MARJORIE COHN, marjorielegal at gmail.com, @marjoriecohn
Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and editor most recently of the book Drones and Targeted Killing. She just wrote the piece: “Want Endless War? Love the U.S. Empire? Well, Hillary Clinton’s Your Choice,” which states: “Hillary Clinton likes to extol her foreign policy credentials, particularly her experience as secretary of state. She attaches herself to Barack Obama’s coattails, pledging to continue his policies. But she is even more hawkish than the president. …
“Obama, who continues to prosecute the war in Afghanistan 15 years after it began, is poised to send ground troops back to Iraq and begin bombing Libya. … The president has bombed some seven countries with drones. …
“Although Clinton supports the [Iran] nuclear deal, she talks tough about Iran. In September 2015, she provocatively declared, ‘I don’t believe Iran is our partner in this agreement. Iran is the subject of the agreement,’ and added, ‘I will confront them across the board.’ … In an August 2014 Atlantic interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, Clinton maintained, ‘There is no such thing as a right to enrich.’ Apparently, she has not read the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which gives countries like Iran the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. …
“One country that does possess nuclear weapons is Israel — which refuses to ratify the NPT. Clinton has consistently and uncritically supported the policies of the Israeli government. …
“Clinton’s vote in favor of President George W. Bush’s illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq cost her the 2008 election. It also cost more than 4,500 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives.
“Yet Clinton cynically told corporate executives at a 2011 State Department roundtable on investment opportunities in Iraq, ‘It’s time for the United States to start thinking of Iraq as a business opportunity.’
“The same year, Clinton led the campaign for forcible regime change in Libya, despite opposition by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Responding to the gruesome sodomizing of President Moammar Gadhafi with a bayonet, Clinton laughed and said, ‘We came, we saw, he died.’
“Both the Iraq War and regime change in Libya paved the way for the rise of Islamic State and dangerous conflict in the Middle East. …”
