Speaking with CNN’s David Axelrod on “The Axe Files,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright derided President Donald Trump over the new administration’s recent rhetoric and actions. Albright, Bill Clinton’s SoS, said Trump has weakened US national security and endangered the military with policies that are “un-American, anti-American and very dangerous.”
That’s incredibly insightful! Of course, this is coming from a woman who delivered some stirring rhetoric to Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes back in 1996. Albright justified the equally “un-American, anti-American and very dangerous” policies of the Clinton administration without hesitation.
Stahl (on U.S. sanctions against Iraq):
“We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the priceworth it?”
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright:
“I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”
Here is the clip:
More from the Axelrod interview:
In an unusually harsh broadside, Albright, who served as America’s top diplomat under President Bill Clinton, condemned Trump’s nationalist, America First approach, which she predicted could do lasting damage to the country.
“Our way of life is totally dependent on having partners in other countries,” she said. “By saying that we’re going to pull up the drawbridge and be hostile towards those that are different … has been very shortsighted. And we will suffer, our economy will suffer, our capability of competing in a number of different ways, and of being leaders.”
Consider Albright’s claims in light of previous work by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting’s Rahul Mahajan from November 2001:
Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s quote, calmly asserting that US policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It’s also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks (e.g., Alexander Cockburn, New York Press, 9/26/01)
But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the quote – in an op-ed in the Orange County Register (9/16/01). This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine(New York Daily News, 9/28/01). The inference that Albright and the terrorists may have shared a common rationale – a belief that the deaths of thousands of innocents are a price worth paying to achieve one’s political ends – does not seem to be one that can be made in US mass media. [emphasis added]
Albright defended mass murder in 1996 and has never apologized for the actions of the Clinton administration. The Trump administration is far from noninterventionist, but by comparison, Bill Clinton and Albright have much more blood on their hands, from hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and all of those individuals killed in retaliation on September 11, 2001.
Jared Labell is the Executive Director of The Libertarian Institute as well as Taxpayers United of America. A native of Texas, Jared is a history major whose work and interviews have been published by dozens of radio, newspaper, and television stations across Illinois and publicized nationally, including such media outlets as the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, WGN, Fox, ABC, NPR, and the Illinois Radio Network, as well as Antiwar.com and the Future of Freedom Foundation. Reprinted from The Libertarian Institute with permission.