Fighting the last war

In the third major-party presidential debate, Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton called her opponent, Republican Donald Trump, a “puppet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Amidst the accusations against Trump of sexual assault, tax evasion, racism and general “hate,” Clinton’s bizarre conspiracy theory was barely noticed by the mainstream media.

America is at war in Afghanistan for 15 years, but not one minute out of six hours of presidential debates was devoted to it. The national debt, which is a much greater threat to Americans than Putin or the Islamic State, was barely touched upon until near the end of the final debate in Las Vegas.

The Russian Federation is not the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. President Putin is not Stalin. Yes, there are stories of dead bodies showing up behind him, but rumors of mysterious deaths follow Hillary Clinton, too.

Putin has dared challenge the liberal benevolent global hegemony (i.e., New World Order) and while he knows America is both a nuclear and conventional superpower, he insists we now live in a multi-polar world. To Clinton and her crowd, that is the ultimate sin.

Trump dug into her by saying that Putin has outsmarted her—and by extension President Obama—at every turn. Trump correctly refused to blame Russia for the WikiLeaks email dumps that revealed the corruption and hypocrisy at the heart of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. Clinton says 17 federal espionage agencies believe the hacking was ordered by Putin himself. The average American shrugged and wondered why the U.S. even has 17 spy agencies.

The recent internationally monitored Russian elections showed overwhelming support for Putin’s party, United Russia. The people of the Crimea voted as Russians for the first time and 95 percent voted United Russia. Russia followed international law by holding a referendum to approve the reunion with Crimea, which had been Russian for centuries. Polls and nonbinding referenda for 20 years have asked Crimeans the same question—do you want to leave the Ukraine and be reunited with Russia? Crimea has always overwhelmingly said yes!

Bashar al-Assad is the legitimate head of the Syrian government. Islamic State, Al Nusra and other armed jihadi are outlaws, not freedom fighters. Since Assad did not invite us, but instead invited Iran, Hezbollah and Russia to help prevent his nation from being overrun by jihadi, any U.S. bombing in Syria is illegal under international law. Yet Clinton continues to double down and support American interventions in Syria like safe zones and no fly zones.

Most important, these parts of the world, Russia’s “near abroad,” simply have much more vital interest to Russia than Clinton and Obama’s ideological “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) prattle about values has to America or most Americans, who are overwhelmingly tired of war.

Whatever Trump’s numerous failings, on this issue he is right and Clinton dangerously wrong.

Does Clinton always choose the military option because she has an inferiority/superiority complex? Is her drive to be President motivated by the need to be tougher than the boys? Or are the neurological problems the blogosphere attributes to her causing her to mentally “short circuit” when it comes to Russia?

President Obama is right that Trump stands against most of the Republican establishment on this issue. If elected President, he would have to fight the deeply entrenched bi-partisan War Party in Washington to change US foreign policy.

After decades of cold war and the global war on terror we still see endless wars of choice in front of us. Wars and rumors of war dominate our news. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Strategic voting for peace means you vote Trump to stop Hillary.