Assuming that the current prospects for US presidential elections candidates hold firm and Hillary Clinton is nominated by the Democrats, and Jeb Bush, Rick Rubio or Scott Walker win the Republican nomination, how should a conscientious citizen vote in November 2016? Step one is to rule out support for the Republican candidates due to their regressive views on a range of social and economic issues and their militarist bluster on foreign and defence policy. Step two is more difficult. Clinton is clearly preferable if the domestic agenda is taken into account, and she is probably no worse than the Republicans when it comes to foreign policy. She is also, however, not noticeably better, and in some ways more objectionable. For instance, this was how she began her recent letter to the billionaire arch-Zionist mega-donor and long-time Clinton family supporter Haim Saban on 7 July: “I am writing to express my alarm over the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, BDS, a global effort to isolate the State of Israel by ending commercial and academic exchanges.” She seeks Saban's guidance in pursuit of this nefarious goal with deferential language: “Now I am seeking your thoughts and recommendations on how leaders and communities across America can work together to counter BDS.” I am sure it didn't escape the gurus of the Clinton campaign that Saban recently joined with the US casino mogul Sheldon Adelson to headline a donor gathering at which each participant was expected to pledge $1 million to fight BDS. Although Adelson identifies as Republican and Saban as Democrat, both fervently embrace the Netanyahu brand of Israeli leadership. Saban has been quoted on Iran in language that manages to outdo Netanyahu, saying, “I would bomb the daylight out of those sons of bitches.” Clinton has a variety of other scary credentials, including voting in support of the Iraq war of 2003. To this day she remains unwilling to admit that the war was at the very least a tragic mistake and, more accurately, a costly international crime. She not only argued for intervention in Libya in 2011, but also made a chilling comment on CBS News after learning of the grisly vigilante execution of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi: “We came, we saw, he died.” Further, among the emails that Clinton has long withheld from the public are several that substantiate the charges that France from the outset both intended to overthrow the Gaddafi regime and expected to reap economic benefits by way of the spoils of war, especially with respect to Libya's oil wealth. It is not that Clinton actually conspired with such plans while serving as US secretary of state. But she did knowingly lead the effort to support the French-led NATO intervention in 2011, claiming that its limited goal was the protection of Libyan civilians in Benghazi when she was well aware that the real purpose of the UN-mandated intervention was regime change in Tripoli. Here is my dilemma: in view of such considerations, does one vote for Hilary Clinton with eyes wide open because she is likely to be better for ordinary Americans on a range of crucial issues, including some effort to challenge the obscene scandal of growing inequalities and sustained slippage in the real income and labour rights of workers and the accumulated hardships of much of the middle class? Or does one say there are certain candidates whose views are so abhorrent as to be unsupportable without weighing their suitability against alternatives? Many remember the acrimonious debates along the same lines concerning the 2000 US presidential election campaign pitting Bush against Gore, allegedly lost by Gore in Florida because Ralph Nader, running as a third-party candidate, received over 90,000 votes, arguably more than enough to swing the state to Gore's side of the ledger and thus enough electoral votes to win the presidency. Most Democrats angrily dismissed Nader as a spoiler and harshly criticised his supporters for indulging in irresponsible political behaviour. As someone who voted for Nader in 2000 while coming to detest the Bush presidency, I continue to believe that the primary duty of citizens in a democratic society is to be on most occasions responsive to their consciences rather than to attempt pragmatic calculations often glamorised as “the best being the enemy of the good.” I do admit, however, that I didn't realise in 2000 that Bush would turn out as badly as he did, and if I had, I might have wavered. Looking ahead to 2016, the issue of choice can at this stage be put as follows: vote for Hillary Clinton as “the lesser of two evils” or vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party as the most attractive presidential candidate, but also as someone with no chance of doing more than enlivening the debate and giving alienated voters like myself a positive option that feels better than not voting. Remember that there were establishment liberals in the tense days after the 9/11 attacks who were ready to rationalise the use of torture as the lesser of evils. It was alleged to be lesser as compared to the need for information that could lead to dangerous terrorist suspects, but where it actually led was to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and a nationally humiliating orgy of torture with very little security payoff. The Kathryn Bigelow film on the search for and execution of Osama Bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty, also gave a bright green light to the torture policies of the Bush presidency, fed to the US public by the grotesque evasion embedded in the words “enhanced interrogation.” The alternative logic may be described as respect for “red lines.” I happen to believe that the BDS campaign is a desirable and an essential step in the redesign of a peace process that might produce a just and sustainable peace for Palestinians and Israelis after more than 67 years of agonising failure. This includes the recent frustrations associated with the Oslo diplomacy initiated by the handshake in 1993 between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, with a beaming Bill Clinton standing between them. For me, Hilary Clinton crossed my personal red line with her craven letter to Haim Saban, making it impossible for me to vote for her by invoking the alternative logic of the lesser of two evils. But maybe, although it is unlikely, by the time November 2016 comes around, I might reconsider. I realise that if one of the awful Republicans is elected US president by a close vote that is skewed by Green Party votes, I will be bitterly criticised by liberal friends. I admit that it is a tricky issue on principled grounds. Livelihoods and wellbeing will almost certainly be adversely affected by a Republican victory, whereas the differences in foreign policy between the two candidates are murky at best, and on Israel/Palestine there is no upside regardless of which party prevails. At the same time, the American plutocracy has become a bipartisan enterprise, calling for resistance as an ethical and political imperative, acknowledging the validity of commentator Chris Hedges's powerfully reasoned insistence that the US is experiencing “pre-revolutionary tremors.” At this stage of the electoral process, my overall sense is that the lesser of the evils is still evil, and that morally significant red lines are important for citizens to draw and respect. Until further notice, then, I have decided not to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton. The writer is Albert G Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and research fellow at the Orfalea Centre of Global Studies. He is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
