I hope you, Dag reader,  watched the most recent Republican debate centered on foreign policy. If so, I hope that on that one issue alone every candidate on stage convinced you that they are each and all disqualified but also that it is a critically dangerous possibility that one of these people becomes the leader of our country and the commander in chief of our armed forces. No one can turn the big ship of state around quickly but the CIC is in a position to, on their own, speed that big mutha right onto the rocks in short order. We need someone to first slow it down and then start turning it around. That isn't any Republican but it isn't Hillary either, I am afraid.

If those candidates demonstrated ignorance and apparent stupidity, coupled with sociopathic, if not psychopathic, personalities scares you like it does me, you might take solace in the fact that Hillary will most likely win. On that one particular issue of foreign policy though I am firmly convinced that that is misguided hope.

I have just finished reading “The Queen of Chaos - The misadventures of Hillary Clinton” by Diana Johnstone and I recommend it.  If you are open to hearing an inciteful critique or Hillary’s policies based on a study of her history placed within a very well developed context I suggest that the 175 pages are well worth investing in.  

“Wow! No other book cuts so starkly and accurately to the heart of the current violent chaos engulfing the world, and to the significance of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s decades-long love affair with power that has helped push us to this precarious moment in history. The well-researched chronology and factual details compiled by Diana Johnstone about Honduras, Rwanda, Libya, Bosnia and Kosovo, to Iraq, Syria and Ukraine, turned into bloodbaths and finally into dangerous, failed states, constitutes the harsh reality that we need to appreciate if, as decent people, we want to regain some moral conscience. But also for our simple self-preservation. "Certainly Hillary is not the only neocon pyromaniac who likes to set a fire and then laugh when no one can put it out. But as she now vies for leadership of that cabal, more and more people will hopefully see through their Orwellian lies, effectively selling perpetual war to the US-NATO-Israel as a noble cause to bring democracy, human rights, peace and love. Self-perpetuating war may indeed make the war profiteers happy and wealthy who so prominently top the Clintons’ donor list, but it is indeed as stupid as playing with fire. In putting a nuclear-armed Russia in their sights, the story cannot end well for anyone. I can assure that if you read Johnstone’s book, you will want to help put out this insanity." — Coleen Rowley, retired FBI Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel, whistleblower and one of TIME Magazine’s Persons of the Year for 2002.

“Diana Johnstone’s Queen of Chaos is an excellent source of information for Hillary Clinton’s political rivals But it’s much more than that. It offers very perceptive accounts of US foreign policy of the last 25 years, particularly the complex and highly controversial cases of Libya, Yugoslavia, Honduras and Russia, as well as the issue of women in power. ‘Is there something wrong with American women,’ Johnstone asks, ‘that they need Hillary Clinton as President to make them feel better?’” — William Blum, author Killing Hope.

And from the introduction:

'Vote For Me, I’m a Woman.   Hillary Rodham Clinton has spent years trying to sell women on the idea that their ambition, rather than hers, will be rewarded if she is elected President of the United States. The idea seems to be that if she “breaks the glass ceiling”, American women en masse will pour through, occupying the upper floors, the attic, even the roof. But do we need to “prove” that a woman can be president? If women can be wrestlers, for which they are clearly not naturally qualified, a woman can certainly be President. There is no serious qualification for the office that a woman lacks. Proving this fairly obvious point is not the most crucial issue at stake in the next U.S. Presidential election. There is also the little matter of whether or not to lead the country into war with a major nuclear power. Avoiding World War III is somewhat more urgent than “proving” that a woman can be President of the United States. Throughout world history, women have been rulers. This fact has had very little effect on the daily lives of millions of women. Like Hillary herself, women rulers have most often been the daughters or wives of male rulers. On her South Asia tour in 1995, she observed, Introduction III as her biographer Carl Bernstein notes, that “Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka all had governments headed by women, yet women are held in such disregard in their cultures that newborn girls are sometimes killed or abandoned.” The social condition of women in a society does not depend on whether or not the country has a Queen. Women are distinguishing themselves in many fields where genuine accomplishment is more significant than politics in creating inspiring role models. For example, in August 2014, Maryam Mirzakhani was the first woman to be awarded the Fields Medal for excellence in mathematics. This could set a positive trend. In politics, as in other fields of power, women are often their own “glass ceiling”, in the sense that they may be content to stay out of the limelight in order to help others. This is not to be despised. But for women who need a politically powerful female as a role model, history offers Cleopatra, Catherine the Great of Russia, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen Elizabeth the First, among many others. Many elected national leaders in today’s world are women, most notably in Latin America. It’s too late for the United States to take the lead by electing a women president, but don’t worry, the USA is sure to catch up eventually. Is there something wrong with American women that they need Hillary Clinton as President to make them feel better? Certainly not. American women are creating many new ways to lead fruitful, useful and rewarding lives. And rather than making us feel better, it might make us feel much worse if the first woman President brings disaster on the world. Let us hope that the inevitable first woman president will be a person distinguished by a profound understanding of the world and genuine human compassion, rather than by relentless personal ambition."  

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