by B. R. GOWANI
IMAGE/Bernie Sanders Video
She was Arkansas’ First Lady for 12 years, United States’ First Lady for 8 years, US senator for 8 years, and US Secretary of State for 4 years and now wants to be the President of the US for 4 to 8 years. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chances of winning the Iowa Democratic primaries was considered a smooth sailing. However, it didn’t happen that way. She won – but by just 0.3 percentage point. Till Iowa primary, she didn’t face much trouble.
February 3, 2016 CNN question answer session with presidential candidates, Hillary and Bernie Sanders, at a town hall meeting had put Hillary on the spot about her getting $675,000 from Goldman Sachs as speaking fees, but the February 4 MSNBC debate between both of them saw her bouncing back.
On February 3, she said she is a “progressive” but the next day she showed her preference for capital punishment. She defended the death sentence by citing Timothy McVeigh, the person behind the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1995, which 168 people got killed and the number of injured was over 600. Her reasoning for invoking McVeigh’s name must be: the larger the number of casualties, the bigger the chances of people accepting the death sentence. But a true progressive will never support a death penalty.
Hillary is a very sly politician and Sanders is too much of a gentleman which does not bode well for his campaign. He’ll have to attack her foreign policy record, which she’s never tired of reminding people. Sanders should draw the attention of his audience, readers, and listeners about her misadventure in Libya and the subsequent consequences. Libya, like any developing country had its problems, but it was a stable country. The Libyans didn’t have very many political rights but they did enjoy a good standard of living. In 2011, the Western countries, mainly France and the US, overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and turned that country into chaos. Today, Libya is divided into sections where different groups, including the ISIS or Islamic State, are holding power. From the US side, it was Hillary who was the major player behind the destruction of Libya. After Gaddafi was murdered, Hillary laughingly told a reporter:
Sanders should let his audience know about her foreign policy achievements – none of them are to be proud of. Sanders’ campaign will have to work hard to go after Hillary. Her people are already at work to discredit Sanders.
A case in point: Black writer Ta Nehesi Coates, who lives in France, recently attacked Sanders in one of his columns in The Atlantic magazine. The Black Agenda Reports’ Bruce A Dixon termed it as a transatlantic brain fart. What problem does Coates have with Sanders? He attacked Sanders, for his interview in Fusion, in which he refused to support reparations to blacks for slavery and past racism. Sanders’ reasons: the bill won’t pass in Congress and it will be divisive. The arguments are not very convincing. Yes, it will be hard to get it passed in Congress but then as a president it’s your work to go after it. Once it turns into a movement, the chances are that it might pass. But you have to try. The divisiveness can be minimized by cutting the $600 billion plus defense budget and diverting it to the Reparation Fund. One can understand Sanders’ hesitation to jump into this fray when he’s trying to concentrate on his campaign.
Hillary was asked the same question and she averted a direct answer. But Coates has nothing to say about Hillary, whose supporter he is, as if she is waiting with Reparations Fund to distribute it to the eligble blacks..
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com