Proposed Text for an Effective Anti-Hillary TV Ad

Just some ideas for a television ad, for anyone opposing Wall Street’s candidate to use as they like.

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They talk about Hillary Clinton’s “experience”—like experience is always a good thing.

[selected clips of politicians and others citing her “experience” as the crucial thing]

But what is Hillary’s experience, really?

As First Lady she promoted health care reform, without success.

She also took a keen interest in foreign policy, as she had since supporting the Vietnam War in college as a Goldwater Girl. She’s always boasted about being “strong” on what she calls “national defense.”

She urged her husband Bill to bomb Yugoslavia, in 1995 and 1999 as that country split up. For the first time since World War II a European capital, Belgrade, was bombed—by NATO forces. The results have been disastrous: failed states in Bosnia and Kosovo, more ethnic cleansing, refugees, heroin trafficking.

[show page 354 from Gail Sheeny, Hillary’s Choice, highlighting the passages where she says she called from Africa on March 21, 1999 and “urged him to bomb.”]

[clips of Belgrade bombing, economic refugees fleeing Kosovo and Bosnia, etc.]

What about Hillary’s experience as a U.S. Senator? In her two terms she sponsored 713 pieces of legislation. Three passed, all unanimously. One established a National Historic Site in New York, another renamed a post office, another renamed a highway.

More importantly: while in the Senate, Hillary voted for the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002. She defended that vote all the way up to 2014, when she finally called her vote a “mistake.”

As Secretary of State, Hillary supported a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq, even though the Bush administration and the Iraqi government had agreed that all troops would be withdrawn by 2011. Hillary just didn’t want to get out.

When mass protests erupted in Syria in 2011, Hillary advocated arming Syrian opposition forces, to bring down the government by force. But these forces were dominated by al-Qaeda aligned factions. Many arms the U.S. provided are now in the hands of al-Nusra and ISIL. And she wanted to set up a no-fly zone in Syria—more bombing.

As Secretary of State she advocated bombing Libya, claiming falsely that Col. Gadhafy was about to commit genocide. The U.S./NATO bombing, which was supposed to be for humanitarian purposes, became an instrument for regime change and the bloody murder of Gadhafy, sodomized by a knife while jihadis cheered.

Hillary’s reaction?

[clip of laughing Clinton telling CBS News: “We came, we saw, he died.”]

Libya today is a country in ruins, with two governments, ethnic cleansing, and rule by militias including those loyal to al-Qaeda or ISIL. Hillary bears much responsibility for this.

Hillary Clinton chose as her Under Secretary of State for Eastern Europe a close aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, the neocon Victoria Nuland, who like Hillary pressed for the expansion of the NATO alliance to surround Russia.

[map of the expansion of NATO]

Hillary’s State Department boasted that the U.S. has invested five billion dollars in an effort to support the so-called “European aspirations of Ukraine.” This was an investment in regime change.

It led to the violent overthrow of an elected government in 2014. The point was to install a leader who would not just bring Ukraine into the EU but into NATO and drive the Russians out of the Crimean Peninsula where their fleet has been headquartered for over 200 years..

Ukraine hasn’t benefitted from the coup. Neo-fascists who played a decisive role in the coup have been empowered like nowhere else in Europe. Ethnic minorities have come under attack. The economy has collapsed. The country is in a state of civil war.

[footage of Nuland, John McCain and Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahybok sharing a stage; followed by image of Tyahybok giving fascist salute]

[images of Azov Battalion]

Hillary has boasted that Henry Kissinger has praised her, saying she’d run the State Department better than anyone had run it in a long time.

[photo of smiling Kissinger and Clinton]

There are reasons that the warmongers in this country have warm feelings for Hillary Clinton. Her experience speaks for itself. She is one of them.

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For narrators, Harry Belafonte would be an excellent . Or maybe other Bernie Sanders supporters, such as Susan Sarandon, Mia Farrow, or Tom Morello.

Gary Leupp is Emeritus Professor of History at Tufts University, and is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa JapanMale Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900 and coeditor of The Tokugawa World (Routledge, 2021). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, (AK Press). He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu