By Scott Tibbs, August 10, 2016
A letter to the editor recently suggested what people angry with Hillary Clinton over the Benghazi massacre are hypocrites for not having the same level of outrage over the Iraq war. This argument ignores history and Clinton's record on matters of war and peace. If you're looking for a candidate committed to non-interventionism, that candidate is not Hillary Clinton.
First, Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq war. She now claims her vote was a mistake based on false information. I also supported the Iraq war and, like Clinton, I realize I was wrong. In fact, even with the knowledge that I had in 2003, I would have opposed the war if I had it to do over again. But has Clinton really learned her lesson? No, she has not. She is to this day supporting the exact same policies that led us to war in Iraq in different parts of the Middle East.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama used American military force to bring about "regime change" in Libya. Moammar Gadhafi presented no threat to our national security. Like in Iraq, Clinton was totally unprepared for the aftermath of "regime change" - a power vacuum that devolved into chaos. Had there been no "regime change" in 2011 there would have been no Benghazi massacre in 2012. Clinton and Obama have weakened and threatened Bashir Assad's regime in Syria, and weakening Assad has strongly contributed to the rise of the Islamic State.
Hillary Clinton is an interventionist to her core. She fully supports using American military force all over the world where there is no national security interest. One of these - the utterly foolish invasion of Somalia in 1992, fully supported by the last Clinton administration - led directly to the massacre of American troops in Mogadishu. There was, of course, no national security interest in Somalia. Sound familiar?
We should be engaged in the world economically and diplomatically, but the use of military force should always be a last resort, only when our vital national security interests are directly threatened. With Hillary Clinton, we can count on four more years of the same kind of military interventionism we have seen under both Republicans and Democrats for generations. This is not a path we should continue to travel.
