[Marxism] Muscular on defense

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

 From Aug. 1999 Nation Magazine editorial endorsement of Hillary Clinton:

Like Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom she likes to identify, Hillary Clinton
has spent the better part of her years as First Lady schlepping around
the country and the globe, meeting as often with the powerless as with
the powerful. There is nothing really new about her much-publicized
listening tour of New York except the several hundred reporters who are
now part of her entourage. She has visited more schools, daycare
centers, hospitals, family planning clinics, model factories, housing
projects, parks, micro-enterprises, agricultural cooperatives and the
like than her staff can tally. She has boundless energy and enthusiasm
for this sort of thing, born of her understanding that what works, and
what's therefore to be taken most seriously, is rarely the product of
elegant social or economic planning but rather the less predictable
outcome of the often messy process of democratic politics, where
policy-makers are obligated to respond to myriad interests.

===

NY Times, April 23, 2004
Keeping Close Eye on Senator, Clinton-Watchers Increasingly See a Hawk
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

WASHINGTON, April 22 - In 1969, Hillary Rodham, then a student, wound up
on the pages of Life magazine after giving a defiant commencement speech
at Wellesley College that reflected the antiwar sentiment and political
turmoil of the era.

"We're not in the positions yet of leadership and power, but we do have
that indispensable task of criticizing and constructive protest,'' she
said, taking aim at the featured commencement speaker, Senator Edward W.
Brooke, a Republican from Massachusetts who urged support for the
Vietnam War in his address.

Fairly or not, Hillary Rodham Clinton's image on defense has been
largely defined by her actions during the Vietnam War, when she
organized teach-ins at Wellesley, as well as her association with her
husband, who aroused great suspicion within the military circles as a
result of his Vietnam draft record and his position on homosexuals in
the armed forces. But these days, Senator Clinton, of New York, has
offered a starkly different image, presenting herself as muscular on
defense even when that puts her at odds with members of her own party.

Even as the war in Iraq proves unpopular with her core base of liberal
supporters, not to mention some mainstream Democrats, Mrs. Clinton has
emerged as one of the most prominent Democratic backers of the military
activities. In recent months, in speeches and interviews, she has
defended her vote authorizing the Republican president to wage war,
argued for more troops in Iraq and sided with President Bush's
contention that Saddam Hussein was, as she put it, "a potential threat''
who "was seeking weapons of mass destruction, whether or not he actually
had them.''

Last week, with violence surging in Iraq, she stood by her decision to
approve a Congressional resolution permitting military action there,
though she did accuse the president of failing to build sufficient
international support for the war and failing to plan adequately for the
aftermath of Mr. Hussein's downfall. And she appeared to agree with
President Bush's contention that the conflict in Iraq was part of the
broader fight against terror, indicating that global threats like Mr.
Hussein took on greater urgency in a post-Sept. 11 world. "After 9/11, a
lot of threats had to be looked at with fresh eyes,'' she said in the
interview.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/23/nyregion/23hillary.html

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