One of the strangest elements of this campaign has been that Hillary Clinton has put special emphasis on the idea that she’s the candidate of experience with regard to foreign policy matters, even though most accounts of the Clinton administration seem to indicate that this was the part of her husband’s administration she was least involved with. The one concrete example of involvement in foreign policymaking she’s really given relates to the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland, but she seems to be lying about this:

Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a “wee bit silly” for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.

George Mitchell, too, has tended to contradict Clinton’s claims on this score.

UPDATE: Chicago Tribune takes a broader look at Clinton’s claims of foreign policy experience and finds it to be mostly flim-flam. It’s not just that it’s false, in general, that she has a lot of experience in this field, but her campaign actually puts out specific examples of things she did while First Lady that, upon examination, turn out not to hold up.

Josh Marshall says “she doesn’t need to be a seasoned foreign policy hand. But she’s setting herself up for a fall when she claims to be.” Right. Clinton would, like Barack Obama, and most modern presidents (Ike, Nixon, and GHWB being the big counterexamples) have little experience with running foreign policy. But she feels compelled to lie about it.

I’ve always thought it was pretty obvious that a lot of the pressure aimed at pushing the US and China into a cycle of mutual hostility was driven by the narrow interests of defense contractors rather than anything to do with national security, but it’s the kind of thing where you rarely get a clear demonstration of a quid pro quo. Kevin Drum, though, finds a really clear-cut example lurking in Thomas Barnett’s Esquire profile of William Fallon.

Needless to say, anyone whose substantive thinking about international relations implies the need to build vast quantities of new weapons systems to fight China with is going to find his think tank has plenty of willing funders.

One consequence of the Iraq War is that a set of doctrines — and in some ways more to the point, a clique of individuals — associated with the concept of “counterinsurgency” has come very much into vogue across both political parties. At the moment, the counterinsurgents are still a minority faction in the military, but they’re on the rise and seem to be the ones with the friends in the press and the political world. What’s more, whatever doubts I have about them, they’re certainly preferable to the “let’s gear up for war with China!” crowd that forms their main opposition within the military.

With that by way of throat-clearing, Spencer Ackerman has decided to do a little new media venture where he writes “The Rise of the Vulcans” or “They Knew They Were Right” before the faction at hand rises to hegemony. Thus, his ongoing series “The Rise of the Counterinsurgents” of which you can read the first edition here.

So as you’ve probably heard by now, Hillary Clinton thinks that you have to pass a “commander in chief threshold” if you want to be president. “I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy.” This is outrage on several levels, both in terms of Clinton’s not-so-thick resume, and in terms of the seriously poor form involved in bashing your opponent in ways that involve praising the other party’s nominee. That said, like Kevin Drum I’m a bit skeptical that there’s a practical problem here of Clinton handing McCain ammunition since politics, in practice, doesn’t seem to work that way.

There is, however, a deeper worry that this expresses. Why does Hillary Clinton think McCain would be a better foreign policy leader than Obama? Now I expect millions of people around the country to agree with Clinton about that in November. Millions of people will, I think, decide that invading Iraq was a good idea, that staying in Iraq indefinitely is a good idea, that pushing the envelop of confrontation with North Korea and Iran is a good idea, that refusing to abide by any of our treaty commitments is a good idea, etc. Those people will, naturally, conclude that McCain would be the better commander in chief. That’s inevitable. I expect those millions of Americans to be outnumbered by millions more who prefer Obama’s approach and who want to see America pulled back from the brink and back toward something like the liberal internationalist tradition that’s governed us at our best since the Second World War rather than to continue on the path of militarism and hegemonism that’s been responsible for the bulk of our mistakes.

I had also taken it for granted that whatever Clinton did or said during the years 2002-2004 she wouldn’t seriously be among the group of people who prefer McCain’s approach. But is she? If not, why does she think he’ll be such a good commander in chief? Now I certainly think that most of Clinton’s supporters, including many of the people who work for her on national security issues, don’t see her as the kind of person who prefers the McCain approach. But maybe she is? Surge architects Jack Keane seems to think so.

John Hagee has some odd ideas about Jews that, as a Jewish person, make me uncomfortable. Jews, as most people know, have suffered a lot of persecution over the years. According to Hagee, we were getting what we deserved:

It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day.

Mark Kleiman points out that Abe Foxman didn’t used to have much truck with this sort of thinking when it arrived in a different context, denouncing the “simplistic, counterproductive, biased and bigoted perception” as “blaming the victim” since “the cause of anti-Semitism is anti-Semites.” But Hagee thinks anti-Semitism is God’s justified punishment for the Jews. Thus when his organization succeeds in pressuring the U.S. and Israel to adopt a foreign policy that leads to Israel’s destruction at the hands of a Russo-Arab alliance, the plan will finally be fulfilled.

What does Foxman have to say about all this Hageean nuttiness? He thinks it’s just fine since Hagee’s pro-Israel. Obviously, we’re not supposed to give too much scrutiny to the content of Hagee’s “pro-Israel” views since in an ordinary sense deliberately seeking the destruction of the Jewish state and the deaths of all its citizens wouldn’t be considered an especially pro-Israel stance. I believe that even Hamas has sometimes hinted at a desire for an accommodation.

Admiral Fallon at CENTCOM long seems to have been lukewarm-at-best about the surge so, naturally, just like Petraeus’ predecessors in Iraq he’s going to be relieved of command. This is what’s known in the Bush administration as shaping policy by military conditions on the ground rather than arbitrary dictates in Washington. First, you formulate a policy. Then you find some career military people who agree with it. Then you put them in charge. Then you hide behind them to avoid taking political heat for your own policies. And if they aren’t good at serving as frontmen for your policies, or aren’t willing to do it, you get some new ones.