Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Policy Record Dissected in Diana Johnstone’s “Queen of Chaos”

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“Facts are stubborn things”

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The quote’s credit has been alternatively given to the second U.S. president, John Adams, to Stalin – and many others.

If Joe Biden wins the presidency – an open question at this point – I’ll bet dollars to donuts that Hillary Clinton  will have considerable sway over Biden’s foreign policy – either directly or through a proxy (Kamala Harris?).

Just started this book, Queen of Chaos by Diana Johnstone. It’s a political biography of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy activités. The book was published by “Counterpunch” – the on-line left journal and came out just prior to the 2016 election. As the 2020 presidential election approaches, it is worth re-examining.

“Some of my best friends” will scream “foul!” – but then again, there are those “stubborn things” – the facts… and Diana Johnstone exposes and analyzes their meaning as well as anyone … and probably better!

It reads well – actually better than that. So many friends – Facebook or elsewhere – “love” Hillary Clinton. There is the Hillary Clinton of Bill C’s 1992 presidential run talking about universal healthcare – and giving a rousing speech to that end at the back of Norlin Library on the C.U.-Boulder campus. Thousands were present, me included, actually wishing that Hillary was the candidate rather than Bill.

Ah, for the good old days, the good old Hillary!

But….

It’s all been downhill for Hillary since then.

What has been missing from most of the discussions about Hillary Clinton is her awful foreign policy record. Not unusual, the eyes of most Americans glaze over when it comes to foreign policy – be it Honduras, Libya or wherever Hillary has left her mark – her mark being the overthrow of governments and the assassination of their leaders.

Not everyone who criticizes Hillary Clinton is a misogynist.

Not everyone who criticizes Hillary Clinton is a misogynist.

It is not a pretty picture – and there IS a well documented record. Johnstone is unsparing in her criticisms of Hillary Clinton – but not without facts, reason behind the allegations.

Hillary Clinton a foreign policy hawk. She needs to be held accountable.

When push comes to shove, she was not better in directing the main lines of U.S. foreign policy than John Bolton in his brief fling with causing foreign policy chaos or that of the present Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. Bolton and Pompeo are, like the president they serve, graceless. Hillary is more graceful, does a better job hiding behind the screen of “democracy” and “humanitarian intervention” but the policies of all three dove tail nicely. There is no difference. It’s more a question of “How do you want your imperialism? Sugar coated or hard core?”

The introduction sets the tone – Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama’s Secretary of State – helps engineer the 2009 coup which overthrows Andorran president Manuel Zelaya from power, and then connives to make sure he cannot return to the presidency by a fierce campaign of repression and assassination of Honduran social activists – trade unionists, democrats. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the more recent U.S. sponsored overthrow of Bolivian president Evo Morales: a military coup of officers trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia that puts a U.S. puppet in power and crushes the protest movement trying to restore democracy.

We have Honduran friends here in Denver, forced to leave Honduras and trek across the Mexican-U.S border to placed in an immigration holding camp for six months in Texas,  who left Honduras in the aftermath of the Zelaya coup. Fearing for their lives made unlivable in an orgy of post coup government orchestrated violence, they are a part of unstoppable wave of Central Americans fleeing the repression, crime and chaos that Hillary Clinton did so much to foster in that country. And most of us aware of the not-so-gentle embrace with its nazi like policies with which the both the Obama and Clinton Administrations greeted Honduran refugees seeking asylum in the United States

Johnstone’s brief introductory expose on Hillary’s Honduran coup machinations is just the opening salvo to a record of Clinton’s global war-mongering. Will reflect more on this record – and in greater detail – when I get to the chapters on her role of overthrowing Khadaffi in Libya where the “true Hillary” comes into her own.

Not too late to buy a copy.