[GPCA Updates] NY Green Release: Greens call Clinton's appointment 'Four More Years Without Change'

[Green Party of California Updates]

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Distributed by the Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org

Green Party of New York State http://www.gpnys.org

For immediate release
Tuesday, December 2, 2008


GPNY Calls the Appointment of Sen. Clinton as Secretary of State "Four
More Years Without Change!"


The Green Party of New York State strongly condemns the decision of
President-elect Barack Obama to appoint New York Senator Hillary
Clinton as Secretary of State in his incoming administration.

By choosing Clinton, Obama either has failed to understand or, more
likely, has simply decided to ignore the will of his constituents, who
overwhelmingly oppose the war. In every respect, this appointment, as
well as the fact that not one Senator or House member who voted
against the war has been considered worthy to join his foreign policy
team, appears to suggest that the new president's policies will, in
substance, continue the bellicose policies of previous administrations
which have brought such turmoil to our county, and particularly to the
people of the Middle East, resulting in a world outraged over American
foreign policy.

"When Senator Obama launched his campaign, much of his appeal to
voters in the primaries was his initial opposition to the invasion of
Iraq during his time as an Illinois state senator," said Howie
Hawkins, Green Party nominee for US Senator from New York in 2006.
"During those primaries, Obama positioned himself as a peace
candidate, despite his consistent votes in the Senate to fund the war,
in contrast to antiwar legislators during Vietnam, many of whom voted
to cut off funding for that earlier war. And now he has appointed to
head the State Department a politician who has refused ever to admit
that her support for the Iraq War was wrong."

The following history makes clear that Clinton's views represent the
antithesis of the peace movement and of the Green Party, the political
arm of that movement:

• Clinton voted for the Iraq war with enthusiasm (though without, as
columnist Maureen Dowd has noted, bothering to read the intelligence
estimate), thus contributing her prestige within the Senate and among
the general public in support of an internationally illegal and
unconstitutional policy of aggressor nation preventive war.

• She was a passionate cheerleader for the invasion as late as May
2005, when, in an infamous speech, she praised the war as a glorious
struggle for Iraq's liberation, not as an act of national self-defense
as it was originally sold to Americans, and she remarked that the
troops themselves were on "freedom's frontlines." (Curiously, Donald
Rumsfeld would use that exact phrase while speaking to a veterans'
group at the Lincoln Memorial just five days later.)

• In a frightening interview on Good Morning America, she coolly
maintained that as president she would "totally obliterate" Iran if
that nation attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon, should it
"foolishly" decide to develop and use such a weapon within "ten
years." This position ignores the fact that a) there is no consensus
among experts that Iran desires to develop such a weapon, or b) that
Iran is capable, within ten years (or more, for that matter), of
developing one even if it wanted to do so, or c) that Iran would
launch a first strike against Israel if it did develop one, and d)
that the official with the power to launch such a strike is not Iran's
controversial President Ahmadinejad, but the Ayatollah Khamenei, who
has issued a fatwa (applicable not only to Iranians, but to all Shiite
Muslims) against the development and use of all nuclear weapons.

• In 2006, she gave unconditional support to the bombings and attacks
on civilians in Lebanon by the State of Israel.

• She has consistently opposed any efforts to end the illegal
occupation of Palestine, including the recent brutal blockade of Gaza.

The choice of Clinton is just one of a series of disturbing
appointments by Obama to key positions in his administration that make
a mockery of Obama's campaign mantra of "change" for the nation. These
include the choice of Iraq hawk Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of
staff, the reappointment of Robert Gates as Defense Secretary and the
selection of John Brennan (who played a major role in Bush's practice
of extraordinary rendition, torture at Guantanamo and warrantless
wiretapping) to lead the review of intelligence agencies.

In addition to its inappropriateness to Obama's image as a
"transformative" president, the selection of Clinton also raises
serious conflict-of-interest issues. Clinton has raised enormous sums
for both her senatorial and presidential campaigns from a slew of
corporate interests, that have their own foreign policy agendas. Her
husband, former President Bill Clinton, poses even more disturbing
problems.

For example, sometime in 2006, the ex-president received a $31 million
donation to his presidential library from a Canadian financier named
Frank Giusta. This would be unremarkable, except for the fact that
Giusta several months earlier had accompanied the former president to
Kazakhstan to meet its President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, while in the
process of trying to win a contract that would give him, Giusta,
access to much of Kazakhstan's rich uranium resources. Within a few
weeks, Giusta's totally unknown shell company was granted the
contract.

Furthermore, at that very meeting, Clinton publicly praised Nazarbayev
for his progress on human rights (President Bush, many legislators and
even Hillary Clinton herself insist there has been no such progress)
and proclaimed his support for Nazarbayev's plan to get himself
appointed head of the international election-monitoring organization,
the OSCE… the very organization that had ruled several of Nazarbayev's
own elections fraudulent. Two years later, Nazarbayev was appointed to
head the OSCE for one year.

With Obama's nomination of Hillary Clinton not representing any
believable nor needed change. With Obama's nomination of Hillary
Clinton not representing any believable nor needed change, the Green
Party calls for her appointment to be the Secretary of State to be
rejected… her being unsuitable to fulfill the advertised Obama
mandate.


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