Maidhc Ó Cathail:
In your
latest book, you dub Hillary Clinton the "Queen of Chaos". Can
you explain why you chose this derogatory sobriquet to describe
Hillary?
Diana Johnstone:
Libya, in a word.
Hillary Clinton was so
proud of her major role in instigating the war against Libya
that she and her advisors initially planned to use it as basis
of a "Clinton doctrine", meaning a "smart power" regime change
strategy, as a presidential campaign slogan.
The Libyan catastrophe actually inspired me to write this book,
along with the mounting danger of war with Russia.
War creates chaos, and Hillary Clinton has been an eager
advocate of every U.S. aggressive war in the last quarter of a
century. These wars have devastated whole countries and caused
an unmanageable refugee crisis.
Chaos is all there is to show
for Hillary's vaunted "foreign policy experience".
MÓC:
What would you say to women who want to see Hillary
as president because she's a woman?
You claim that,
"[a]voiding
World War III is somewhat more urgent than 'proving' that a
woman can be President of the United States."
Why do believe
that Hillary is likely to launch World War III?
DJ:
There are two questions here.
As for the second part, I
don't believe anyone will consciously launch World War III. The
situation now is more like the eve of World War I, when great
powers were armed and ready to go when an incident set things
off.
Ever since Gorbachev naïvely ended
the Cold War, the hugely over-armed United States has been
actively surrounding Russia with weapons systems, aggressive
military exercises, NATO expansion.
At the same time, in recent years the demonization of
Vladimir Putin has reached war propaganda levels.
Russians have
every reason to believe that the United States is preparing for
war against them, and are certain to take defensive measures.
This mixture of excessive military preparations and propaganda
against an "evil enemy" make it very easy for some trivial
incident to blow it all up.
My answer to the first part of the question is that "voting for
Hillary because she is a woman" makes no sense to me at all.
Yes, women should get together for causes that affect women in
general:
equal pay for equal work, equal recognition of
abilities, reproductive rights, maternity leave and child care,
that sort of thing.
But Hillary Clinton is an individual, she is
not women in general. Women together might fight for women's
right to be elected President, but that right exists.
It cannot
be reduced to one particular woman's right to be President.
The President of the United States is not a purely symbolic
position. It involves crucial decision-making powers. Hillary
Clinton has demonstrated dangerously poor judgment in fateful
questions of war and peace.
That should disqualify her.
MÓC:
One of your chapters is titled "Libya: A War of Her Own."
Considering the key role of the pro-Israeli
Bernard-Henri Lévy
in persuading France to support the so-called "rebels," why do
you single out Hillary for blame for NATO's destruction of the
formerly richest country in Africa?
DJ:
Bernard-Henri Lévy repeatedly stated that he supported
military intervention in Libya "as a Jew", perhaps meaning that
he considered overthrowing Gaddafi to be good for Israel.
The
French government was perhaps motivated by fear that Gaddafi's
scheme to create a gold-backed African currency might replace
the French-backed CFA franc used throughout France's former
African colonies.
But neither France nor France and Britain
together had the military capacity to carry out the operation
that finally overcame Libyan resistance.
The U.S. leadership was
divided, and it was Hillary Clinton who overcame the reluctance
of President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates to enter the war.
It was the United States that provided the means to destroy
Libya.
MÓC:
In the chapter titled "The War Party" you write that,
"[s]ince the War Party dominates both branches of the
Two-Party-System, the recent track record suggests the
Republicans will nominate a candidate bad enough to make Hillary
look good."
It sounds like you anticipated the incredible rise
of Donald Trump, doesn't it?
DJ:
As a matter of fact I didn't. But I did anticipate the rise
of Trump's main rival, Ted Cruz, who may actually be worse than
Trump.
As Robert Reich has pointed out, Cruz is a radical
right-wing fanatic, with solid reactionary convictions, who is
sure to do the wrong thing. Trump shoots off his mouth in all
directions, so much so that there's no telling what he might do.
At least he does seem interested in avoiding war with Russia.
Nor did I anticipate the rise of Bernie Sanders, and the
enthusiasm he has aroused among young people at the prospect of
nominating a decent alternative to Hillary Clinton.
Both phenomena show the deep dissatisfaction among Americans
with the country's dysfunctional political system.
MÓC:
In "Queen of Chaos," you predicted that,
"[a]s things look
now, the 2016 presidential race could be a contest between Haim
Saban and Sheldon Adelson. In either case, the winner would be
Israel."
Could you elaborate on Saban's "devotion" to another
Clinton presidency and what it would mean for U.S. foreign
policy?
DJ:
If you think U.S. policy couldn't be more pro-Israel than it
is now, just wait until you see Hillary in the White House.
After Haim Saban pledged to spend "as much as necessary" to make
her President, Hillary Clinton has pledged to invite Netanyahu
to the While House in her first month as President, to use the
occasion to "reaffirm the unbreakable bonds of friendship and
unity" between America and Israel, and to do everything to
destroy the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement.
She
continues to echo Israeli denunciations of Iran as a dangerous "terrorist state". She has previously equated criticism of
Israeli policies with "anti-Semitism" and blamed the people of
Gaza for Israeli assaults on their wretched territory.
Previous Presidents, including Obama, have often had their
moments of exasperation with Israel's uncontrollable conduct.
With Hillary, it seems that there would be no objections to
further Israeli destruction of Gaza or even to attacks on Iran.
She is perfectly in line with Israel's tacit policy to destroy
and dismember Syria.
MÓC:
When asked which women in the world
"inspired" her, Hillary
cited Pussy Riot.
What does this tell us about Hillary? And what
does it mean for U.S-Russia relations?
DJ:
Can you imagine Hillary having group sex with Bill in a
museum, as radical anarchist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova did in one
of her performance art protests against the system? An
"inspiration"?
As is so often the case, Hillary doesn't say what
is true, but grabs the chance to show how anti-Putin she is. The
joke is that Tolokonnikova recently expressed her preference for
Bernie Sanders.
MÓC:
If the so-called "responsibility to protect," or R2P, is to
be the organizing principle of Hillary's foreign policy, can you
explain why this would be bad for human rights around the world?
DJ:
The
Libyan disaster proved to most of the world
- although not
to Hillary - that R2P is a dangerous doctrine.
Supposedly to "protect" certain Islamist rebels in Benghazi, the NATO R2P
intervention totally destroyed the modern city of Sirte,
provided cover for racist lynching of Libya's black population,
killed thousands of civilians and left the country in a
shambles.
R2P might make sense if there really existed a neutral,
all-knowing world police force to intervene on the basis of
solid, unbiased evidence. This is most surely not the case
In the case of Libya, the evidence for the "humanitarian
emergency" was manufactured by internal opponents of the regime
and relayed to the world by a docile mainstream media.
It was
almost entirely untrue, but conflicting sources were ignored
(see Maximilian Forte,
Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO's War on
Libya and Africa.)
With the current relationship of forces in the world, R2P can
only be applied by a great power to a smaller one, according to
the great power's own interpretation of events in the smaller
one.
In reality, R2P is simply used by the United States against
regimes it doesn't like, period.
MÓC:
You write that the Nobel 'Peace' Prize-winning
Barack Obama,
"went on to outdo even his predecessors in useless aggressive
war-making - with moments of hesitation, however, which we cannot
expect from Hillary".
What makes you believe that a Clinton
presidency would be less hesitant than Obama to use U.S.
military force?
DJ:
Simple: whenever Obama hesitated, Hillary did not.
She urged
war in Libya, a no-fly zone in Syria, and from all she says,
would have been urging stronger action against Russia when her
former spokeswoman Victoria Nuland was leading the anti-Russian
coup in Kiev.
Her chuckling over the bestial murder of Gaddafi
shows an absence of any human feeling for her adversaries.
She
dismisses them as subhuman. In addition to her absence of
compassion, she seems to have no doubts about the ultimate
ability of the United States to prevail in any armed
conflict - and this is most dangerous of all.
She is ready to push
every adversary as far as possible, apparently certain that the
"bad guy" will back down - even if it happens to be nuclear-armed
Russia.
Obama apparently lacks Hillary's assurance. His lavish use of
murderous drones reflects the military recognition of the limits
of U.S. ground forces. He has been under constant pressure from
the War Party.
Sometimes he has resisted their pressure, as in
the case of chemical weapons in Syria, after Kerry had replaced
Clinton as Secretary of State.
MÓC:
In your concluding chapter titled "The War Party" you write
that,
"[t]he rise of Hillary Clinton should make clear the total
failure of clinging to the Democratic Party as the 'lesser
evil'."
But if the demagogic Donald Trump is running against
Hillary, do you think it's possible to convince voters that she
isn't the lesser of two evils?
DJ:
That looks impossible on the face of it.
Who knows, perhaps
Trump will make the danger of war a major issue. But it seems to
me now that an election contest between Donald Trump and Hillary
Clinton will be decided at the gut level, not on issues.
I may
be wrong, but foreign policy seems of minor concern in this
election, even though it should be a top concern.
Trump appalls
the elite, but Internet comments show that hostility to Hillary
is reaching the boiling point. It will be strengthened if Bernie
Sanders loses the nomination as a result of what looks like
cheating.
The way things are going, the November election risks
being a race between the two most hated people in America.
MÓC:
You propose a "Peace Party" as an alternative to the
"War
Party" that dominates both branches of the Two-Party-System.
You
suggest two admirable women to serve as part of a "peace team"
to support a "peace candidate", namely, Cynthia McKinney and
Coleen Rowley.
They couldn't be more different from the women
with whom Hillary has surrounded herself, such as,
-
Madeleine
Albright
-
Suzanne Nossel
-
Susan Rice
-
Samantha Power,
...could
they?
Are you optimistic that one day the American people will
become sufficiently aware to know the difference?
DJ:
By Peace Party, I mean something broader than a political
party.
I mean a network of knowledgeable, principled people who
are intent on saving the country and the world from what has
become an insanely arrogant policy of world domination.
The
difficulty is that the so-called neocons and the liberal
interventionists have more or less taken over the State
Department and have recently purged the Pentagon.
The Peace
Party could be made up of diplomats, scholars, military
officers, politicians, editors.
I would suggest that individuals
who want to avoid World War III need to study the example of the neocons, who through a web of think tanks, editorial pages,
financial interest and infiltration of the executive branch have
seized control of the policy-making apparatus.
Can this process
be reversed, and if so, how? It is not up to me to answer this
question. But it needs to be asked.
At the popular level, the Peace Party could be built on economic
demands:
-
cut back the insane military budget in order to finance
useful and productive domestic activities
-
shut down superfluous
military bases
-
stop expanding NATO to conquer the world
-
stop
subsidizing Israel to the tune of three billion dollars per
year
American riches, the American people and the American
future are being squandered to wage increasingly destructive
wars.
The real enemy is
the U.S. military industrial complex,
which survives and expands because the government provides sure
profits on financial investment.
If the American people were
fully aware of this, the Peace Party would grow naturally...
