As for the NYT article the other day about her foreign policy positions and outlook throughout her life and particularly as a Senator and the Secretary Of State, I thought it was a good article that gave a lot of context and added depth to foreign policy positions and philosophies we already knew she held. It is not news that she is more hawkish and more interventionist than many of the left would like. I have said before, that if given the choice, I'd prefer a third Obama term over Hillary, for several reasons, a major one being that I prefer his minimalist approach to military affairs, even with the moral questions the droning program raises. I have never shied away from the fact that I don't share her general philosophies in this area. Just because there are awful people doing horrific things in the world and we feel a moral obligation to do something about it because we're America, doesn't mean we should if we don't actually have a clear and effective way of removing the awful people(and replacing them with a stable system) and alleviating the horrific things.
All that said, for all the problems I have with her outlook on foreign affairs - of which there are plenty - I am still confident that she knows her shit and does her homework, that she knows what the fuck is going on in in any given foreign policy situation(or if she doesn't she makes it her business to seek out those who do and learn), which is more than I can say for her opponent. I may not agree with her, but I do feel a degree of confidence that the world won't blow up with her in office(like I said, I'd feel safer still with another Obama term). Furthermore, if she manages to accomplish even half the things on the DNC platform($15 minimum wage, tuition free stage college, gun control measures, public option, to name a few), it would be worth putting up with a more interventionist foreign policy than you would ideally want.
Also, to address BMP - just because we might disagree with her on these things, or because she might be wrong, does not mean she's 'bonkers'. That's silly.
And I know that Bernie people - of which I was one - like to point to her hawkish tendencies as a reason Bernie should've been the nominee, but the reality is that Bernie really didn't show much interest in being commander in chief when he was running, he only wanted to talk about domestic things. There's more to foreign policy than military intervention, and just because you're a pacifist doesn't mean you get to skip having a foreign policy. Hillary may be too hawkish, but I, despite voting for Bernie in the primary, was never convinced he'd be engaged or interested enough in the foreign policy side of the job to do it effectively, and it's one of the reasons my support for him weakened later on in the primary.
There wasn't a great foreign policy choice in the primary - it was either too interventionist or too disinterested. Like I said, I'd take a third Obama term over either.
Finally, when we read things like this, it is easy for those on the left to say, well, she doesn't seem much different, foreign policy wise, than a neo-con, she's just like Bush and Cheney and co. I would encourage anyone with that thought to dismiss it immediately. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were not just neo-cons, they weren't just interventionists, they weren't just hawkish - they were war criminals. They made shit up to justify an unnecessary war, they misled both the electorate and congress to do so, and as a result 4000 people died and who knows how many more came home physically wounded, mentally damaged, or both. So let those on the far left not fall into the trap of putting Hillary in the same camp.
