Hillary Clinton – the Coca Cola choice

When it comes to the American election race and the common question about ‘which democrat are you supporting’ (if we ignore the small fact that I have no vote), I’ve usually been of the opinion that choosing between Republican or Democrat, Obama or Clinton is like deciding whether you want Pepsi or Coke: They both come in similar packaging, taste the same and are bad for your health but one’s marginally more evil than the other. The mechanics of the American political system and the country’s demographic means, essentially, one candidate will differ minimally on the wider scale of things than the other, as Noam Chomsky puts it “the US is basically a one-party state — the business party. with two factions, Democrats and Republicans.” This difference is further negligible between candidates of the same faction: Obama, viewed as the more liberal candidate increased the rate of his rightwing-baiting rhetoric as the pace of the elections picked up. Most people will remember his comments regarding Iran and Pakistan. Yet Hilary’s recent comments make Obama appear relatively fair-trade pop in comparison:

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president we will attack Iran,” Clinton said. “In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Here we have it again, US politicians taking the moral high ground against other ‘regressive’ nations. To me it equates to indisputable racism. Iran has not left its borders for the past 800 years – unlike the US. Contrary to reports, Iran has not been found to contradict the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, again, unlike the US, which is in direct violation of Article 6 of the NPT ( by EXPANDING their weapons program). The most regurgitated excuse for vilifying Iran and condoning intervention is that Ahmadinejad threatened to ‘wipe Israel of the map’. Now whether you believe the interpretation or not (many claim he was expressing his desire for a return to the land as it was pre-1948, prior to its colonisation and the creation of the state of Israel) the difference between Hilary and Ahmadinejad is that he only, allegedly, ‘threatened’ to attack where as Ms Clinton openly declared she ‘will attack Iran’!

And where’s the ‘government’ after Iranian? She is seemingly warning every innocent civilian in Iran that she will ‘obliterate’ them and that she has no hesitation in wiping them out. Read the statement again: Hillary has promised the 71 million population of Iran a genocide. Obama was right when he referred to her bellicose comments as ‘sabber-rattling’ towards the Middle East, noting the similarity between her war cries and that of the Bush administration prior to the invasion of Iraq.

It now also appears that Hilary is edging her way to winning the democrat contest with her significant Pennsylvania victory last night. Although Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama share the same policy and vision of the US: both promise to defend and preserve America’s neo-liberal agenda and its right to act as a pseudo-moral world police, they differ slightly in the tactical approach taken in the Middle East. Clinton has taken full advantage of this in an attempt to convince the American population that what she refers to as his lack of experience translates to lack of leadership and has exploited the reactionary ‘war on terror’ debate to magnify her point.

Over one million have died in Iraq and over 4 million refugees created as a direct result of an illegal US intervention based on unfounded accusations. It appears lessons have not been learnt in America. Whether it’s Obama or Clinton or McCain there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel but a part of me is still praying, in the absence of some sort of political revolution, that the former is elected rather than the latter two.