Here's the choice you'll have to make if it's Trump vs. Hillary:

This is the saddest crop of candidates I've ever seen.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clinton-became-a-hawk.html

Clinton singled out,as she often would,the United Nations climate-change meeting in Copenhagen the previous December,where she and Obama worked together to save the meeting from collapse. She brought up the Middle East peace process,a signature project of the president’s,which she had been tasked with reviving. But she was understandably wary of talking about areas in which she and Obama split —namely,on bedrock issues of war and peace,where Clinton’s more activist philosophy had already collided in unpredictable ways with her boss’s instincts toward restraint. She had backed Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendation to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan,before endorsing a fallback proposal of 30,000 (Obama went along with that,though he stipulated that the soldiers would begin to pull out again in July 2011,which she viewed as problematic). She supported the Pentagon’s plan to leave behind a residual force of 10,000 to 20,000 American troops in Iraq (Obama balked at this,largely because of his inability to win legal protections from the Iraqis,a failure that was to haunt him when the Islamic State overran much of the country). And she pressed for the United States to funnel arms to the rebels in Syria’s civil war (an idea Obama initially rebuffed before later,halfheartedly,coming around to it).

That fundamental tension between Clinton and the president would continue to be a defining feature of her four-year tenure as secretary of state. In the administration’s first high-level meeting on Russia in February 2009,aides to Obama proposed that the United States make some symbolic concessions to Russia as a gesture of its good will in resetting the relationship. Clinton,the last to speak,brusquely rejected the idea,saying,“I’m not giving up anything for nothing.” Her hardheadedness made an impression on Robert Gates,the defense secretary and George W. Bush holdover who was wary of a changed Russia. He decided there and then that she was someone he could do business with.

“I thought,This is a tough lady,” he told me.

A few months after my interview in her office,another split emerged when Obama picked up a secure phone for a weekend conference call with Clinton,Gates and a handful of other advisers. It was July 2010,four months after the North Korean military torpedoed a South Korean Navy corvette,sinking it and killing 46 sailors. Now,after weeks of fierce debate between the Pentagon and the State Department,the United States was gearing up to respond to this brazen provocation. The tentative plan —developed by Clinton’s deputy at State,James Steinberg —was to dispatch the aircraft carrier George Washington into coastal waters to the east of North Korea as an unusual show of force.

But Adm. Robert Willard,then the Pacific commander,wanted to send the carrier on a more aggressive course,into the Yellow Sea, between North Korea and China. The Chinese foreign ministry had warned the United States against the move,which for Willard was all the more reason to press forward. He pushed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,Mike Mullen,who in turn pushed his boss,the defense secretary,to reroute the George Washington. Gates agreed, but he needed the commander in chief to sign off on a decision that could have political as well as military repercussions.

Gates laid out the case for diverting the George Washington to the Yellow Sea: that the United States should not look as if it was yielding to China. Clinton strongly seconded it. “We’ve got to run it up the gut!” she had said to her aides a few days earlier. (The Vince Lombardi imitation drew giggles from her staff,who,even 18 months into her tenure,still marveled at her pugnacity.)

Obama,though,was not persuaded. The George Washington was already underway;changing its course was not a decision to make on the fly.

“I don’t call audibles with aircraft carriers,” he said —unwittingly one-upping Clinton on her football metaphor.

It wasn’t the last debate in which she would side with Gates. The two quickly discovered that they shared a Midwestern upbringing,a taste for a stiff drink after a long day of work and a deep-seated skepticism about the intentions of America’s foes. Bruce Riedel,a former intelligence analyst who conducted Obama’s initial review on the Afghanistan war,says: “I think one of the surprises for Gates and the military was,here they come in expecting a very left-of-center administration,and they discover that they have a secretary of state who’s a little bit right of them on these issues —a little more eager than they are,to a certain extent. Particularly on Afghanistan,where I think Gates knew more had to be done,knew more troops needed to be sent in,but had a lot of doubts about whether it would work.”

As Hillary Clinton makes another run for president,it can be tempting to view her hard-edged rhetoric about the world less as deeply felt core principle than as calculated political maneuver. But Clinton’s foreign-policy instincts are bred in the bone —grounded in cold realism about human nature and what one aide calls “a textbook view of American exceptionalism.” It set her apart from her rival-turned-boss,Barack Obama,who avoided military entanglements and tried to reconcile Americans to a world in which the United States was no longer the undisputed hegemon. And it will likely set her apart from the Republican candidate she meets in the general election. For all their bluster about bombing the Islamic State into oblivion,neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has.

PkrBum wrote:http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clinton-became-a-hawk.html

Clinton singled out,as she often would,the United Nations climate-change meeting in Copenhagen the previous December,where she and Obama worked together to save the meeting from collapse. She brought up the Middle East peace process,a signature project of the president’s,which she had been tasked with reviving. But she was understandably wary of talking about areas in which she and Obama split —namely,on bedrock issues of war and peace,where Clinton’s more activist philosophy had already collided in unpredictable ways with her boss’s instincts toward restraint. She had backed Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendation to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan,before endorsing a fallback proposal of 30,000 (Obama went along with that,though he stipulated that the soldiers would begin to pull out again in July 2011,which she viewed as problematic). She supported the Pentagon’s plan to leave behind a residual force of 10,000 to 20,000 American troops in Iraq (Obama balked at this,largely because of his inability to win legal protections from the Iraqis,a failure that was to haunt him when the Islamic State overran much of the country). And she pressed for the United States to funnel arms to the rebels in Syria’s civil war (an idea Obama initially rebuffed before later,halfheartedly,coming around to it).

That fundamental tension between Clinton and the president would continue to be a defining feature of her four-year tenure as secretary of state. In the administration’s first high-level meeting on Russia in February 2009,aides to Obama proposed that the United States make some symbolic concessions to Russia as a gesture of its good will in resetting the relationship. Clinton,the last to speak,brusquely rejected the idea,saying,“I’m not giving up anything for nothing.” Her hardheadedness made an impression on Robert Gates,the defense secretary and George W. Bush holdover who was wary of a changed Russia. He decided there and then that she was someone he could do business with.

“I thought,This is a tough lady,” he told me.

A few months after my interview in her office,another split emerged when Obama picked up a secure phone for a weekend conference call with Clinton,Gates and a handful of other advisers. It was July 2010,four months after the North Korean military torpedoed a South Korean Navy corvette,sinking it and killing 46 sailors. Now,after weeks of fierce debate between the Pentagon and the State Department,the United States was gearing up to respond to this brazen provocation. The tentative plan —developed by Clinton’s deputy at State,James Steinberg —was to dispatch the aircraft carrier George Washington into coastal waters to the east of North Korea as an unusual show of force.

But Adm. Robert Willard,then the Pacific commander,wanted to send the carrier on a more aggressive course,into the Yellow Sea, between North Korea and China. The Chinese foreign ministry had warned the United States against the move,which for Willard was all the more reason to press forward. He pushed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,Mike Mullen,who in turn pushed his boss,the defense secretary,to reroute the George Washington. Gates agreed, but he needed the commander in chief to sign off on a decision that could have political as well as military repercussions.

Gates laid out the case for diverting the George Washington to the Yellow Sea: that the United States should not look as if it was yielding to China. Clinton strongly seconded it. “We’ve got to run it up the gut!” she had said to her aides a few days earlier. (The Vince Lombardi imitation drew giggles from her staff,who,even 18 months into her tenure,still marveled at her pugnacity.)

Obama,though,was not persuaded. The George Washington was already underway;changing its course was not a decision to make on the fly.

“I don’t call audibles with aircraft carriers,” he said —unwittingly one-upping Clinton on her football metaphor.

It wasn’t the last debate in which she would side with Gates. The two quickly discovered that they shared a Midwestern upbringing,a taste for a stiff drink after a long day of work and a deep-seated skepticism about the intentions of America’s foes. Bruce Riedel,a former intelligence analyst who conducted Obama’s initial review on the Afghanistan war,says: “I think one of the surprises for Gates and the military was,here they come in expecting a very left-of-center administration,and they discover that they have a secretary of state who’s a little bit right of them on these issues —a little more eager than they are,to a certain extent. Particularly on Afghanistan,where I think Gates knew more had to be done,knew more troops needed to be sent in,but had a lot of doubts about whether it would work.”

As Hillary Clinton makes another run for president,it can be tempting to view her hard-edged rhetoric about the world less as deeply felt core principle than as calculated political maneuver. But Clinton’s foreign-policy instincts are bred in the bone —grounded in cold realism about human nature and what one aide calls “a textbook view of American exceptionalism.” It set her apart from her rival-turned-boss,Barack Obama,who avoided military entanglements and tried to reconcile Americans to a world in which the United States was no longer the undisputed hegemon. And it will likely set her apart from the Republican candidate she meets in the general election. For all their bluster about bombing the Islamic State into oblivion,neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has.

Interesting read, Pkr. Thanks for sharing.

Food for thought.