Hillary Clinton’s recent tough talk, stating that the U.S. could “obliterate Iran” if it were to attack Israel, gives us a glimpse of the kind of foreign policy we could expect if she was to become the next president.

Unfortunately, women rarely rise to the top in politics without demonstrating an aggressiveness that rivals that of their toughest male opponents.

Condoleeza Rice, Madeleine Albright and Margaret Thatcher are all examples of women who ascended by demonstrating that, no matter what, they never flinch.

If Hillary’s primary focus is to demonstrate that she can be as tough as any male president, Americans should be worried. The Clinton era that she claims as evidence that she is the best candidate for the presidency was not without its own dark side, even though Bill did not have as much to prove.

When Bill Clinton arrived at the White House in 1993, Iraq was already a major U.S. foreign policy pre-occupation. It had been devastated by the 1991 Gulf War orchestrated by George Bush, Sr. The sanctions imposed before the war were continued in its aftermath with catastrophic consequences for Iraq’s civilian population.

By 1995, two years after Clinton took office, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization was warning that malnutrition was widespread across all age and social groups.

Hillary Clinton was First Lady when 60 Minutes interviewed Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, following the CBS program’s investigative trip to Iraq.

On a segment that aired May 12, 1996, Madeleine Albright was asked if sanctions were worth the deaths of half a million Iraqi children. Madeleine’s response? “It’s a tough question, but yes, we think it’s worth it.”

How many women or men could so casually and callously dismiss the deaths of so many innocent children?

After taking office, Bill not only continued the policies of the previous administration, but he was soon beating his own war drums for Iraq. This eventually led to a four-day bombing campaign in December 1998.

The renewed conflict was over the composition of a UN weapons inspection team. At the time, the U.S. and Britain were still sporadically bombing Iraq. The team of 16 inspectors was heavily biased with nine Americans, five Britons, one Russian and one Australian. Saddam Hussein insisted that members of the weapons inspection team were spies, a charge vehemently denied by Clinton and his administration.

But, a few months later, the BBC broke the story that the UN weapons inspection team had indeed been “infiltrated and fatally compromised” by both U.S. and British intelligence agencies. The lies of 1997-1998 were a prelude to the lies of the current devastating war.

We all know that Hillary supported the current war against Iraq, until the tide of public opinion turned against it. It is now politically expedient to oppose the war. But does Hillary grasp just how unjust the war has been, not just for U.S. soldiers but for the Iraqi people? Does she comprehend their unimaginable suffering and loss with their country in chaos and ruin, and so many dead and maimed?

In recent statements she appears to blame the Iraqis for failing to manage and control the U.S.-made disaster, insisting it is past time they fixed what the U.S. has broken.Hillary was also the First Lady when, on August 20, 1998, the Clinton Administration bombed the El-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in retribution for terrorist attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Bill claimed that the plant was producing biological weaponry and had ties to Osama bin Laden.

In the aftermath of the attack, the European Union sent in a team of investigators to ascertain whether the charges were true. No evidence of biological weaponry or ties to Osama bin Laden was ever found.

The pharmaceutical plant had only been in operation for one year when it was demolished. It was providing 50 per cent of the pharmaceuticals for Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world, and provided 90 per cent of the veterinary pharmaceuticals for the impoverished African continent.

The Sudanese businessman who had purchased the factory for $18 million to help stimulate economic development in his impoverished homeland fought hard for compensation in U.S. courts. In 2003 his case was dismissed and all efforts to appeal were denied on the basis that foreigners have no right to claim for damages against U.S. military action on foreign soil.

If you were aware that your administration had been responsible for such a miscarriage of justice in a poverty-stricken region of the world, would you not insist on restitution? Would you not understand that failing to do so would feed into the anti-Americanism that led to the embassy bombings in the first place?

Just a few months after the El-Shifa bombing, in March 1999, the Clinton Administration was once again on the warpath – this time against Yugoslavia. The war was purportedly fought to end ethnic cleansing in the Kosovo region.

After the war, the International War Crimes Tribunal announced that only 2,788 bodies were ever found in mass graves. Most were attributed to ongoing clashes between the Kosovo Liberation Army and Serb forces, and the 1999 war itself. In other words, no evidence of genocide was ever found.

This is hardly a foreign policy record to be proud of.

Hillary’s threatening posture with Iran suggests that she will continue the hostile war policies of the past. As a woman who is trying to look tough, will she have the courage to try talking rather than just bombing? Or will she pander to those who consider it weakness? These are important questions because real change in the United States will not come from toughness but from having the courage to change.

What the United States and the world need right now is a U.S. President who understands that war does not solve problems, and that terrorism will only end once the U.S. starts listening and talking to the many who have legitimate grievances against the United States.