podesta-emails
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*[image: Inline image 1]*
*Correct The Record Monday August 11, 2014 Afternoon Roundup:*
[Ready for Hillary’s Adam Parkhomenko and Kirby Hoag announced their
engagement on Sunday morning.]
*Tweets:*
*Correct The Record *@CorrectRecord: Bill and Hillary listened to Arkansans
in all 75 counties about the details and struggles of education inequality:
http://thecabin.net/interact/opinion/columns/2014-08-07/ernst-hillary-clinton-and-education#.U-UqZoBdUyC
…
<http://t.co/Mhgjr3p8jK> [8/11/14, 9:01 a.m. EDT
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/498816550649204736>]
*Correct The Record *@CorrectRecord: Don Ernst traces @HillaryClinton
<https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton>'s history as an advocate for education
equality in this op-ed for @lcdonline <https://twitter.com/lcdonline>:
http://thecabin.net/interact/opinion/columns/2014-08-07/ernst-hillary-clinton-and-education#.U-UqZoBdUyC
…
<http://t.co/Mhgjr3p8jK> [8/11/14, 8:30 a.m. EDT]
*Correct The Record *@CorrectRecord: HRC at women's event: "no country in
the 21st century can advance if half the population is left behind" #HRC365
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/HRC365?src=hash> http://1.usa.gov/LrT3Ei
<http://t.co/M8u5wazY6P>[8/10/14, 5:00 p.m. EDT
<https://twitter.com/CorrectRecord/status/498574695709831169>]
*Headlines:*
*The Week: “The political brilliance of Hillary out-hawking Obama”
<http://theweek.com/article/index/266164/the-political-brilliance-of-hillary-out-hawking-obama>*
“Pundits love to say that people vote their pocketbooks, not foreign
policy. Well, what Clinton is doing here transcends foreign policy. It's
about restoring America's swagger. And I think there's a real hunger for
this.”
*Politico: “Bill Clinton to headline DCCC fundraiser”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/bill-clinton-headline-dccc-nyc-fundraiser-109910.html>*
“Bill Clinton will headline a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee next month, signaling the beginning of fall political
activity by the Clintons ahead of the midterms, according to an invitation
obtained by POLITICO.”
*Washington Post blog: Achenblog: “Hillary Clinton takes on Barack Obama”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/achenblog/wp/2014/08/11/hillary-clinton-not-a-reluctant-warrior-like-her-former-boss-obama/>*
“This doesn’t look like a mere kerfuffle to me: This is a planned political
maneuver by the former Secretary of State and not-quite-announced
presidential candidate.”
*Salon column: Joan Walsh: “Hillary’s overlooked ’16 worry: Will she write
off the anti-interventionist left again?”
<http://www.salon.com/2014/08/11/hillarys_overlooked_16_worry_will_she_write_off_the_anti_interventionist_left_again/>*
“I’d rather progressives start out realistic, elect Clinton, let her
appoint two Supreme Court justices, do some good things on economic policy,
and continue with at least 98 percent of Obama’s foreign policy — while
progressives work to change the House and Senate.”
*Huffington Post: “Former Deputy CIA Director Disagrees With Hillary
Clinton On Syria”
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/11/hillary-clinton-syria_n_5668370.html?1407771089>*
“Former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell said he disagreed with Clinton’s
suggestion –- offered in a recent Atlantic Magazine interview -– that the
United States should have armed Syrian rebels far earlier than it did.”
*CNN: “With vocal support of Israel, Clinton rankles pro-Palestinian
Americans”
<http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/08/11/with-vocal-support-of-israel-clinton-rankles-pro-palestinian-americans/>*
“Hillary Clinton has been upfront about her support for Israel's recent
military operations in Gaza. And her outspokenness is infuriating
pro-Palestinian supporters in the United States.”
*Washington Post blog: The Fix: “What Hillary Clinton is doing by slamming
President Obama’s foreign policy”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/08/11/what-hillary-clinton-was-doing-by-slamming-president-obamas-foreign-policy/>*
“Clinton does very little by accident in the public space. This interview
with Goldberg was no exception.”
*Mother Jones opinion: Kevin Drum: “Is There a Hillary Doctrine?”
<http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/08/there-hillary-doctrine>*
“I don't know for sure.”
*Haaretz opinion: Peter Beinart: “Israel’s new lawyer: Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.610007>*
[Subtitle:] “She sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through Bibi’s eyes,
which could be the reason she gets so much wrong.”
*Washington Post blog: PostEverything: “Which GOP hopeful does Hillary
Clinton sound like? The answer may surprise you…”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/11/which-gop-hopeful-does-hillary-clinton-sound-like-the-answer-may-surprise-you/>*
“In bringing up containment, it would seem that Clinton is trying to steer
a middle ground between Obama’s reluctance to take more aggressive action
and the neoconservative impulse to take aggressive action at the drop of a
hat.”
*Yahoo: “Bernie Sanders says he has a ‘damn good platform’ to run for
president in 2016”
<http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/bernie-sanders-says-he-has-a--damn-good-platform--to-run-for-president-in-2016-212513869.html>*
“One of Sanders’ most likely competitors, should he choose to seek the
Democratic nomination, is Hillary Clinton. And while Sanders praised
Clinton for a successful career, he was critical of the Democratic Party’s
seeming coronation of the former secretary of state.”
*Articles:*
*The Week: “The political brilliance of Hillary out-hawking Obama”
<http://theweek.com/article/index/266164/the-political-brilliance-of-hillary-out-hawking-obama>*
By Matt K. Lewis
August 11, 2014, 10:22 a.m. EDT
[Subtitle:] She sounds like a Democrat that even Republicans can love
Hillary Clinton's interview with Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic — in
which she dinged Obama for "the failure to help build up a credible
fighting force" of moderates in Syria, leading to "a big vacuum, which the
jihadists have now filled" — is leading to a lot of headlines about the
former secretary of State sprinting from the failing foreign policy of her
former boss.
This political knifing of Obama is surely not the friendliest thing the
Clintons have ever done. And it's obviously hypocritical — Clinton was
secretary of State for four years! Nonetheless, this rhetoric is music to
the ears of of both GOP and Democratic hawks, friends of Israel, and many
Americans of all political stripes watching in horror as ISIS commits
crimes against humanity in Iraq.
It's called triangulation. It's a method perfected by Bill Clinton and Dick
Morris. And it's brilliant.
This excerpt in particular struck me as the work of a master:
“At one point, I mentioned the slogan President Obama recently coined to
describe his foreign-policy doctrine: ‘Don't do stupid shit’ (an expression
often rendered as ‘Don't do stupid stuff’ in less-than-private encounters).
“This is what Clinton said about Obama's slogan: ‘Great nations need
organizing principles, and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing
principle.’ [The Atlantic]”
Ouch.
Pundits love to say that people vote their pocketbooks, not foreign policy.
Well, what Clinton is doing here transcends foreign policy. It's about
restoring America's swagger. And I think there's a real hunger for this.
So many people today have the sense that America is floundering at home,
and being pushed around abroad by thugs and dictators and autocrats. It's
not just about national security — this takes a toll on our national
psyche. Americans don't want to get bogged down in a foreign land, and most
are sick of military adventurism. But they sure as hell don't like malaise
or looking like weaklings, either.
Obviously, Clinton's gambit isn't fool proof. There will be some on the
left who will resent her out-hawking of Obama. Presumably, this makes
Clinton more vulnerable to a primary challenge from the left. Still, this
was very smart.
As a female candidate, Clinton probably still feels she has to demonstrate
that she's tough. Elbowing Obama helps a lot in this regard. But perhaps
most importantly, she might be depriving the GOP of its best arguments for
winning over Obama-weary independent and Democratic voters in the 2016
general election.
What if moderates believe they can restore American greatness without
taking a chance on someone who might have a "scary" social issues policy?
If one believes America has moved leftward on social issues — and that
ObamaCare isn't likely to be the defining issue of the 2016 presidential
election — then Clinton may be co-opting the strongest argument the GOP
has: A return to American toughness and exceptionalism.
As Dave Wiegel pointed out, a recent CNN poll shows Clinton doing better
with white voters than any Democrat since 1976. And that was before the
triangulation began in earnest. It's not hard to imagine Clinton absolutely
cleaning up with non-evangelical whites who never really liked Obama — and
who are sick of America being pushed around.
And Clinton's move doesn't just make sense if she's matched up against a
non-interventionist like Rand Paul. Let's suppose she goes up against Marco
Rubio — someone thought of as more hawkish. Rubio has the ability to
inspire Americans to be a force for good in the world, and boasts a unique
biography that taps into hope for the future and the American Dream. That
isn't all that different than what Clinton is selling.
Ironically, she might even be able to cast him (or Ted Cruz) as some sort
of inexperienced show horse — someone, who (she won't say it, but... like
Barack Obama) spent just a few years in the Senate before running for
president. She might bring up that 3 a.m. call again. And this time
(ironically, because Obama was elected president) it might resonate. That
message will appeal to middle-of-the-road Republican voters in the general
election.
The GOP had better watch its back.
*Politico: “Bill Clinton to headline DCCC fundraiser”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/bill-clinton-headline-dccc-nyc-fundraiser-109910.html>*
By Maggie Haberman
August 11, 2014, 12:12 p.m. EDT
Bill Clinton will headline a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee next month, signaling the beginning of fall political
activity by the Clintons ahead of the midterms, according to an invitation
obtained by POLITICO.
The event will be hosted by Jim Chanos and Dennis Mehiel, along with House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and DCCC Chairman Steve Israel.
It is scheduled for Sept. 4 in New York City, according to the invitation.
Both Bill and Hillary Clinton are in high demand by committees and
candidates to help out in a difficult midterm cycle for Democrats.
*Washington Post blog: Achenblog: “Hillary Clinton takes on Barack Obama”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/achenblog/wp/2014/08/11/hillary-clinton-not-a-reluctant-warrior-like-her-former-boss-obama/>*
By Joel Achenbach
August 11, 2014, 10:34 a.m. EDT
Here we are witnessing the world on fire again, in multiple locations.
August is never as slow as it ought to be. I think of it as the time my
tomatoes ripen, but in some parts of the world it’s known as Fighting
Season. The news from much of the world is so awful that you almost feel
guilty watching baseball, much less plotting a trip to the beach.
Questions: Why is it so hard to get supplies to those poor people who have
taken refuge on the mountain? What will happen if the militants blow up the
Mosul Dam? What’s the latest from the Green Zone in Baghdad?
Meanwhile, we see an eruption of dissent within the Democratic
establishment: Hillary Clinton has distanced herself quite dramatically
from President Obama. This doesn’t look like a mere kerfuffle to me: This
is a planned political maneuver by the former Secretary of State and
not-quite-announced presidential candidate.
In her interview with the Atlantic, she states:
“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who
were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists,
there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to
do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.”
Just in case you thought that notion slipped out accidentally, she doubled
down, jabbing Obama for his cautious approach to foreign policy:
“Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is
not an organizing principle.”
Obama, however, gave an interview to Tom Friedman on Friday in which he
explicitly derided the idea that there was a road not taken in Syria that
could have squelched the gestation of ISIS:
“With ‘respect to Syria,’ said the president, the notion that arming the
rebels would have made a difference has ‘always been a fantasy. This idea
that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to
what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers,
pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not
only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia,
backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards.’”
Counterfactual history is for arm-wavers: No one can know what might have
been.
But think ahead to 2016: Clinton has taken a big step toward advocating a
more hawkish and interventionist foreign policy. Would love to see her
debate Rand Paul on that!
As for Obama: His strategy, as articulated to Friedman, goes beyond “Don’t
Do Stupid Stuff.” He believes that the U.S. should use its military might
as political leverage. We shouldn’t simply answer the bell whenever
someone needs us to serve as an emergency air force, Obama says. Think
long-term, think endgame, think about the political fallout from the
military actions. His broader message to the fighting factions abroad: We
can’t solve your problems. Only you can solve your problems. And the only
way you can solve your problems is to stop trying to kill everyone you
disagree with.
But hate is toxic, and does not tend to mellow into something more
palatable over time. Hate can’t be wished away.
I wrote something in late June that touched on Obama’s philosophy:
“Obama’s signature philosophy has been to turn crises into mere problems.
It’s a ratcheting down of dilemmas, at least in theory. The catastrophe is
reframed as a crisis and the crisis is reframed as a problem and the
problem is reframed as a policy question.”
The world isn’t cooperating. The president now has to scale up in the
opposite direction. Problems are now crises; crises are becoming
catastrophes. No use pretending otherwise.
A smart and unified U.S. policy, with politics stopping at the water’s
edge, is probably unattainable given our own domestic rancor and the cable
TV shout-fest culture, and Clinton’s comments suggest that even the
Democrats could become fractured. Everyone play the blame game!
So: This is a bad situation and could get even worse. If the U.S. policy is
to await the efflorescence of harmony and power-sharing among rival
factions in places like Iraq, we may want to rethink that. It’s hard to see
how the U.S. can finesse this situation with limited air strikes here and
there. Even reluctant warriors know that.
*Salon column: Joan Walsh: “Hillary’s overlooked ’16 worry: Will she write
off the anti-interventionist left again?”
<http://www.salon.com/2014/08/11/hillarys_overlooked_16_worry_will_she_write_off_the_anti_interventionist_left_again/>*
By Joan Walsh
August 11, 2014, 11:56 a.m. EDT
[Subtitle:] For all the talk about her positioning around inequality, her
foreign policy may alienate voters she needs in '16
Political mischief-makers are having a lot of fun with Jeffrey Goldberg’s
Hillary Clinton interview, published Saturday night for maximum Monday
morning OMG predictability. I admit: that makes me instinctively inclined
to minimize the fissures between Clinton and President Obama that Goldberg
widened into chasms to conform with his own political worldview.
Except I can’t entirely. Because Clinton and her team are smart enough to
know that’s exactly what Goldberg would do. Which means that’s what they
wanted him to do.
It’s important to note that there’s almost nothing new in the Goldberg
interview. We already knew that Clinton is somewhat more hawkish than
Obama. Specifically, we knew that as Secretary of State she backed arming
“moderate Syrian rebels,” took a maximalist approach to Iran sanctions, and
was sometimes uncomfortable leaning on Benjamin Netanyahu the way Obama
wanted, because she’s already told us. Here’s the best take on the way
Goldberg, and more important lots of pundits, have exaggerated those
differences.
Clinton also can’t be blamed for the timing of its publication – the
weekend Obama ordered U.S. began airstrikes in Iraq to set back ISIS, which
enraged the right and the left for different reasons and satisfied
practically no one. She gave the interview before the crisis escalated.
What’s most disturbing about the conversation is not its timing in relation
to Iraq, but to the Israel-Gaza debacle. The person most furious about
Clinton’s remarks should not be Obama, but Secretary of State John Kerry,
who has been barbecued by Israeli officials and hawkish American critics
for daring to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu to be a tiny bit more careful not
to kill children while obliterating Hamas.
Clinton apparently felt it important to avoid every opportunity Goldberg
gave her to criticize Netanyahu, occasionally sounding more hawkish than
Goldberg himself, at a time when her successor was under very unfriendly
political fire. Even assuming that everything she said about Palestinian
leaders blowing chances at peace is true, I see no reason for such
unyielding support for Netanyahu — not to mention so little compassion for
Palestinian victims — except to court favor with hardline supporters of
Israel. That’s disturbing.
On the issue of arming “moderate” Syrian rebels, Goldberg’s headline and
introduction exaggerate the extent to which Clinton was criticizing Obama.
She explains to him, as she does in her book, that she thought it was
possible to identify and support a secular opposition, but admits “we’ll
never know” if she was right, and adds: “And I don’t think we can claim to
know.”
Yes, she used the word “failure,” which became Goldberg’s headline. But her
overall take on the differences between them is considerably more generous,
and I’m inclined to read “failure” as “inability” – or as a generic failure
of U.S. leaders, herself included, and their global allies, to figure out
how to advance a moderate Syrian alternative.
But Clinton’s take on the potential power of the “moderate” elements in the
Free Syrian Army stands in clear opposition to Obama’s, published for
maximum contrast in an interview with Thomas Friedman the same weekend.
Obama told Friedman that the idea of finding and backing a capable and
moderate Syrian opposition has “always been a fantasy. This idea that we
could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was
essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists
and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a
well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by
Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards.”
That difference between Obama and Clinton led Steve Clemons to warn that
the interview will “reawaken the substantial resistance to her as a
reckless interventionist by some quarters.” I would not call Clinton
“reckless,” but Clemons has a point.
As someone who supported Clinton in 2008 and who anticipates supporting her
again in 2016, assuming she runs, I found the interview sobering. So far,
my approach to 2016 is to say that Clinton may not be perfect, but she’s
the not-perfect candidate we know, very well. I would rather not see
progressives set up someone who seems perfect (Sen. Elizabeth Warren,
perhaps?) who will turn out to be not perfect — whether on Israel, Iraq or
some crisis that hasn’t emerged yet — as Sen. Obama did. Especially since I
don’t see anyone on the horizon with Obama’s politics, charisma, or
capacity to unite the party.
I’d rather progressives start out realistic, elect Clinton, let her appoint
two Supreme Court justices, do some good things on economic policy, and
continue with at least 98 percent of Obama’s foreign policy — while
progressives work to change the House and Senate.
I still mostly feel that way. I also hope anti-interventionist progressives
won’t be fooled by Sen. Rand “Stand with Israel” Paul. That said, I am not
sure what we need is an American president who’s even closer to Benjamin
Netanyahu and who can’t be moved to utter a word of genuine compassion for
innocent Palestinian victims. Clinton may think she can write off the
anti-interventionist left – again — and win the White House this time. But
she may find out she’s wrong this time too.
*Huffington Post: “Former Deputy CIA Director Disagrees With Hillary
Clinton On Syria”
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/11/hillary-clinton-syria_n_5668370.html?1407771089>*
By Sam Stein
August 11, 2014, 11:31 a.m. EDT
WASHINGTON -- On one of the first major foreign policy rifts between
President Barack Obama and his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
one top former administration official is siding with the president.
Former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell said he disagreed with Clinton’s
suggestion –- offered in a recent Atlantic Magazine interview -– that the
United States should have armed Syrian rebels far earlier than it did.
“There is no doubt that what ISIS [the Islamic State] was able to do in
Syria was probably the key factor in strengthening them in terms of what
they are doing in Iraq today,” Morell told "CBS This Morning" on Monday.
“It is difficult for me to see how arming the moderate rebels would have
made that much difference in Syria. We would have had to have it on a very,
very large scale that I think would have frightened our partners in the
region because it would have put a very, very large footprint, U.S.
footprint on the ground in the Middle East."
“So you support the decision made by the president at the time,” host
Charlie Rose asked.
“Yes,” Morell replied.
A lifer in the intelligence community, Morell served as both deputy
director and acting director at the CIA when the Obama administration’s
policy toward the Syrian rebels was put in place. His skepticism about arms
transfers ended up prevailing, though contemporaneous reporting has shown
it was one of the most contentious foreign policy debates inside the
administration. (Eventually, the president did send light arms to the
rebels).
The argument has been revived in recent weeks as the Islamic State has
moved from waging an insurgency inside Syria toward wreaking havoc through
western, mid and northern Iraq. And in a notable break from the president,
Clinton stressed that more could have been done earlier to deal with the
menace.
“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who
were the originators of the protests against Assad — there were Islamists,
there were secularists, there was everything in the middle — the failure to
do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” she told
The Atlantic.
Whether timed for political benefit or an honest assessment of her policy
preference, Clinton’s deviation from Obama on Syria underscored the rifts
that continue to exist within the Democratic Party on matters of foreign
affairs. Its more hawkish wing may have been humbled by the Iraq War, but
recent events in the Middle East have encouraged its members to speak up a
bit more.
The president has never been a part of that camp, as his "don't do stupid
stuff" ethos is (more often than not) philosophically at odds with it. And
in comments that appeared before Clinton's, he made the same case as Morell
-- that more weapons in Syria never would have guaranteed better results.
“This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated
arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors,
farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to
battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by
Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the
cards,” the president told the New York Times’ Tom Friedman.
*CNN: “With vocal support of Israel, Clinton rankles pro-Palestinian
Americans”
<http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/08/11/with-vocal-support-of-israel-clinton-rankles-pro-palestinian-americans/>*
By Dan Merica
August 11th, 2014, 1:10 PM ET
Washington (CNN) - Hillary Clinton has been upfront about her support for
Israel's recent military operations in Gaza. And her outspokenness is
infuriating pro-Palestinian supporters in the United States.
Since Israel kicked off Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in early
July, Clinton has strongly and repeatedly said she backs Israel's right to
defend itself. She stepped up that message in a recent interview with The
Atlantic, in which she charged Hamas for "stage-managing" the conflict to
engender sympathy.
"There have been a lot of political support for what Israel has done in
Gaza, but to go so far to say that Palestinians are stage managing dead
children is disgusting," said Rania Khalek, a Lebanese blogger for the
pro-Palestine Electronic Intifada blog. "It is really disheartening and
frustrating to see politicians in the United States blaming Palestinians
for their own slaughter."
[TWEETS]
Israel has been criticized for hundreds of civilian deaths, particularly
those at United Nations schools and local hospitals. The country's leaders
contend, however, that Hamas is intentionally firing rockets from within
civilian areas in order to engender support for its cause when innocent
civilians are killed.
"What you see is largely what Hamas invites and permits Western journalists
to report on from Gaza. It’s the old PR problem that Israel has," Clinton
said. "Yes, there are substantive, deep levels of antagonism or
anti-Semitism towards Israel, because it’s a powerful state, a really
effective military. And Hamas paints itself as the defender of the rights
of the Palestinians to have their own state. So the PR battle is one that
is historically tilted against Israel."
The comment, particularly the charge of stage managing, did not sit well
with pro-Palestine activists and writers.
The reaction to Clinton's interview with the Atlantic from pro-Palestine
activists and writer was swift and loud, especially on Twitter:
[TWEETS]
In addition to their frustration, the biggest takeaway for pro-Palestinian
writers from Clinton's interview was this: She is running for president.
"Stage-managing is an exaggeration," said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at
The American Task Force on Palestine, a nonprofit think tank on the
Israel-Palestine conflict.
Ibish said that there is plenty to criticize Hamas over, but Clinton's
comments went further than she ever has because he feels she is vying to
win the presidency in 2016.
"I don't think there is a lot of political cache is taking on pro-Israel
sentiment when you are going for the highest office in the land," he said.
"From a political point of view, I understand why someone is going to do
that. What she is engaging in is politics, not foreign policy."
Ibish was not alone in this sentiment. A handful of pro-Palestine activists
and writers said her comment further cemented their feeling that Clinton -
the Democratic party's frontrunner for the presidency in 2016 - is vying
for the job.
She was "posturing in preparation for a presidential run," Yousef Munayyer,
executive director of the The Jerusalem Fund, said bluntly.
"The language that she used yesterday, the uncritical acceptance of the
Israeli narrative in Gaza, means she is already thinking in a very
politically calculated mode and is prepared to defend against critics on
the right," he added.
CNN reached out to a Clinton spokesman to respond to these claim, but did
not immediately receive a response.
Clinton has long been a vocal supporter of Israel, but that support has not
always been certain.
When she ran for Senate in 2000, she had to win over a skeptical New York
Jewish community by reassuring her commitment to Israel. Some, at the time,
worried that the former first lady was too sympathetic to Palestinians. But
she effectively won them over and enjoyed Jewish support in both of her
Senate race and her failed bid at the presidency in 2008.
Although Clinton's cred with American Jews was somewhat questioned during
her four years as President Barack Obama's secretary of state – largely
because of her work with Iran – Clinton been vocally pro-Israel since
kicking off her memoir tour in June.
During an NPR interview in July, Clinton strongly sided with Israel in the
country's conflict with Hamas and the Gaza Strip.
Clinton said that she has "no doubt" that the current conflict "was a
deliberate provocation" by Hamas to "engender more sympathy for their cause
and also to put Israel on the back heal."
"I think the responsibility falls on Hamas," Clinton said.
*Washington Post blog: The Fix: “What Hillary Clinton is doing by slamming
President Obama’s foreign policy”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/08/11/what-hillary-clinton-was-doing-by-slamming-president-obamas-foreign-policy/>*
By Chris Cillizza
August 11, 2014, 11:10 a.m. EDT
Former Secretary of State and all-but-announced presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton offered her most public break yet from President Obama over
the weekend, slamming his "don't do stupid [stuff]" foreign policy and
suggesting he had not been aggressive enough in asserting America's role in
the world.
"Great nations need organizing principles -- and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is
not an organizing principle," Clinton told the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg
in a line that surely launched a thousand grimaces (or worse) in the White
House.
Clinton, of course, knew what she was doing -- picking a prominent foreign
policy writer to make a pointed critique of the current Administration's
policies at the very moment when President Obama's ratings are at -- or
damn close to -- their lowest ebb of his time in office. So, why did she do
it -- and what does her willingness to so publicly break with the Obama
Administration tell us about how she's positioning herself for 2016?
Here are three thoughts.
1) Clinton isn't worried about the Democratic primary. At all. Consider
the 2008 race. By this time in that contest, then Illinois Sen. Barack
Obama had already emerged as a potentially potent political force who was
running to Clinton's ideological left largely on his opposition to the Iraq
war. Clinton would never have made such a hawkish statement as this one
back then, worried that it would embolden an already-rising Obama. (It
turned out that Clinton's vote for the use of force resolution and her
unwillingness to back away from it was enough for Obama to capitalize.) Why
do it now then? Because she is supremely confident that there simply is no
serious primary challenger out there who would be emboldened to take on the
race because of her more hawkish (than Obama at least) views on foreign
policy. Sure, people like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or former Montana
Gov. Brian Schweitzer might run in 2016 against Clinton but she doesn't
spend one second worrying about them. This positioning on foreign policy
-- that America needs to be more aggressive in asserting its views on the
world stage -- is entirely aimed at a general electorate.
2) Clinton as ready on day one. Remember that "3 a.m. phone call" ad? The
idea was that Barack Obama was untested on the world stage and sought to
raise the question in voters' minds whether the freshman Illinois Senator
was the person they wanted dealing with a complex world. Now, six years
later, there are many people -- Democrats, Independents and, obviously,
Republicans -- who believe that Obama wasn't prepared to take on the
various challenges the changing world presented to him. Clinton's
"organizing principle" argument is aimed directly at those doubts about
Obama. Her argument is a simple one: I know the world. I know how
complicated it is. I know all of these things because I have spent decades
in government (and out of government) studying them, building relationships
with foreign leaders, developing best practices. On day one, I step into
the job with a broad idea of how I want America to be seen in the world --
and a plan to make it happen.
3) Clinton wants people to remember she never always agreed with Obama. One
of the challenges Clinton will face in 2016 -- although not the biggest
challenge -- is her association with Obama, particularly on foreign policy.
(She was, after all, the top diplomat in the Obama Administration for his
first term.) What Clinton does not want to do, however, is be forced to own
every decision the President made -- especially those that she disagreed
with. On Afghanistan, Clinton -- along with Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates -- advocated for putting more troops in the country. On Libya ,
Clinton was a lead voice making the case for a military intervention to
topple Muammar Gaddafi. And, in the interview with Goldberg, Clinton calls
the U.S.'s decision to not actively involve itself in the early days of the
uprising in Syria a "failure". There will be plenty on the foreign policy
front that Clinton will have to own -- "pushing the reset button" with
Russia, anyone? -- but she also wants to make very clear that had she been
president, our foreign policy might have looked very different over the
past six years.
Clinton does very little by accident in the public space. This interview
with Goldberg was no exception.
*Mother Jones opinion: Kevin Drum: “Is There a Hillary Doctrine?”
<http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/08/there-hillary-doctrine>*
By Kevin Drum
August 11, 2014, 11:21 a.m. EDT
Jeffrey Goldberg's interview with Hillary Clinton is being taken as an
effort by Hillary to distance herself from President Obama. Here's the most
frequently quoted snippet:
HRC: Great nations need organizing principles, and “Don’t do stupid stuff”
is not an organizing principle. It may be a necessary brake on the actions
you might take in order to promote a vision.
....JG: What is your organizing principle, then?
HRC: Peace, progress, and prosperity. This worked for a very long time.
Take prosperity. That’s a huge domestic challenge for us. If we don’t
restore the American dream for Americans, then you can forget about any
kind of continuing leadership in the world. Americans deserve to feel
secure in their own lives, in their own middle-class aspirations, before
you go to them and say, “We’re going to have to enforce navigable sea lanes
in the South China Sea.”
I've seen the first part of this excerpt several times, and each time I've
wondered, "So what's your organizing principle." When I finally got around
to reading the interview, I discovered that this was Goldberg's very next
question. And guess what? Hillary doesn't have one.
She's basically hauling out an old chestnut: We need to be strong at home
if we want to be strong overseas. And that's fine as far as it goes. But
it's not an organizing principle for foreign policy. It's not even close.
At best, it's a precursor to an organizing principle, and at worst it's
just a plain and simple evasion.
It so happens that I think "don't do stupid stuff" is a pretty good
approach to foreign policy at the moment. It's underrated in most of life,
in fact, while "doctrines" are mostly straitjackets that force you to fight
the last war over and over and over. The fact that Hillary Clinton (a)
brushes this off and (b) declines to say what her foreign policy would be
based on—well, it frankly scares me. My read of all this is that Hillary is
itching to outline a much more aggressive foreign policy but doesn't think
she can quite get away with it yet. She figures she needs to distance
herself from Obama slowly, and she needs to wait for the American public to
give her an opportunity. My guess is that any crisis will do that happens
to pop up in 2015.
I don't have any problems with Hillary's domestic policy. I've never
believed that she "understood" the Republican party better than Obama and
therefore would have gotten more done if she'd won in 2008, but I don't
think she would have gotten any less done either. It's close to a wash. But
in foreign policy, I continually find myself wondering just where she
stands. I suspect that she still chafes at being forced to repudiate her
vote for the Iraq war—and largely losing to Obama because of it. I wouldn't
be surprised if she still believes that vote was the right thing to do, nor
would I be surprised if her foreign policy turned out to be considerably
more interventionist than either Bill's or Obama's.
But I don't know for sure. And I probably never will unless she gets
elected in 2016 and we get to find out.
*Haaretz opinion: Peter Beinart: “Israel’s new lawyer: Hillary Clinton”
<http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.610007>*
By Peter Beinart, The Atlantic
August 11, 2014, 5:24 p.m.
[Subtitle:] She sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through Bibi’s eyes,
which could be the reason she gets so much wrong.
Who’s the Israeli government’s best spokesperson? Ron Dermer? Michael Oren?
Bibi himself? Nope. It’s Hillary Clinton. In her interview on Sunday with
Jeffrey Goldberg, Clinton offered the most articulate, sophisticated,
passionate defense of Netanyahu’s conduct I’ve heard from a government
official on either side of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, important chunks of
it aren’t true.
Let’s take her claims in turn.
In his first term, Netanyahu moved towards a Palestinian state
Clinton began her defense of Bibi by noting that in his first term, in the
late 1990s, he had “give[n] up territory” and “moved in that direction
[towards a Palestinian state], as hard as it was.”
That’s extremely generous. It’s true that in 1997, Bibi withdrew Israeli
troops from most of the West Bank city of Hebron (though they can reenter
any time Israel wants) and the following year signed the Wye River Accords,
under which Israel was supposed to hand over 13 percent of the West Bank to
the Palestinian Authority (though Bibi’s government fell before it could do
so).
What Clinton leaves out is that Bibi only agreed to these withdrawals to
forestall the far larger ones envisioned under the Oslo Accords he
inherited from Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. In 1993, when Oslo was
signed, Bibi publicly compared it to Neville Chamberlain’s surrender of the
Sudetenland to Adolf Hitler.
He accepted Oslo in the 1996 election campaign only because he couldn’t
repudiate a process endorsed by the Israeli center and championed by the
United States. So Bibi sabotaged Oslo by accelerating settlement growth and
minimizing the amount of land Israel relinquished. “Before I took office,”
he later boasted, “the conception was to give away everything except for
two percent [of West Bank] while I turned everything around and gave just
two percent to [full control] of the Palestinian Authority.” Or as he told
settlers after leaving office, “I stopped the Oslo Accords.”
The Clinton administration officials who dealt with Bibi in his first term
understood this all too well. “Neither President Clinton nor Secretary
[Madeleine] Albright believed that Bibi had any real interest in pursuing
peace,” writes Dennis Ross in The Missing Peace. Ross’ deputy, Aaron
Miller, adds in his memoir that, “all of us saw Bibi as a kind of speed
bump that would have to be negotiated along the way until a new Israeli
prime minister came along who was more serious about peace.”
That’s a far cry from what Hillary told Goldberg. Then again, Ross and
Miller aren’t running for president.
Bibi agreed to a settlement freeze but Abbas wouldn’t negotiate
Fast-forwarding to the Obama years, Clinton claims that, “I got Netanyahu
to agree to the unprecedented settlement freeze… It took me nine months to
get Abbas into the negotiations even after we delivered on the settlement
freeze.”
What’s striking, again, is what Clinton leaves out. The settlement freeze
was indeed, unprecedented. Unfortunately, it didn’t actually freeze
settlement growth. It’s not just that, as Clinton admits, the “freeze”
exempted East Jerusalem. Even more importantly, it exempted buildings on
which construction had all ready begun. This loophole proved crucial
because, as the Israeli press reported at the time, settlers spent the
months preceding the “freeze” feverishly breaking ground on new
construction, on which they continued to build during the ten month
“freeze,” before breaking new ground once it expired. As a result,
according to Peace Now, there was more new settlement construction in 2010
- the year of the freeze - than in 2008. As Obama administration envoy
George Mitchell admitted to Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat, the Obama
administration had wanted a freeze that truly stopped settlement growth but
“we failed.”
Clinton’s claim that Abbas refused to negotiate until the last minute is
disingenuous too. In fact, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met
repeatedly during the “freeze.” In January 2010, just over a month after it
began, veteran Israeli columnist Ben Caspit reported that, “In the past
weeks, Israeli representatives, including Netanyahu, have repeatedly
rejected official documents that their Palestinian counterparts have tried
to submit to them, with details of the Palestinian positions on all the
core issues. The Israeli representatives are completely unwilling to
discuss, read or touch these documents, not to speak of submitting an
equivalent Israeli document with the Israeli positions.”
While reporting my book, The Crisis of Zionism, I heard four different
Obama officials confirm this account. During the settlement “freeze,” the
Palestinians submitted to Netanyahu and his aides the same positions they
had submitted to Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert. These included a
Palestinian state on the 1967 lines with a 1.9 percent land swap for
territory inside Israel proper, Israeli control of all the Jewish
neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, international troops in the Jordan Valley
and the return of 150,000 Palestinian refugees over ten years. The
Netanyahu government, by contrast, steadfastly refused to discuss the
parameters of a Palestinian state.
In her interview with Goldberg, Clinton never mentions that.
Netanyahu’s views on Palestinian statehood resembled Ehud Barak’s.
Given the evidence that during her time as secretary of state, Bibi refused
to discuss territory, Clinton’s claim that “I saw Netanyahu move from being
against the two-state solution to…considering all kinds of Barak-like
options” is bizarre. Whatever you think of Ehud Barak’s offer at Camp David
in July 2000, it was a detailed offer. Netanyahu, by contrast, refused put
forward a territorial proposal not merely during Clinton’s term, but during
John Kerry’s far more aggressive effort to broker a deal. During the Kerry
negotiations, according to Haaretz’s Barak Ravid, Netanyahu “flatly refused
to present a map or even to discuss the subject theoretically…throughout
the nine months of the talks Netanyahu did not give the slightest hint
about the scale of the territorial concessions he would be willing to make.”
It’s too bad Goldberg didn’t press Clinton on what kind of “Barak-like
options” she heard Netanyahu propose, because the best reporting we have
suggests he offered no territorial “options” at all.
Netanyahu is right to demand indefinite control of the West Bank
Most remarkable of all, Clinton tells Goldberg that, “If I were the prime
minister of Israel, you’re damn right I would expect to have security
[control over the West Bank].” What makes this statement so remarkable is
that earlier in the interview, Hillary praised the Clinton parameters
outlined by her husband in December 2000. Those parameters permit Israeli
troops to remain in the Jordan Valley, along the West Bank’s border with
Jordan, for three years. Later in the interview, Clinton claims that she
convinced Abbas to agree to allow Israeli troops to remain for “six, seven,
eight years” and that she “got Netanyahu to go from forever to 2025” as a
date for their withdrawal. Even this, from a Palestinian perspective,
represents painful backsliding from the position outlined by Hillary’s
husband. But as Hillary must know, Bibi three weeks ago said that in light
of regional developments, “there cannot be a situation, under any
agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of
the River Jordan.” Which is to say that, as of now, Bibi’s position really
does seem to be “forever.” Yet rather than challenge that stance, Clinton
endorses it.
Why does Clinton again and again endorse Netanyahu’s view of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict even when it contradicts long-standing
American positions? Because she’s so willing to see the world through his
eyes. Notice how she begins her statement about security control of the
West Bank: “If I were the prime minister of Israel.” There’s nothing wrong
with that. U.S. officials should understand, and empathize with, Israeli
leaders, even right-wing ones. But what’s missing from Clinton’s interview
is any willingness to do the same for Palestinians. If it’s so easy to
understand why some Israelis might want perpetual military control of the
West Bank, why can’t Clinton understand why Palestinians - after living for
almost fifty years under a foreign army - might not want it to indefinitely
patrol their supposedly independent state.
One of the hallmarks of Barack Obama’s statements about Israel and
Palestine, going back to his 2008 presidential campaign, has been his
insistence on giving voice to the fears and aspirations of both sides.
Writing about his trip to Israel in The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote that,
“I talked to Jews who’d lost parents in the Holocaust and brothers in
suicide bombings; I heard Palestinians talk of the indignities of
checkpoints and reminisce about the land they had lost.” In Jerusalem last
March, he spoke movingly, and in detail about the Jewish story, but also
asked Israelis to “put yourself in their [the Palestinians] shoes. Look at
the world through their eyes.” In her interview with Goldberg, that’s
exactly what Clinton does not do. Her interpretations of recent
Israeli-Palestinian history reflect from a deep imbalance: a willingness to
see reality through Israeli eyes and an almost total refusal to do the same
for Palestinians.
“For far too long,” wrote Aaron Miller in 2005, “many American officials
involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as
Israel's attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the
expense of successful peace negotiations.” From the beginning, Barack Obama
has tried to avoid that. Although he hasn’t brokered Israeli-Palestinian
peace, he has tried to make good on his campaign promise to “hold up a
mirror” to both sides. In Hillary Clinton, by contrast, at least judging
from her interview on Sunay, Israel has yet another lawyer. And a very good
one at that.
*Washington Post blog: PostEverything: “Which GOP hopeful does Hillary
Clinton sound like? The answer may surprise you…”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/11/which-gop-hopeful-does-hillary-clinton-sound-like-the-answer-may-surprise-you/>*
By Daniel W. Drezner
August 11, 2014, 8:49 a.m. EDT
So, a few high-ranking Democrats gave some foreign policy interviews over
the weekend.
Barack Obama’s muse du jour was the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman. You
can go read their interview. I, for one, am delighted with it, because it
pretty much confirms the point I made last month about Obama’s Zen Master
approach to foreign policy. As a general rule, Obama is reluctant for the
United States to take the lead in other countries’ civil strife, unless he
thinks the balance of domestic politics on the ground favors the side he
wants to back. It certainly explains why he didn’t intervene in Syria but
why he’s intervening in Iraq right now.
The thing about Obama is that on foreign policy, he’s pretty predictable at
this point, and also spectacularly bad at, well, you know, the actual
politics of the whole thing. So his chat with Friedman is not the most
interesting interview by a high-ranking Democrat to be published this
weekend (though it is always fun to see what thing Obama says that
Breitbart will distort the most).
No, that honor goes to Hillary Clinton’s chat with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey
Goldberg.
There’s a lot to parse through here, and much of it has already been
parsed, but there was one part of the interview that did jump out at me, in
talking about the need for an ordering principle for U.S. foreign policy in
the Middle East:
“I think part of the challenge is that our government too often has a
tendency to swing between these extremes. The pendulum swings back and then
the pendulum swings the other way. What I’m arguing for is to take a hard
look at what tools we have. Are they sufficient for the complex situations
we’re going to face, or not? And what can we do to have better tools? I do
think that is an important debate.
“One of the reasons why I worry about what’s happening in the Middle East
right now is because of the breakout capacity of jihadist groups that can
affect Europe, can affect the United States. Jihadist groups are governing
territory. They will never stay there, though. They are driven to expand.
Their raison d’être is to be against the West, against the Crusaders,
against the fill-in-the-blank—and we all fit into one of these categories.
How do we try to contain that? I’m thinking a lot about containment,
deterrence, and defeat. You know, we did a good job in containing the
Soviet Union, but we made a lot of mistakes, we supported really nasty
guys, we did some things that we are not particularly proud of, from Latin
America to Southeast Asia, but we did have a kind of overarching framework
about what we were trying to do that did lead to the defeat of the Soviet
Union and the collapse of Communism. That was our objective. We achieved
it….
“[M]ost Americans think of engagement and go immediately to military
engagement. That’s why I use the phrase ‘smart power.’ I did it
deliberately because I thought we had to have another way of talking about
American engagement, other than unilateralism and the so-called boots on
the ground. (emphasis added)”
In bringing up containment, it would seem that Clinton is trying to steer a
middle ground between Obama’s reluctance to take more aggressive action and
the neoconservative impulse to take aggressive action at the drop of a
hat. But what’s fascinating about the reference to containment is that it
reminded me of a GOP contender who, last year, made a similar analogy in a
speech at the Heritage Foundation. Can you guess who said this?
“What the United States needs now is a policy that finds a middle path. A
policy that is not rash or reckless. A foreign policy that is reluctant,
restrained by Constitutional checks and balances but does not appease. A
foreign policy that recognizes the danger of radical Islam but also the
inherent weaknesses of radical Islam. A foreign policy that recognizes the
danger of bombing countries on what they might someday do. A foreign policy
that requires, as Kennan put it, ‘a long term, patient but firm and
vigilant containment of . . . expansive tendencies.’ A policy that
understands the ‘distinction between vital and peripheral interests.’….
“Like communism, radical Islam is an ideology with worldwide reach.
Containing radical Islam requires a worldwide strategy like containment. It
requires counterforce at a series of constantly shifting worldwide points.
But counterforce does not necessarily mean large-scale land wars with
hundreds of thousands of troops nor does it always mean a military action
at all.”
If you said “Rand Paul,” you’re right — and likely very confused. After
all, there’s been a lot of chatter the past few months about what
neoconservatives would do in a Clinton vs. Paul race, as they think the
former is more hawkish than the latter. Indeed, as Time’s Michael Scherer
pointed out last Friday, “[Rand Paul] is also running for President—albeit
without an official campaign—on the idea that he can best distinguish
himself from Clinton on key matters of foreign policy that are likely to
resonate with independent and young voters.” But the above quotes don’t
sound very different at all.
How to explain this? Well, there are two possibilities. The first is
that, despite all the hyperbole about political polarization, the two-party
system is once again producing a Kang vs. Kodos choice:
[SIMPSONS CLIP]
The other possibility is that we’re in the very preliminary stages of the
2016 presidential election, and statements like these are sufficiently
anodyne and flexible enough to allow either candidate to reference
containment without feeling locked into any particular foreign policy
position. And that embracing concepts like “smart power” and “neither
isolationism nor invasion” will resonate pretty well with foreign policy
cognoscenti.
For me, what all of this means is that whatever any potential 2016 hopeful
says about foreign policy right now isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.
We’re at the posturing phase of a presidential campaign that’s already
started way too damn early. Let’s wait at least a year and see if these
candidates actually add some flesh to these foreign policy bare bones.
Am I missing anything?
*Yahoo: “Bernie Sanders says he has a ‘damn good platform’ to run for
president in 2016”
<http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/bernie-sanders-says-he-has-a--damn-good-platform--to-run-for-president-in-2016-212513869.html>*
By Jeff Zeleny, Richard Coolidge and Jordyn Phelps
August 11, 2014
Sen. Bernie Sanders isn’t afraid to be called a socialist. In fact, the
Vermont Independent proudly labels himself a Democratic socialist.
“Do you hear me cringing? Do you hear me running under the table?” Sanders
said rhetorically when asked if Democratic socialist is an accurate
description.
Sanders is so delighted with his brand of politics that he said in an
interview with “The Fine Print” that it would be a “damn good platform” on
which to run for president.
"If the American people understand what goes on in countries like Denmark,
Sweden, Norway, and other countries, they will say, ‘Whoa, I didn't know
that!’” Sanders said, pointing out that health care is considered a right,
“R-I-G-H-T,” among even the most conservative politicians in Denmark.
Sanders described his credo as a fight to protect America’s working class
from what he sees as the threat of an approaching “oligarchic form of
society.”
“You have today in America more income and wealth inequality than any time
in this country since 1928 and more than any major country in the world,”
Sanders said. “So, you got the top one percent owning 38 percent of the
wealth in America. Do you know what the bottom 60 percent own? 2.3 percent.”
“You know what that is?" he said. "That's called oligarchy."
Though Sanders isn’t making any secret of his possible 2016 presidential
bid, he said he’s still determining whether he could generate a sufficient
level of grassroots support on which to build a campaign.
“Look, it's easy for me to give a good speech, and I give good speeches,”
he said. “It is harder to put together a grassroots organization of
hundreds of thousands of millions of people prepared to work hard and take
on the enormous amounts of money that will be thrown against us.”
One of Sanders’ most likely competitors, should he choose to seek the
Democratic nomination, is Hillary Clinton. And while Sanders praised
Clinton for a successful career, he was critical of the Democratic Party’s
seeming coronation of the former secretary of state.
"She has accomplished a lot of very positive things in her career, but I'm
not quite sure that the political process is one in which we anoint
people,” Sanders said.
Though he stopped short of criticizing Clinton directly, he said she is not
a sufficient champion of his message for the middle class.
“What I'm telling you is that this country has more serious problems today
than any time since the Great Depression,” he said. “Those are the real
issues that we've got to start dealing with.”
To hear more specifics about Sanders’ potential presidential platform,
check out this episode of “The Fine Print.”
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