Hillary Clinton: I’d Pay Blood For Oil

Hillary Clinton’s incomprehensible foreign policy ideas ramble on.

She chastised Barack Obama for his naieve willingness to enter discussions
with America’s enemies without preconditions, but now she is willing to do just
that with Iran. Clinton stated that as soon as she is elected president she
"would immediately open a diplomatic negotiation with Iran over all
issues that we disagree with them on."

Yet at the same town hall meeting in South Carolina in which she made this
faux pas, she also declared that Iranian actions to cut off oil supplies would
invite military action:

"I will make it very clear to the Iranians that there are very
serious consequences attached to their actions," Clinton said. The presidential candidate spoke at a town hall meeting with 300 people at a high school in a Democratic stronghold in early voting South Carolina.

The New York senator, responding to a question, said blocking oil shipments
"would be devastating to the world economy."

If the U.S. took military action as a result, she said, "I would hope
that the world would see that was an action of last resort, not first resort.
Because we need the world to agree with us about the threat that Iran poses
to everyone."

I am so torn here, do we cheer her or boo her for this? Is it possible, as
Charles Krauthammer points out, that Hillary Clinton as president, may lurch
into doing the correct thing albeit for the wrong reasons? Her willingness to
take on the Iranians over oil is obviously not the product of any understanding
of security issues, as her willingness to negotiate with the Iranians without
preconditions shows. She is just tossing this out there because it tested well
in focus groups, or because it sounded good to her at the time. It is clearly
not the product of serious foreign policy analysis.

Crossposted from Ken McCracken