Sunday, November 16, 2008

Hillary for State? What would Change?

Comment # 115. NYTimes
November 16, 2008 10:52 am

Link:
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/11/16/opinion/16dowd.html?permid=115#comment115


Hillary has a higher profile and proven capability in international affairs and has more credentials in foreign policy than Barack Obama or ANY of her colleagues in Congress.
Hillary would be an invaluable asset to the Obama cabinet and she would probably, given her energy, drive, ambition, political astuteness, prove to be a great Secretary of State.

If Hillary is appointed Secretary of State, it would then be up to informed and progressive members of the U.S.electorate, NOT to support the 60-year policy of the U.S. State Department to meddle, with disastrous consequences, in the internal affairs and foreign policy priorities of sovereign states.

To name a few:

Pakistan is trying its best to deal with its own extremist threat within its own borders. The U.S. better not conduct so-called counterterrorist incursions (with loss of civilian life)into Pakistan because the U.S. will undoubtedly unleash a long-term backlash against itself in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Russia has a right to reconfigure relationships with republics of the erstwhile Soviet Union without a Cheney-type threat to Putin and Medvedev.

Iran, like every sovereign nation-state has every right to develop its nuclear capability. It is NOT for the U.S. (which has the MOST nuclear warheads and is the ONLY nation-state that has used nuclear against another nation-state) to decide who should or should not develop nuclear capability.

The U.S. can certainly boost humanitarian aid (with no-strings attached) in Africa. That would be a beneficial use of the State Department's resources.

No matter who is appointed to lead State, that individual will likely continue to follow an unfair, unethical, undemocratic pro-Zionist policy in the so-called Middle East (it is West Asia).

The people of the nation-states of West Asia, especially the Palestinian people have long suffered the consequences of first British/French and now U.S. neo-imperial greed and manipulation.

So, I have only modest hopes about the Hillary candidacy for Secretary of State. I am pragmatically aware that the US under Barack Obama will NOT be progressive, but neoliberal and militaristic.

The U.S. will continue to DOMINATE instead of PARTICIPATE in international initiatives and alliances to build a more equitable world order. The U.S. will continue to distort international politics with its direct interventions and its self-serving, supremacist divide-and-rule strategy.

In my view the U.S. has proven to be the greatest threat to world peace, stability and an equitable world economic order, in the last 60 years. This is not going to change in any substantive way, no matter who becomes the U.S. Secretary of State.

Much of the world is moving in the direction of new multi-polar alliances and reconfigurations but the U.S. continues to be uni-polar.

How 20th century!

An ethical electorate (can this admittedly small section of the U.S. electorate coalesce around progressive goals?) that places the Greater Collective Good(GCG) of ALL of the world's peoples, over the aggressive and destructive stance of the Cheney-Bush U.S. State Department can attempt to make a difference.

Will the "change" at State really mean, in practice, no change at all? Just hype, no change?

The burden of proof is on the incoming Obama administration.

Chithra KarunaKaran
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com

— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
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