Hillary Rodham Clinton is seen in New York. Hillary Rodham Clinton has so far kept a low profile this year, something that’s starting to change as she heads toward her expected 2016 campaign for president.
WASHINGTON — No matter how much Hillary Rodham Clinton may seem to be a shoo in for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 2016, her hawkish war stance may keep voters away.
In a climate in which war-weary Americans are making their opposition to U.S. intervention and war profiteering heard, Clinton, who served in the U.S. Senate from 2001 to 2009 and as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, has supported every major recent U.S. war and intervention.
MintPress News takes a look at her record below:
- During her time as a senator from New York, Clinton voted in favor of the Patriot Act, a controversial piece of legislation due to concerns about civil liberty violations, including the indefinite detention of immigrants, and the expansion of law enforcement’s power to search homes, businesses, and electronic communications — often without a court order. Much like every other candidate, Clinton supports the United States’ traditional allies in the Middle East as well, like Saudi Arabia and Israel. She has also penned an opinion piece for the Washington Post, where she expressed her strong admiration for Henry Kissinger.
- Clinton, along with the majority of the U.S. Senate, supported the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan.
- The New York senator damningly voted in favor of the 2002 Iraq War Resolution, which sent U.S. troops into Iraq, destroyed the country, and served as an impetus for the chaos witnessed in the region today.
- Clinton introduced legislation in 2005 to increase the size of the U.S. Army by 80,000 soldiers due to difficulties the troop force was facing in Iraq.
- That same year, she helped to ensure that Manuel Zelaya, the democratically-elected president of Honduras, who was overthrown in a military coup in 2009, would not return to office. Later, she wrote in her 2014 book “Hard Choices,” “We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”
- In March 2011, Clinton supported the NATO attacks on Libya to aid rebels in their attempts to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi, which inadvertently led to Libya becoming the failed state that it is today.
- After becoming Secretary of State in 2009, Clinton supported Obama’s decision to send an additional 21,000 troops into Afghanistan.
- The secretary then supported greater contact with Free Syrian Army rebels in Syria and wanted to arm them.
- Clinton supported Israel’s attacks on Gaza last summer, which killed over 2,300 people and left almost 500,000 displaced.
- More recently, she supported a bombing campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but she’s said she opposes sending ground troops into the region.