Election Section

Perhaps the strongest reason to favor Sanders over Clinton is that Clinton is demonstrably a hawk. This is shown again in the recent Atlantic article by Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine”, April 2016.  

Clinton consistently sided with those advisors who were in favor of aggressive action in Syria and Libya, while V.P. Biden and Defense Secty Gates, among others, who were more cautious. Obama fortunately took the more cautious path. In the case of Syria and its chemical weapons this proved the wisest as he subsequently negotiated with the help of Putin for Syria to get rid of them. Obama couldn’t bomb the weapons sites themselves for the collateral damage so any bombing wouldn’t have accomplished much except for escalating the war.  

But that he had said he would bomb and didn’t was unforgiveable to the “Washington consensus”, and Hilary subscribed to it fully. She subsequently said “If you say you are going to strike, you have to strike. There’s no choice.” But there is always choice. Circumstances change.  

Since a President is relatively constrained domestically but has much more freedom as “commander in chief”, how a candidate views international matters is of paramount importance. And Clinton has very much of a track record in this arena, not for the best