Michelle Alexander on the black vote, the Clinton brand — and of course, mass incarceration

February 10, 2016

Michelle Alexan­der on the black vote, the Clin­ton brand — and of course, mass incar­cer­a­tion.

Alexan­der is one of the lead­ing voic­es on the rise of a lev­el of mass incar­cer­a­tion in this coun­try in the last 25 years. It’s hard to over­state just how dev­as­tat­ing our prison-industrial com­plex has become. The huge num­bers of African Amer­i­can men in jails for non­vi­o­lent crimes begs com­par­i­son to the dark­est days of slav­ery. Bill Clin­ton esca­lat­ed mass incar­cer­a­tion and the “War on Drugs” as a way to prove his polit­i­cal toughness.

The love affair between black folks and the Clin­tons has been going on for a long time. It began back in 1992, when Bill Clin­ton was run­ning for pres­i­dent. He threw on some shades and played the sax­o­phone on The Arse­nio Hall Show. It seems sil­ly in ret­ro­spect, but many of us fell for that. At a time when a pop­u­lar slo­gan was “It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t under­stand,” Bill Clin­ton seemed to get us. When Toni Mor­ri­son dubbed him our first black pres­i­dent, we nod­ded our heads. We had our boy in the White House. Or at least we thought we did.

We tend to remem­ber the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion through rose-colored glass­es but there were a lot of WTF moments we’ve for­got­ten – three strikes, the sanc­tions against Iraqi civil­ians, the way cruise mis­sile strikes seemed to mag­i­cal­ly coin­cide with admin­is­tra­tion scan­dals, Bil­l’s ser­i­al phi­lan­der­ing and Hillary’s slut-shaming respons­es. On paper, HRC is the most qual­i­fied can­di­date to ever run for the pres­i­den­cy. But if she’s run­ning on the Clin­ton brand, she needs to explain how her polit­i­cal choic­es dif­fer from her hus­band’s 20 years ago.

Hussein Backs off, Clinton Whines

November 14, 1998

Sddam Hus­sein has just backed off. He’s agreed to a diplo­mat­ic solu­tion and has agreed to let Unit­ed Nations weapon inspec­tors back in.

U.S. offi­cials said that they were about to attack Sat­ur­day night, Nov. 14, when Hus­sein agreed to the inspec­tions. One Pen­ta­gon offi­cial is quot­ed as say­ing “It was almost as if he knew,” which is a ridicu­lous state­ment con­sid­er­ing that rumors of an immi­nent attack were cir­cling the inter­net and news sites all week­end. Of course Hus­sein knew, we all did.

This should be cause for rejoic­ing. Blood won’t have to be shed, diplo­ma­cy (notably France and Rus­si­a’s) have saved the day again, and the U.N. teams can go back to work.

But U.S. admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials are upset. They want­ed a war. They’re double-guessing their tim­ing, wish­ing they had bombed him ear­li­er this week. They’re imply­ing that they might bomb Bagh­dad any­way. They’re whin­ing that now they have to once again work with the U.N. and with Iraqi officials.

Why is the Admin­is­tra­tion so upset? It’s because they have no real pol­i­cy in the Gulf. Ear­li­er this week they admit­ted that they did­n’t know what they would do after the attack. Here they were send­ing war­ships and per­son­nel into the Gulf and they had no long- or mid-term vision for what these peo­ple were going to do after the first hun­dred cruise mis­siles went off. U.S. pol­i­cy is once more stuck in the same mud­dle its been in since mid-1991.

Clin­ton wish­es Hus­sein would just dis­ap­pear. That his mil­i­tary would launch a coup and dri­ve him from pow­er. That a cruise mis­sile would hit and kill him. They wish that Iraqi mil­i­tary know-how would dis­ap­pear. But none of this is like­ly to hap­pen. In the real world, high-tech U.S. mis­siles can’t do very much. The real world requires diplo­ma­cy, nego­ti­at­ing with peo­ple you don’t trust, de-escalating rhetoric. These are skills that the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion needs to develop.

It is time for the U.S. to stop whin­ing when diplo­ma­cy works. And it is time for a U.S. to devel­op a real­is­tic pol­i­cy for build­ing a last­ing peace in the Gulf.

President Clinton Overturns Assassination Ban

November 14, 1998

Today’s Times has an arti­cle that the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion real­ly was try­ing to kill Osama bin Laden in August’s cruise mis­sile attack against Afghanistan. This flat-out con­tra­dicts months of assur­ances that this was not a U.S. goal.

But even more wor­ri­some is that Pres­i­den­tial lawyers have con­clud­ed that this sort of polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion attempt does­n’t fall under the 1975 Exec­u­tive Order ban­ning polit­i­cal mur­der. The same Pres­i­dent who says sex isn’t sex is now say­ing that assas­si­na­tion isn’t assas­si­na­tion. He’s once again split­ting legal hairs and lying to the Amer­i­can peo­ple when caught.

Who Clin­ton sleeps with is his business.

But who he tries to assas­si­nate is the busi­ness of all of us. And it’s our busi­ness when he breaks U.S. law to do so. And our busi­ness when his Admin­is­tra­tion goes on a con­cert­ed, coor­di­nat­ed cam­paign to lie about a mil­i­tary mission’s goals. The bomb­ings ratch­eted up the anti‑U.S. anger in the world. It vio­lat­ed the sov­er­eign­ty of two nations. It cost over a hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars. The Unit­ed States is a democ­ra­cy and the peo­ple need to be involved in mak­ing such far-reaching deci­sions. We need to be ful­ly informed.

The Pres­i­dent must be held account­able to U.S. law. And he must be told that cre­ative legal def­i­n­i­tions aren’t accept­able in a democracy.