{"id":273905,"date":"2016-10-19T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/hillary-clinton-and-syria-stupidity-or-something-worse\/"},"modified":"2016-10-19T18:11:13","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T18:11:13","slug":"hillary-clinton-and-syria-stupidity-or-something-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/hillary-clinton-and-syria-stupidity-or-something-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillary Clinton and Syria: Stupidity or Something Worse?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In
\n any critical study of US foreign policy, one question is bound to arise: Are
\n they really this stupid?<\/p>\n

By
\n \u201cthey\u201d I am of course referring to the politicians and advisers that have set
\n and implemented the disastrous course of foreign intervention. The question
\n is aimed at trying to explain these repetitive failures.<\/p>\n

Depending
\n on the politician at hand, stupidity can offer a reasonably persuasive explanation
\n for foreign policy decisions (ahem, George W. Bush and Iraq comes to mind).
\n But for many others, it doesn\u2019t seem to apply. For example, I do not think President
\n Obama or Secretary Hillary Clinton are stupid or ignorant on matters of foreign
\n policy. In spite of this, they have still committed many of the same mistakes
\n as their predecessors \u2013 overthrowing sovereign governments, backing dubious radical
\n groups, etc.<\/p>\n

I raise this point because we now have new evidence which confirms that, in
\n fact, Clinton is quite knowledgeable about one of today\u2019s most prominent foreign
\n policy issues, Syria. The evidence comes from a transcript of Clinton\u2019s notorious
\n Goldman Sachs speeches, which were recently leaked by WikiLeaks This particular
\n speech occurred in June 2013, before President Obama\u2019s more public push for
\n strikes directly against the Syrian government.<\/p>\n

In
\n the speech, Clinton displays a remarkably accurate grasp of the players and
\n forces at work in the Syrian conflict. Indeed, her characterization is not altogether
\n different from one you might read from me or other commentators that support
\n nonintervention. The problem is that, in spite of her understanding of the situation
\n and the risks involved, she supports a dangerous strategy of intervention anyway.
\n Here are some relevant excerpts<\/a> from a talk she
\n gave in June 2013 (emphasis mine):<\/p>\n

So
\n let\u2019s just take a step back and look at the situation that we currently have
\n in Syria. When \u2013 before the uprising started in Syria it was clear that you
\n had a minority government running with the Alawites in lead with mostly the
\n other minority groups \u2013 Christians, the Druze, some significant Sunni business
\n leaders. But it was clearly a minority that sat on top of a majority. And the
\n uprisings when they began were fairly mild in terms of what they were asking
\n for, and Assad very well could have in my view bought them off with some cosmetic
\n changes that would not have resulted in what we have seen over the now two years
\n and the hundred thousand deaths and the destabilization that is going on in
\n Lebanon, in Jordan, even in Turkey, and the threat throwing to Israel and the
\n kind of pitched battle in Iran well supported by Russia, Saudi, Jordanians and
\n others trying to equip the majority Sunni fighters.<\/p>\n

Here,
\n Clinton is acknowledging that, at least by 2013, the conflict had devolved into
\n a complicated proxy war….<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In any critical study of US foreign policy, one question is bound to arise: Are they really this stupid? By \u201cthey\u201d I am of course referring to the politicians and advisers that have set and implemented the disastrous course of foreign intervention. The question is aimed at trying to explain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18,1616,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-273905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire","7":"category-latest-news","8":"category-usa-news","9":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}