libya
Don Debar recalled the United States’ involvement in Libya ─
eight months’ bombing by NATO, the United States and its allies ─ “killing
thousands of people, devastating homes and infrastructure that had been built
over the past 40 years.” Given this, he
commented concerning the death of a U.S. agent/diplomat, no one should be
surprised “that there would be people who were angry over that, that might want
to kill those they identify as being responsible.” Yet the Clinton/Obama Sunday
performance and the content of media in recent weeks have been quite different
from reality on the ground.
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| Libyans burn U.S. flag |
“H
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illary Clinton’s husband,” Debar said, “was the premier
Republican president of the late 20th century. He did away with welfare as we
knew it; he started war again in Europe; he did away with possibility of
keeping down the military after the fall of the Soviet Union.” And Hillary Rodham
Clinton [together with her president] continued the Hawkish trend during her
tenure as the U.S. Secretary Of State, he said.
Unmentioned behavior unbecoming called to account (or was it?)
Lawmakers in the Republican Party had demanded for months
that Secretary of State Clinton “explain in person the many missteps that an
independent review panel found in her department’s handling of the Benghazi (Libya)
crisis. Clinton’s appearance was delayed by a prolonged illness and a
concussion, though some right-wing critics accused her of trying to wriggle out
of her commitment to testify.”
A Washington power broker being hauled before the Congress
to give an accounting of her stewardship is not the preferred way to end a
career but Clinton finally faced, belligerently, a congressional committee.
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| Libya |
“On Wednesday [January 23, 2013], Clinton reminded a [congressional]
committee that the [Accountability Review Board] had found that direct
responsibility for the deficiencies highlighted during the Benghazi assault [on
her watch] began at the level of
assistant secretary and below. Four State Department managers were placed
on administrative leave as part of disciplinary actions related to the report’s
findings; one of them resigned.…”
The Accountability Review Board had found [on
her watch] “grossly inadequate” security procedures at the U.S. mission” or “consulate” in Benghazi.
Coverup
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| Tunisians burn U.S. flag at U.S. Embassy |
“Obviously, the report by the Accountability Review Board
[ARB] illustrates that there is clearly a cover-up by the White House
surrounding the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the
death of Ambassador [Chris] Stevens,” Detroit
political commentator Abayomi Azikiwe reflected in an interview with Press TV.
“The cover-up stems from several factors, Abayomi Azikiwe
said, “the most significant of which was the role of Ambassador Stevens on
behalf of the United States government in Libya…
“
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A lot of these militias that are operating in Libya and in
other countries in North Africa and the Middle East have had relationships with
the United States.”
As developments in Syria show, “We can see clearly that some
of these organizations that today may be cooperating with the United States;
tomorrow may be labeled as terrorists.
“The report reflected poorly, Azikiwe said, “on the U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The State Department was guilty of gross
negligence and [actions] related to intelligence as well as security in regard
to U.S. interest.”
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| Burning U.S. , Israeli Flags Rafah, Southern Gaza Occupied |
Criminal hypocrisy
Palestine, Syria,
Iran
Electronic Intifada co-founder and journalist Ali Abunimah
last spring assessed the criminal foreign relations hypocrisy of the Obama
government’s state secretary.
“U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (the article was
published March 12, 2012) gave a stirring UN Security Council speech on the
virtues of democracy, human rights, and U.S. support for them. She contrasted
the purity of American motives with those of regional adversaries:
When a country like Iran claims to
champion these principles in the region – and then brutally suppresses its own
people and supports suppression in Syria and other places — their hypocrisy is
clear to all.
But Hillary Clinton, he wrote, “did not examine the
hypocrisy of U.S. support for dictatorships in the region that also purport to
support democracy but only in Syria, while brutally suppressing their own
people.”
The previous Friday (March 8), he said, “millions of voters
in Iran – men and women – chose new legislators from among thousands of
candidates in parliamentary elections. Critics may be quite right that the
elections are ‘nothing more than a selection process amongst the ruling
conservative elite’ (cf. U.S. elections currently underway), but that is much
more than citizens in some U.S.-backed states ever get the opportunity to do.”
E
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ven worse, Abunimah said, “It was on Gaza that [the U.S.
Secretary of State’s] hypocrisy truly shone. She said regarding Syria:
Now the United States believes
firmly in the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all member-states, but
we do not believe that sovereignty demands that this council stand silent when
governments massacre their own people, threatening regional peace and security
in the process. And we reject any equivalence between premeditated murders by a
government’s military machine and the actions of civilians under siege driven
to self-defense.
“Clinton was explicitly supporting the right of Syrians to
use armed struggle to resist the government, and even claimed that such armed
struggle is morally superior. …
“What did she say about Gaza, which has been under
unprovoked Israeli bombardment for five days, killing more than twenty people
and injuring dozens? … Not one word of
sympathy for the families of Palestinian civilians killed in the Israeli
attacks.…
“Israel [had] carried out an extrajudicial execution of
people in an occupied territory whom it accuses of a crime; [and] unlike even
China and Iran, Israel does not bother to try Palestinians it has sentenced to
death in secret and in absentia. It merely jumps straight to the execution
phase.
“This is all perfectly fine” for Hillary Clinton – in her
remarks at the UN, “she didn’t even mention it.” What the U.S. Secretary of
State offered was “the same old tired slogans: The only way for Palestinians to
achieve anything, she insisted – even as Israel bombs and besieges them,
executes them, and seizes their land for Jewish-only colonies – is through
rigged ‘negotiations’ that have gone nowhere precisely because the United
States has its mighty hands on the scale in favor of Israel.”
L
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| U.S. opposed at United Nations |
ate in 2012 Josh Ruebner seconded Ali Abunimah’s thoughts
in recounting the U.S. Secretary of State’s International Human Rights Day
remarks, “[stating] that the United States works to advance ‘the universal
freedoms enshrined’ in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which
includes the ‘right to life, liberty and security of person’ and ‘When
governments seek to deny these liberties through repressive laws and blunt
force, we stand against this oppression and with people around the world as
they defend their rights.’
“Yet,” Ruebner wrote, “when it comes to U.S. policy toward
Palestinians, this rhetoric rings hollow. The United States arms Israel to the
teeth, fails to uphold U.S. human rights laws when Israel uses U.S. weapons to
commit abuses of Palestinians and, up to this point, has thrown around its
diplomatic heft in international forums to shield Israel from the war crimes
prosecutions advocated by Human Rights Watch and others.…
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| Palestinians protest wall |
“While [U.S. Secretary of State] Clinton offered platitudes
about standing against aggression on International Human Rights Day, the
Pentagon was busy that same day notifying Congress that it hopes to ship to
Israel 6,900 Joint Direct Attack Munitions tail kits, which ‘convert free-fall
bombs into satellite-guided ordnance,’ and more than 10,000 bombs to accompany
them.
On November 18, an Israeli air
force pilot flying a U.S.-made F-16 fighter jet fired a missile at the
four-story home of the al-Dalu family in Gaza City, killing ten members of the
family and two from the al-Muzannar family next door.
“An on-site investigation conducted by Human Rights Watch
concluded that the attack was a ‘clear violation of the laws of war’ and
demanded that those ‘responsible for deliberately or recklessly committing a
serious violation of the laws of war should be prosecuted for war crimes.’”
I
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Sources and notes
“Obama-Clinton ‘show’ … ‘U.S. at war with more states than
it’s been since 1945’, January 28, 2013, http://rt.com/news/obama-clinton-praise-libya-919/
“‘We came, we saw, he died’ The real Hillary Clinton
exposed, war crimes which mainstream media can't mention, the ambassador killed
in Benghazi's buried cable, and the new defense secretary won't invade Iran, or
let Israel invade Iran – exclusive. Seek truth from facts with Senator Mike
Gravel, Ilana Mercer, author of the book "Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons
for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa", Rethink Afghanistan
director Robert Greenwald, New York journalism professor Jeff Cohen,
international consultant Adrian Salbuchi, Igor Khokhlov of the Russian Academy
of Sciences, and independent journalist Joseph Farah.” The Truthseeker, January
25, 2013, http://rt.com/programs/the-truthseeker/benghazi-clinton-new-iran/
“Clinton on Benghazi: defiance — and distress… Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton was combative at times in congressional testimony
on security lapses in the attacks in the deadly Sept. 11 attack on U.S. posts
in Libya that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other
Americans” (By Hannah Allam, McClatchy Newspapers) Originally published January
24, 2013 at 6:44 AM | Page modified January 24, 2013 at 4:18 PM, http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2020203586_benghaziclintonxml.html?syndication=rss
“U.S. covers up facts about attack on consulate in Benghazi:
Abayomi Azikiwe,” December 20, 2012, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/12/20/279161/us-hiding-truth-about-consulate-attack/
“Obama's Libya lies and how the United States ambassador
really died ─ Critics of the Libya intervention warned that dropping bombs in a
country and killing civilians, would produce blowback in the form of those who
would then want to attack the U.S.”
(Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian), September 20, 2012,
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/libya/1891-obamas-libya-lies-and-how-the-us-ambassador-really-died
“Hillary Clinton, Gaza and the right of civilians to
self-defense ─Today at the UN, Hillary Clinton once more gave Israel a blank
check to do as it wishes, assured of impunity and full US support” (Ali
Abunimah's blog submitted by Ali Abunimah on Monday, March 12, 2012,
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/hillary-clinton-gaza-and-right-civilians-self-defense
“Did Clinton sabotage a Palestinian reconciliation?” (Hasan
Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah), March 4, 2009,
http://electronicintifada.net/content/did-clinton-sabotage-palestinian-reconciliation/8111
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and
author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to
End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).
Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of
Jordan at the United Nations.
“How the United States supports Israel's war crimes in Gaza ─Israel
is the largest recipient of U.S. taxpayer-funded military aid and these weapons
are used by Israel to commit systematic human rights abuses against
Palestinians” (Josh Ruebner) December 27-28, 2012, http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/palestine-and-israel/2149-how-the-united-states-supports-israels-war-crimes-in-gaza
THE REAL HILARY CLINTON EXPOSED, The Truthseeker, January
25, 2013, http://rt.com/programs/the-truthseeker/benghazi-clinton-new-iran/
______________________________________________
Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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