Camille Rings In The New Year

From her latest column at Salon.com:

I will vote for Hillary if she is the nominee of my party, because I want Democrats appointed to the Cabinet and the Supreme Court. But I plan to vote for Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary because he is a rational, centered personality who speaks the language of idealism and national unity. Obama has served longer as an elected official than Hillary. He has had experience as a grass-roots activist, and he is also a highly educated lawyer who will be a quick learner in office. His international parentage and childhood, as well as his knowledge of both Christianity and Islam, would make him the right leader at the right time. And his wife Michelle is a powerhouse. The Obamas represent the future, not the past.

. . .

I have never understood the logic by which certain nations in the world have determined that they have a perfect right to nuclear weapons while other, emergent nations do not. Naturally, it would be a far safer world if no one had them. But it's the U.S., which first used the atom bomb in warfare, that began this process.
Unfortunately, the U.S. invasion of Iraq has made it more likely, not less, that smaller nations will seek nuclear weapons by any means necessary: Nukes are the only possible equalizer against a superpower like ours with overwhelming military might.

. . .

I'm uncomfortable with the formulation "good guys"/"bad guys" that one also constantly hears on talk radio. By what reasoning or authority have Americans concluded that we are invariably the "good guys"? And that it is our moral right to define who the "bad guys" are and to exterminate them, or anyone who looks like them or happens to be in the area, at will? To claim purity on the basis of good intentions alone isn't virtue -- it's complacence. Stereotyping diverse people into generic groups makes it easier to wage war on them. They cease to exist as individuals, with their own aspirations and capacity for suffering. Hence the full scale of the brutalization and destruction of Iraqi civilians has been underreported by the American press and has never been mentally processed by most U.S. citizens.