A Vote for Barbarism

Keeping up with Hillary’s abuses of power, scandals and criminality could be a full-time job. They go back decades. In 1978 and 1979, there is the cattle futures trading scandal. The Whitewater scandal erupted in 1992-1993 and goes back to the 70s and 80s. These financial scandals culminate recently with the Clinton Foundation’s sales of influence and her secretive Wall Street speeches and commitments for extraordinary fees. CNN reporters, our moral arbiter on such matters, tell us “There is nothing illegal or unethical about former Secretaries of State earning money on the speaking circuit. And according to sources in the industry, there is nothing unusual about someone with the name value of Hillary Clinton being able to charge so much.” Washington is corrupt to the bone. The entire operation is a sty, and CNN is part of it.

Several e-mailers provide further thoughts on Hillary’s e-mails. One link is here. That one suggests that Clinton’s attack on Trump on national security grounds implicitly admits that her missing e-mails contained important government matters, not just yoga routines and magically transform American-committed homicides, injuries and massive destruction of property into “self-defense”. And if there are not CNN reporters stepping up to defend murder, then there will be the national security establishment and a host of neocons.

One quick reply is that not a single preemptive military engagement of the U.S. passes the Caroline test: “The Caroline test is a 19th-century formulation of customary international law, reaffirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II, which said that the necessity for preemptive self-defense must be ‘instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.’”

Saddam Hussein had already been bombed and cowed into submission and a condition of toothless weakness. He posed no immediate or instant or overwhelming threat to America. He had no means of attacking her. Neither did the Taliban in Afghanistan. Neither did Gaddafi in Libya. Neither did any part of the former Yugoslavia. Neither does Assad in Syria, which is where Hillary Clinton is determined to act. Neither do Ukraine, Crimea or Donbass. In all these cases, there was “no choice of means”. There were plenty of other possible choices. There was plenty of time for deliberation. None of these passed the Caroline test, a test that is virtually common sense. Either U.S. officials have taken leave of their senses, Hillary Clinton among them, or they have abandoned prior standards of lawfulness in international relations and reverted to savage behavior, making the world far more dangerous, or both. Voting for her is a vote for barbarism claiming to be responsible and morally right.

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