by William Skink
A person I have a lot of respect for posted this article on her Facebook page that features a heartbreaking, graphic picture of a dead Syrian toddler who washed up on a beach. The little boy is face down in the surf, dead.
The first comment on that post is from a local Democratic politician who I have absolutely zero respect for. The comment stated simply this: yes.
I’m not sure what that “yes” is supposed to mean. The intention of the person who posted the article is to bring attention to the worse refugee crisis the world has seen since WWII. I’m assuming the yes is in solidarity with this effort to raise awareness.
The reason I can’t stomach that response is because that politician also ardently supports Hillary Clinton, a despicable warmongering hawk who gleefully celebrated the news of Gaddafi being sodomized with a bayonet, then executed.
Here is the Facebook response I wrote then chose not to post:
What needs to change is not European attitudes but American foreign policy. There are Syrian refugees because American foreign policy has been to arm “moderate” rebels who are not actually moderate but violent foreign fighting mercenaries and terrorists. There are Libyan refugees because interventionists like Hillary Clinton exploited a trumped-up humanitarian crisis to justify ousting and executing Gaddafi. This is geopolitics at its worst, and Americans remain mostly ignorant of what’s actually going on with their tax dollars abroad because our corporate media feeds us propaganda (even MSNBC). Maybe a picture of dead toddler washing up on the beach will change that. I doubt it, though.
Now, in Syria, Russia is getting more directly involved. How would a President Clinton respond?
The end of summer. It means back-to-school shopping, tearfully ended beach-borne romances, Labor Day barbecues—and, it would seem, the increased likelihood of new Russian adventurism. As if Moscow weren’t satisfied with the game in Ukraine, the last month has seen a flurry of reports about its ever-expanding military involvement in Syria.
One report has even alleged that Russian pilots are gearing up to fly missions alongside the Syrian air force, dropping bombs not just on ISIS but on anti-Assad rebels who may or may not be aligned with the United States or its regional allies.
Several sources consulted for this story said the Pentagon is being unusually cagey about Russia’s reinvigorated role in Syria. A former U.S. military officer told The Daily Beast, “I’m being told things like, ‘We really can’t talk about this.’ That indicates to me that there’s some truth to these allegations.”
Russian adventurism? How is that for propaganda?
Here is an analogy for RD readers. Both America and Russia have military bases in other countries. How do you think America would respond if China was blatantly arming “moderate rebels” in Japan? Do you think America would just stand by and allow strategic military bases to be threatened by a foreign nation? Hell no, America would intervene.
So why would we expect anything different from Russia?
Anyone who supports Hillary Clinton supports more war. More war means more war refugees. That’s the reality.
And remember, the neocons have become reluctant fans of Clinton’s ME adventurism. In that NYT article, a neocon alignment with Hillary Clinton is described as “not as outlandish as it may sound,” then goes on to state this:
Consider the historian Robert Kagan, the author of a recent, roundly praised article in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto. He has not only avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department.
Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he’s a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that citadel of liberalism headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article “magisterial,” in what amounts to a public baptism into the liberal establishment.)
Refugees will continue dying in the thousands. Politicians can lament over that harsh reality, but if they support Hillary Clinton, then I’m not interested in anything they have to say about the consequences of American foreign policy.
