Global Research

On Thursday, touting her foreign policy record without explaining its lawlessness, Clinton delivered a 30-minute anti-Trump rant focussing on US foreign policy and US-NATO led wars,  a demagogic litany  devoid of substance, more proof of the danger humanity faces if she succeeds Obama next year. Excerpts below: 

“He is not just unprepared – he is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.

This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes – because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.

We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump’s hands. We cannot let him roll the dice with America.

This is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia.

This is someone who has threatened to abandon our allies in NATO – the countries that work with us to root out terrorists abroad before they strike us at home.”

He has said that he would order our military to carry out torture and the murder of civilians who are related to suspected terrorists – even though those are war crimes.

He says he doesn’t have to listen to our generals or our admirals, our ambassadors and other high officials, because he has – quote – ‘a very good brain.’

He also said, ‘I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.’ You know what? I don’t believe him.

He says climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese, and he has the gall to say that prisoners of war like John McCain aren’t heroes.

He praises dictators like Vladimir Putin and picks fights with our friends – including the British prime minister, the mayor of London, the German chancellor, the president of Mexico and the Pope.

He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia.

And to top it off, he believes America is weak. An embarrassment. He called our military a disaster. He said we are – and I quote – a ‘third-world country.’ And he’s been saying things like that for decades.

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Unlike him, I have some experience with the tough calls and the hard work of statecraft. I wrestled with the Chinese over a climate deal in Copenhagen, brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, negotiated the reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia, twisted arms to bring the world together in global sanctions against Iran, and stood up for the rights of women, religious minorities and LGBT people around the world.

And I have, I have sat in the Situation Room and advised the President on some of the toughest choices he faced.

So I’m not new to this work. And I’m proud to run on my record, because I think the choice before the American people in this election is clear.

I believe in strong alliances; clarity in dealing with our rivals; and a rock-solid commitment to the values that have always made America great. And I believe with all my heart that America is an exceptional country – that we’re still, in Lincoln’s words, the last, best hope of earth. We are not a country that cowers behind walls. We lead with purpose, and we prevail.

And if America doesn’t lead, we leave a vacuum – and that will either cause chaos, or other countries will rush in to fill the void. Then they’ll be the ones making the decisions about your lives and jobs and safety – and trust me, the choices they make will not be to our benefit.

That is not an outcome we can live with.

As I see it, there are some important things our next President must do to secure American leadership and keep us safe and our economy growing in the years ahead. These are all areas in which Donald Trump and I profoundly disagree. And they are all critical to our future.

First, we need to be strong at home.

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America’s network of allies is part of what makes us exceptional. And our allies deliver for us every day.

Our armed forces fight terrorists together; our diplomats work side by side. Allies provide staging areas for our military, so we can respond quickly to events on the other side of the world. And they share intelligence that helps us identify and defuse potential threats.

Take the threat posed by North Korea – perhaps the most repressive regime on the planet, run by a sadistic dictator who wants to develop long-range missiles that could carry a nuclear weapon to the United States.

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And it’s the legacy of American troops who fought and died to secure those bonds, because they knew we were safer with friends and partners.

Now Moscow and Beijing are deeply envious of our alliances around the world, because they have nothing to match them. They’d love for us to elect a President who would jeopardize that source of strength. If Donald gets his way, they’ll be celebrating in the Kremlin. We cannot let that happen.

That’s why it is no small thing when he talks about leaving NATO, or says he’ll stay neutral on Israel’s security.

It’s no small thing when he calls Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers. We’re lucky to have two friendly neighbors on our land borders. Why would he want to make one of them an enemy?

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Now we must enforce that deal vigorously. And as I’ve said many times before, our approach must be ‘distrust and verify.’ The world must understand that the United States will act decisively if necessary, including with military action, to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. In particular, Israel’s security is non-negotiable. They’re our closest ally in the region, and we have a moral obligation to defend them.

But there is no question that the world and the United States, we are safer now than we were before this agreement. And we accomplished it without firing a single shot, dropping a single bomb or putting a single American soldier in harm’s way.

Donald Trump says we shouldn’t have done the deal. We should have walked away. But that would have meant no more global sanctions, and Iran resuming their nuclear program and the world blaming us. So then what? War? Telling the world, good luck, you deal with Iran?

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Fourth, we need to be firm but wise with our rivals.

Countries like Russia and China often work against us. Beijing dumps cheap steel in our markets. That hurts American workers. Moscow has taken aggressive military action in Ukraine, right on NATO’s doorstep. Now I’ve gone toe-to-toe with Russia and China, and many other different leaders around the world. So I know we have to be able to both stand our ground when we must, and find common ground when we can.

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Fifth, we need a real plan for confronting terrorists.

As we saw six months ago in San Bernardino, the threat is real and urgent. Over the past year, I’ve laid out my plans for defeating ISIS.

We need to take out their strongholds in Iraq and Syria by intensifying the air campaign and stepping up our support for Arab and Kurdish forces on the ground. We need to keep pursuing diplomacy to end Syria’s civil war and close Iraq’s sectarian divide, because those conflicts are keeping ISIS alive. We need to lash up with our allies, and ensure our intelligence services are working hand-in-hand to dismantle the global network that supplies money, arms, propaganda and fighters to the terrorists. We need to win the battle in cyberspace.

And of course we need to strengthen our defenses here at home.

That – in a nutshell – is my plan for defeating ISIS.

What’s Trump’s? Well he won’t say. He is literally keeping it a secret. The secret, of course, is he has no idea what he’d do to stop ISIS.

Just look at the few things he’s actually said on the subject.

He’s actually said – and I quote –’maybe Syria should be a free zone for ISIS.’ Oh, okay – let a terrorist group have control of a major country in the Middle East.

Then he said we should send tens of thousands of American ground troops to the Middle East to fight ISIS.

He also refused to rule out using nuclear weapons against ISIS, which would mean mass civilian casualties.

It’s clear he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. So we can’t be certain which of these things he would do. But we can be certain that he’s capable of doing any or all of them. Letting ISIS run wild. Launching a nuclear attack. Starting a ground war. These are all distinct possibilities with Donald Trump in charge.

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A Trump Presidency would embolden ISIS. We cannot take that risk.

This isn’t reality television – this is actual reality.

And defeating global terrorist networks and protecting the homeland takes more than empty talk and a handful of slogans. It takes a real plan, real experience and real leadership. Donald Trump lacks all three.

And one more thing. A President has a sacred responsibility to send our troops into battle only if we absolutely must, and only with a clear and well-thought-out strategy. Our troops give their all. They deserve a commander-in-chief who knows that.

I’ve worked side-by-side with admirals and generals, and visited our troops in theaters of war. I’ve fought for better health care for our National Guard, better services for our veterans, and more support for our Gold Star families. We cannot put the lives of our young men and women in uniform in Donald Trump’s hands.

Sixth, we need to stay true to our values.

Trump says over and over again, ‘The world is laughing at us.’ He’s been saying this for decades, he didn’t just start this year.

He bought full-page ads in newspapers across the country back in 1987, when Ronald Reagan was President, saying that America lacked a backbone and the world was – you guessed it – laughing at us. He was wrong then, and he’s wrong now – and you’ve got to wonder why somebody who fundamentally has so little confidence in America, and has felt that way for at least 30 years, wants to be our President.

The truth is, there’s not a country in the world that can rival us. It’s not just that we have the greatest military, or that our economy is larger, more durable, more entrepreneurial than any in the world. It’s also that Americans work harder, dream bigger – and we never, ever stop trying to make our country and world a better place.

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So yes, we have a lot of work to do to keep our country secure. And we need to do better by American families and American workers – and we will. But don’t let anyone tell you that America isn’t great. Donald Trump’s got America all wrong. We are a big-hearted, fair-minded country.

There is no challenge we can’t meet, no goal we can’t achieve when we each do our part and come together as one nation.

Every lesson from our history teaches us that we are stronger together. We remember that every Memorial Day.

This election is a choice between two very different visions of America.

One that’s angry, afraid, and based on the idea that America is fundamentally weak and in decline.

The other is hopeful, generous, and confident in the knowledge that America is great – just like we always have been.

Let’s resolve that we can be greater still. That is what I believe in my heart.

I went to 112 countries as your Secretary of State. And I never lost my sense of pride at seeing our blue-and-white plane lit up on some far-off runway, with ‘The United States of America’ emblazoned on the side. That plane – those words – our country represents something special, not just to us, to the world. It represents freedom and hope and opportunity.

I love this country and I know you do too. It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve America and I’m going to do everything I can to protect our nation, and make sure we don’t lose sight of how strong we really are.

Thank you all very much.

In 1999, she urged husband Bill to bomb Belgrade, a flagrant violation of international and constitutional law.

She lied about Slobodan Milosevic, saying “(y)ou cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time. What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?”

The late Nobel laureate Harold Pinter called NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia “barbaric (and despicable), another blatant and brutal assertion of US power, using NATO as its missile (to consolidate) American domination of Europe.”

Lawless aggression became humanitarian intervention. An avenue to Eurasia was opened. A permanent US military presence was established. US imperialism claimed another trophy. Clinton’s public record shows the danger of her serving in high office.

She’s indifferent to human suffering, a monument to wrong over right, ideologically opposite what deserves popular support. Her public persona conceals her extremist views.

As first lady in the 1990s, she called Black youths “super predators (with) no conscience, no empathy.”

She urged the FBI to make “a very concerted effort (to) bring them to heel.” She supported “deporter-in-chief” Obama’s anti-immigrant agenda – deporting undocumented Latinos in record numbers, separating husbands from wives, parents from children.

She advocated racist get tough on crime laws, more police, more prisons, harsher sentences – an agenda directed at Blacks and Latinos “to keep them off the streets…for as long as it takes.”

She supports unrestricted nuclear cooperation with Israel and other US allies, flagrantly violating NPT provisions – endorsing the use of these super-weapons she calls peacekeeping deterrents.

As US senator and presidential candidate twice, she was and remains one of the largest recipients of campaign contributions from Wall Street and war-profiteers.

In the run-up to Bush’s 2003 Iraq war, she lied, saying “intelligence (sic) reports show that Saddam Hussein rebuilt his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program.”

At AIPAC’s 2008 convention, she said “(t)he United States stands with Israel now and forever,” claiming “our two nations are fighting a shared threat,” an invented one, she failed to explain.

Then and now, she backs “massive retaliation” if Iran attacks Israel – as a 2008 presidential aspirant, saying I “want the Iranians to know that if I’m president, we will attack Iran.”

“In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

She supports preemptive, unilateral use of nuclear weapons, including against non-nuclear states.

She orchestrated the ouster of democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, fascist tyranny replacing him.

In 2010, her attempt to remove Ecuador’s Rafael Correa failed. In 2012, her dirty hands were involved in ousting Paraguay’s democratically elected President Fernando Lugo – what he called “a parliamentary coup against the will of the people.”

She orchestrated US-led NATO aggression on Libya, destroying Africa’s most developed country, transforming it into a failed state – an endless cauldron of violence, chaos and human misery.

She notoriously celebrated Gaddafi’s sodomized murder, infamously saying “(w)e came. We saw. He died” – the rant of a lunatic eager to kill again.

She conspired with Obama and other administration neocons to wage preemptive war on Syria, raging in its sixth year, responsible for the murder of around half a million, mostly civilians, and internally or externally displacing half the population.

In her Thursday address, she called America “an exceptional country.” Its sordid history shows otherwise.

Her anti-Trump rant ignored her longstanding criminal record, including using the Clinton Foundation as a suspected criminal enterprise, masquerading as an NGO charity, vulnerable to racketeering charges.

Calling Trump “not just unprepared (but) temperamentally unfit” to hold high office ignores the danger of her finger on the nuclear trigger, the threat of WW III with her as president.

Trump fired back, twittering “(c)rooked Hillary no longer has credibility – too much failure in office. People will not allow another four years of incompetence” – adding her performance was “terrible…pathetic.”

Anyone rising to presidential material in America isn’t fit for any public office. The prospect of Clinton or Trump succeeding Obama should scare everyone.

Neocons infesting Washington exert enormous influence. Four more years of endless wars are certain. Humanity’s fate hangs in the balance

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].  His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.