Senator Clinton’s real foreign policy experience

I originally posted this at MyDD, and look forward to your comments.

While Obama supporters often obsess over the Iraq War Vote, there is no denying that Senator Clinton has far more Foreign Policy experience than Senator Obama.  If one reads the Foreign Policy Speech she gave yesterday (link), there is an impressive grasp of world affairs.

But giving a speech is not the full extent of her foreign policy experience.  There is testimony from all parts of the world about her involvement in world affairs, playing a role that is far beyond that of a typical First Lady or even a US Senator.

The New York Times seemed to intentionally minimize her role during the White House years in a piece late last year.  They wrote (link):

Her role mostly involved what diplomats call “soft power” — converting cold war foes into friends, supporting nonprofit work and good-will endeavors, and pressing her agenda on women’s rights, human trafficking and the expanded use of microcredits, tiny loans to help individuals in poor countries start small businesses.

Hillary’s real influence in African Affairs

This is an impressive list but is made to look more like the typical First Lady role.  This theme of people intentionally playing down her experience is also part of a discussion by Ambassador Joseph Wilson of his interaction with her when he was over African Affairs.  Wilson talks about a key role played by Hillary in African Affairs, and mentions that some of the people who know this work for Obama and yet are suddenly forgetting what she did (link):

During my tenure as Senior Director for African Affairs in the Clinton Administration, I had the responsibility for helping to plan and execute President Clinton’s historic trip to that continent. It was a trip that forever changed the way American administrations think about Africa. I spent eleven days with President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton traveling to six countries and meeting with leaders from many more. She was a full participant in all of our activities and a key adviser–and for good reason. Hillary had previously traveled to Africa, leading a prominent U.S. delegation to several countries. On her return she was instrumental in persuading the president that he should invest that most precious of presidential assets–time–in his own trip. People who are now senior advisers to Senator Obama were involved in both of those trips. So it is mystifying to me that they have allowed themselves to “forget” the key role Hillary played in such a major shift in approach to that part of the world and have participated in a negative campaign tactic on the part of the Obama campaign to demean her significant contributions to foreign policy of which they are well aware.

Hillary’s real role in the Northern Ireland Peace Process

And although there has been a move by some to minimize Hillary’s role in the Northern Ireland peace process, those who worked with her are having none of that (link):

“I am quite surprised that anyone would suggest that Hillary Clinton did not perform important foreign policy work as first lady. I can state from firsthand experience that she played a positive role for over a decade in helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland,” said former SDLP leader and Nobel laureate John Hume is a statement responding to critical press reports.

“She visited Northern Ireland, met with very many people and gave very decisive support to the peace process. In private she made countless calls and contacts, speaking to leaders and opinion makers on all sides, urging them to keep moving forward,” said Hume.

Hillary’s real challenge of the Chinese over rights for women

She took on the Chinese over women’s rights in particular.  In the NYT piece that seemed intentionally written to belittle her White House years, even they wrote that she stood up to Chinese officials (link):

…The foreign policy achievement most often credited to Mrs. Clinton came in 1995, with her speech to the United Nations conference on women in Beijing, where she declared that “human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” She also tangled with Chinese officials, she said, and refused to bow to pressure to soften her remarks.
“She had a good balance of being firm on these issues, even if they clearly covered Chinese sins, but also understanding the need for good relations with China,” said Winston Lord, then the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, who briefed and accompanied her on the trip.

Hillary’s real key role in Kosovo

But perhaps the biggest event that Senator Clinton had a role in during the White House years is her involvement in Kosovo.  During this time there was a lot of opposition from Republicans in congress (See discussion here)and from the Pentagon to getting involved in what appeared to be a Civil War.  President Clinton was torn between the Department of Defense and the Department of State.  Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke and General Wes Clark were pushing for involvement because there was an impending ethnic slaughter of Kosovars.  They reached out to Hillary and she then convinced Bill to get involved.  That is mentioned in the NYT piece and here (though with details twisted to make it look like a purely political calculation).  More discussion of these events here.

Here is what the NYT actually said, which is intentionally misleading:

In visits to Bosnia and Kosovo after the American-led bombing of Serbia, she entered war zones before officials believed it was safe for her husband to go and acted as a spokeswoman for American interests rather than as a negotiator. Mrs. Clinton had become a champion of the bombing campaign, and many officials — including Madeleine K. Albright and Richard Holbrooke in the administration and Tony Blair, then Britain’s prime minister — turned to her at times to stiffen Mr. Clinton’s resolve to take on Serbia.

It is worth remembering that Kosovo actually yielded the hearts and flowers that Vice-President Cheney and others promised us we would see in Iraq.  Picture here.  It is also worth noting that although there are some critics of the war in Bosnia and Kosovo, Senator Obama’s own Foreign Policy analyst, Samantha Power, recently defended the actions taken there by the Clinton adminstration.  She refused to accept much of what critic Jeremy Scahill had to say. (link)

Hillary’s real involvement in Palestinian Statehood Issues

Hillary has also been involved in pushing for Palestinian statehood.  Here is a mention by the ever noxious William Safire of a statement she made supporting Palestinian statehood in May of 1998.  And though Senator Clinton is often painted as a pro-Israel War Hawk, there is at least some evidence that Palestinians think she would be on their side as president. (link, link) (For those who believe Senator Obama is better on Israeli Palestinian issues, they need to read this.)

One thing Hillary has done is to publicly address the textbooks used to teach Palestinian children to hate.  A youtube video of part of that work is here.

The real story about the Iraq War Vote

As in other areas, there are people who were part of discussion of the Iraq War vote who intentionally remain silent about previous events in order to promote Senator Obama over Senator Clinton.  Among these are some bloggers, Josh Marshall for example, who defended the same exact position in 2004 that Senator Clinton holds now. (link)

There is no end of Obama supporters who claim that they knew at the time of the AUMF vote that it was a vote for war and that George Bush could not be trusted.  I am not just speaking only of bloggers but also of some media personalities.  Chelsea Clinton recently referred to such claims as “clairvoyance” and got called all sorts of nasty names in the lefty blogs. (One example here)  One person in particular who could have stepped up on this and set the record straight is Senator Ted Kennedy.  Here is what he said in 2002:

“In this serious time for America and many American families, no one should poison the public square by attacking the patriotism of opponents, or by assailing proponents as more interested in the cause of politics than in the merits of their cause. I reject this, as should we all. Let me say it plainly, I not only concede, but I am convinced that President Bush believes genuinely in the course he urges upon us. …There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein’s regime is a serious danger, that he is [a] tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated.”

The reason I know Senator Kennedy said this is that Tim Russert whacked him over the head with this quote in 2004 on Meet The Press.  Clearly, telling the truth about that time period is not as important to him as promoting Senator Obama.  A lot of lies are being told about who said what then to build up a candidate who was not even in the Senate at the time.  And a lot of unfair anger is being directed at Senator Clinton that Senator Kennedy and others are shamelessly allowing to happen.

One person who has spoken up in defense of Senator Clinton is also one of the chief critics of the Bush administration and the intelligence manipulation leading up to the war: Ambassador Joseph Wilson.  Here is what he said (link):

A number of us, like then Illinois state senator Obama, opposed the second Gulf War. My own opposition from the beginning has been well documented. I fought the fight in the arena itself, Washington DC, against a ruthless administration and its supporters while the senator’s opposition came from a far distance and carried no risk, given that he represented in Springfield, Illinois the district encompassing the University of Chicago. As an obscure but safe provincial political figure, he never was granted access to the distorted intelligence that was used to drive the Congress and the media. When I looked to the left or to the right for support, I never saw the state senator. In fact, I never heard of Barack Obama until he announced his intention to run for the Senate in the 2006 election.

In the run up to the war and thereafter, I was in frequent discussions with senior Democrats in Washington, including Senator Clinton, and I was keenly aware of her demand for the full exercise of international diplomacy and allowing the weapons inspectors to complete their mission. Many of the most prominent early opponents of the war, including former General Wes Clark and former ambassador to the United National Richard Holbrooke support Senator Clinton for President, as do I. We do so because we know that she has the experience and the judgment that comes from having been in the arena for her entire adult life–and from close personal participation with her in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. And we have trust in her to end the war in Iraq in the most responsible way, consistent with our national security interests.

During this time Senator Clinton has repeatedly said that although she did not read the complete NIE she got enough briefing on it to believe the info was suspect.  So she reached out to the international network of intelligence analysts to find out if Saddam really had weapons or not.  It is only recently that most of us learned, from an FBI agent interviewed on 60 Minutes (link), why the international network she reached out to could not give her a definite answer: Saddam was intentionally giving the impression that he did indeed have WMD because he wanted to scare the Iranis.

Even Senator Obama admitted in his famous speech that Saddam might have WMDs (link):

I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

Since no one knew for sure and Saddam had been willing to assassinate a former US President (link) and had once threatened the security of Israel (link), this seems to be an instance where it is better to be safe than sorry.  With that in mind, Senator Obama’s willingness to not push for weapons inspectors to be allowed into Iraq seems ill-advised.

Senator Clinton’s Real Actions on Iran

Getting back to the subject of Iran, Senator Clinton has long urged attention to the issue, pointing out the threats to Israel and Lebanon in addition to concerns in Iraq.  She urged for sanctions, not war, and went to great lengths to say that the President Bush should not go to war with Iran unless he had specific congressional approval.

Critics of Senator Clinton say that her support of the Webb amendment, which basically said the same thing, was a mere CYA effort because of her Kyl-Lieberman vote.  But Hillary had been publicly saying the same thing some six months before the Webb amendment came into the picture.

And while we are on the subject of Kyl-Lieberman, Senator Clinton took a lot of criticism from Barack and John and their supporters, even though both had been willing to bomb Iran.  Never mind that Hillary had said over and over that she felt Iran was dangerous because of the threats to Lebanon and Israel, if not Iraq, and that she said she signed Kyl Lieberman as a way of getting diplomatic leverage against Iran.

Of course the supposedly really smart people, especially on the blogs, would have none of this explanation.  Even though Josh Marshall at TPM, as just one example, admitted that the part about authorizing use of the military against Iran was taken out, even including a copy of the changes that were made so readers could see for themselves, even so Josh, who I really respect, and others, complained to high heaven about the vote and refused to accept that labeling the IRG as a terrorist organization might give diplomatic leverage.  

And this kvetching from the blogs and others was all in spite of the fact that all three of the principal players in rescuing the Kosovo Albanians from Milosevic, Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke and Wes Clark, who had to get help from Hillary to drag the Pentagon kicking and screaming to get involved, and who still do not get the recognition they deserve for doing so, supported the vote and pointed out that the final legislation did not include the part that was likely put in the document to use as an excuse to start a war with Iran.

Even Digby got all sidetracked by what Kyl and Lieberman and their neocon friends probably intended to do with the amendment.  She failed to focus on the fact that the final document only labeled the IRG as terrorists and she failed to discuss that such a labeling could conceivably be used as diplomatic leverage against the Iranians.  No sir, all the supposedly very smart people, even some Hillary supporters, failed to contextualize Hillary’s vote within the years of her personal discussion of Iran and/or give her the benefit of the doubt.