Why is Hillary Clinton courting Republican foreign policy heavyweights?

The focus on national-security risks alienating progressive voters wary of Clinton’s reputation as a foreign-policy hawk more likely to support military intervention abroad than President Obama and other Democrats. Chants of “No more war!” rung out inside the Wells Fargo Center when former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and retired General John Allen spoke in support of Clinton at the Democratic National Convention.

“Henry Kissinger is an architect of war,” said Winnie Wong, a co-founder of The People for Bernie Sanders. “That Hillary Clinton is purportedly courting an endorsement from him speaks volumes about her future foreign-policy plans for the United States. Progressives want peace. This is not peace.”

Dan Froomkin of The Intercept summed up hostility toward Kissinger in February. “Kissinger is reviled by many left-leaning observers of foreign policy,” he wrote, “They consider him an amoral egotist who enabled dictators, extended the Vietnam War, laid the path to the Khmer Rouge killing fields, stage-managed a genocide in East Timor, overthrew the democratically elected left-wing government in Chile, and encouraged Nixon to wiretap his political adversaries.”