25 October 2016
By Jacob G. Hornberger
No one would ever accuse liberals of being consistent or of lacking in
hypocrisy. One of the best examples of their duplicity and two-facedness, of
course, is with respect to their support for the horrific mistreatment of
illegal immigrants through immigration controls, even while they tell everyone
how much they love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged with their support of
the welfare state.
But even their decades-long abuse of illegal immigrants doesn't come close to
matching their most recent hypocrisy over Donald Trump's abuse of women.
Liberals are shocked — shocked! — over Trump's supposed sexual assaults on
women and his braggadocio about his sexual exploits with women. Liberals and
the mainstream press are voting for Hillary Clinton because, they say, no man
who mistreats women in that way is qualified to be president of the United
States.
Well, except for one big thing that seems to escape the liberal eye, including
all those mainstream press pundits who, week after week, publish their
editorials and op-eds denouncing Trump for his abuse of women.
What is that one big thing? All the women that Clinton has abused in the
Middle East with the undeclared wars of aggression that she, President Obama,
President Bush, and other liberals and conservatives have waged in the Middle
East for the past 25 years.
Yes, there is no doubt about it — sex abuse and demeaning treatment of women
(and anyone) is a bad thing. But so is killing women. In fact, one might even
argue that killing women is worse than groping them without their consent.
Of course, it's impossible to know how many women have been killed by the U.S.
government in the Middle East since the end of the First Cold War in 1989. As
a matter of policy, the Pentagon and the CIA decided early on not to keep
track of the number of people, including civilians, they killed with their
interventions and wars of aggression in that part of the world. It just didn't
matter. All that mattered was the number of U.S. troops killed. Thus, it's
impossible to know exactly how many women have been killed by U.S. forces in
the Middle East during the past 25 years, but it has to be substantial.
According to Paul Walker, director of the Institute for Peace and
International Security, U.S. Air Force Gen. Merrill ''Tony'' McPeak estimated
that during the Gulf War in 1990-1991, 85,000 tons of bombs were dropped on
Iraq. At 59,000 tons a month, that was more than the 34,000 tons per month
that the Pentagon dropped on the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.
One of those bombs hit the Amiriyah bomb shelter in Bagdad, where hundreds of
civilians were taking cover. More than 400 people were killed. How many were
women? I'm not sure but it has to be considerable. One woman lost 8 children
in the bombing, which, it would seem, would constitute a special form of
abuse.
Of course, U.S. interventionists, including liberals, would argue that war is
hell and that mistakes are made in the heat of battle. Except for one thing:
The Gulf War was none of the U.S. government's business. And it initiated its
massive bombing campaign without the congressional declaration of war mandated
by the U.S. Constitution, which made the killing of those people in that
shelter and the rest of Iraq illegal under our form of constitutional
government.
Has Hillary Clinton ever denounced U.S. interventionism in the Persian Gulf
War? Are you kidding? She continues to be one of the most committed
interventionists on the planet, so long as it is the U.S. national-security
state that is doing the intervening. When it's Russia doing the intervening,
as in Syria, she goes ballistic and even intends to prohibit Russia from
flying its planes over Syria once she is elected president. I wonder how many
women would die in a U.S. war with Russia, including those thousands of young
American women who would be drafted to fight in such a war.
Don't forget the brutal sanctions that the U.S. government imposed on the
Iraqi people after the Gulf War in the hopes of squeezing Iraqis into ousting
their ruler Saddam Hussein from power. It contributed to the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. At the risk of belaboring the
obvious, that was not only an abuse of those children, it was also an abuse of
the mothers who had to bury them.
Has Hillary Clinton ever denounced those sanctions, which her husband brutally
enforced for the entire eight years of his presidency? Are you kidding? During
her presidential campaign, Clinton has proudly embraced her husband's UN
Ambassador, Madeleine Albright, who infamously declared that the deaths of
half-a-million Iraqi children from the U.S. sanctions were ''worth it.''
Then came George W. Bush's war against Iraq, an undeclared war of aggression
based on bogus WMD claims, a war that Hillary Clinton proudly supported and
endorsed. Oh sure, today she acknowledges it was a ''mistake,'' but has she
ever expressed any genuine remorse for the thousands of Iraqis, including
women, killed in that war? Has she ever personally apologized to the Iraqi
people for supporting an illegal invasion against people who never attacked
the United States? Has she ever acknowledged that the war was illegal under
our form of constitutional government? Has she ever even intimated that
interventionism is morally wrong and reprehensible?
Are you kidding? Even while prudentially calling her support of the U.S. war
on Iraq a ''mistake,'' she has always been one of those who have thanked the
troops for their service in Iraq. Even worse, she (and Obama) proceeded to
double down with interventionism with a violent U.S.-led regime change in
operation in Libya, a country that has now been thrown into a vicious civil
war that continues to kill countless people. How many women have died as a
result of Clinton's regime-change operation in Libya? Again, we don't know the
precise number but it has to be substantial. All we know is that Clinton
exclaimed in the finest Roman Empire tradition after her regime-change
operation resulted in the horrific murder of Libya's ruler, ''We came, we saw,
he died.''
And look at Syria, another U.S. regime-change operation that Clinton supports,
one in which countless women have been killed, either directly or in the
process of escaping the massive violence unleashed by U.S. bombs and missiles.
Is Clinton acknowledging that that regime-change attempt was a ''mistake,'' as
she has done with the U.S. undeclared war of aggression on Iraq? Are you
kidding? She's in favor of dropping whatever amount of bombs will be necessary
to finally oust Assad from power in Syria. As Albright would perhaps put it,
whatever death toll comes from U.S. bombs in Syria will definitely be ''worth
it.''
Notice that the liberal community (with the exception of a few of them), the
presidential debate moderators, and the mainstream press, while expressing
unrestrained outrage over Trump's misconduct, have expressed no outrage or
indignation whatsoever over the fact that Clinton is unequivocally committed
to continuing the U.S. killing of people in the Middle East, including women.
Let's also not forge the U.S. war on Afghanistan, where tens of thousands of
innocent people, including women, have been killed by the U.S. invasion and
13-year-long invasion of that country. That includes the several wedding
parties (at least eight) that have been bombed by U.S. forces. At the risk of
belaboring the obvious, wedding parties usually include brides, bridesmaids,
and mothers and aunts of the bride and groom. Clinton continues to support
that intervention as well, a position that is met with silence by liberals and
the mainstream press.
Liberals and Clinton's mainstream press supporters might respond, ''We don't
have a real choice. We can't vote for Trump because he's a man who abuses and
mistreats women.''
Okay, fair enough. But that doesn't mean that they have to remain silent about
Clinton's plans to continue the 25-year-old intervention in the Middle East
and the 13-year-long intervention in Afghanistan. The fact is that ISIS is not
coming to get us. The Taliban is not coming to get us. The Muslims are not
coming to get us. And the only reason the terrorists are striking Americans is
because Obama, Bush, Clinton, Trump, and others of the interventionist ilk
continue to kill people over there.
There is no reason why the left and the mainstream press can't demand that
Hillary Clinton bring all U.S. troops home immediately even if they choose to
vote for her. Their silence in the face of Clinton's massive abuse of women in
the Middle East is either because they think the killing of women over there
is no big deal or because their obsession with defeating Trump is blinding
them to their own hypocrisy and two-facedness.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom
Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in
economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the
University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He
also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught
law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become
director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has
advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the
country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and
he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show
Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full
Context.
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