[Peace-discuss] Hillary's Ill Will Tour

[Morton K. Brussel]

Raimondo's take on our Secretary of State and Obama's supposed refusal  
to rein her in.

A most undiplomatic diplomat

by Justin Raimondo, November 02, 2009

In what the Los Angeles Times described as "a fence-mending trip" to  
Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed to tear down more  
fence posts than she repaired. Abrasive, arrogant, and condescending,  
she fired a series of verbal RPG volleys that nearly demolished what  
remained of good relations between the U.S. and its principal ally in  
the region.

On the fight against al-Qaeda:

"Clinton told a group of journalists in Lahore that she found it ‘hard  
to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and  
couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.’ Al-Qaeda, she said, ‘has  
had a safe haven in Pakistan since 2002.’"

It is astonishing that a U.S. diplomat would say this in a public  
forum – at a question-and-answer session with Pakistani journalists,  
no less. One U.S. official tried to justify this outburst with the  
"explanation" that "You’ve got to remember, she was a senator from New  
York on 9/11." But what has that got to do with the plausibility of  
Hillary’s contention that the government of Pakistan is holding out on  
us as to Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts? Exactly nothing. If she has  
evidence Pakistan is knowingly harboring the world’s most wanted  
terrorist, then she should state it publicly, rather than engage in  
unfounded innuendo.

A more inflammatory remark would be hard to imagine – unless it’s what  
she said about U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan’s territory. Asked if  
she thinks attacks that kill innocent civilians constitute terrorism –  
"execution without trial," as one questioner put it – Clinton replied,  
"No, I do not," and then refused to discuss the matter further, citing  
"security" reasons. The audience of Pakistani women sat there in  
stunned, horrified silence. Which was similar to the reaction of an  
audience of businessmen, who were told:

"’At the risk of sounding undiplomatic, Pakistan has to have internal  
investment in your public services and your business opportunities,’  
she told the executives. The U.S. government taxes ‘everything that  
moves and everything that doesn’t, and that’s not what we see in  
Pakistan.’"

Hillary is miffed Pakistan doesn’t plunder its citizens to the extent  
we do, but that doesn’t mean the central government in Islamabad  
scores high points in any index of economic freedom. Pakistan’s poor  
bear the lion’s share of the tax burden in that country to such an  
extent that their Supreme Court recently intervened to lower the  
gasoline tax, overruling the national legislature. The lower and  
middle classes cheered, but Hillary will have none of it: how dare  
those Pakistanis lower taxes!

What’s scary is that Hillary considers this to have been a "charm  
offensive" – and, byher standards, it is. Having inflicted maximum  
damage on the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, she took her bull-in-a- 
china-shop routine to Israel, where, standing next to Netanyahu, she  
declared:

"What the prime minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on  
the policy of settlements … is unprecedented."

Well, yes, Netanyahu’s absolute refusal to freeze all "settlement"  
activity isunprecedented – in its stubborn intransigence. This is  
specially evident in the context of the U.S. demand that, as Hillary  
put it not long ago, we "see a stop to settlements – not some  
settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions." So much for  
taking the administration’s pronouncements seriously.

The Palestinian reaction was to declare that the peace talks – which  
Hillary had been sent to the region to kick-start – are indefinitely  
stalled. Nabil Abu Rudeinah, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority  
head honcho Mahmoud Abbas, averred, "The negotiations are in a state  
of paralysis, and the result of Israel’s intransigence and America’s  
backpedaling is that there is no hope of negotiations on the horizon."

It is often said that the election of Barack Obama boosted our image  
in the world: suddenly, after eight years of unmitigated hatred  
directed against George W. Bush’s America, we’re popular again. Yet it  
looks like Hillary is trying as hard as she can to undo all that with  
her ill-will tour. The woman is John Bolton in a dress.

Just as I predicted upon her appointment to State, Clinton is  
conducting her own foreign policy while Obama, preoccupied with  
domestic matters, dithers and lets his "team of rivals" carry the  
ball. The problem is that the Clintonian policy is a blunt instrument  
with which our remaining allies are being hit over the head, and the  
results aren’t pretty. Hillary left Pakistan even more destabilized –  
and hostile to the U.S. – than it was when she arrived, and her trip  
to Israel is similarly disastrous.

This administration is hopelessly divided when it comes to foreign  
policy, with the Obama loyalists sending out hopeful signals in the  
form of the Dear Leader’s matchless rhetoric (e.g., the Cairo speech)  
and the the Clintonians in effective control of the foreign policy  
apparatus, contradicting and neutralizing whatever positive effects  
result from the president’s pronouncements.

Not only that, but at the policy level, where words are translated  
into concrete actions,Queen Hillary and her minions are carrying out  
another policy altogether, onevirtually indistinguishable from the  
Bush administration’s in style and content. The same blundering  
crudity is used to express and justify a policy of unmitigated  
aggression and complete disregard for human life.

There is nothing diplomatic about Hillary’s words or the tone in which  
they are uttered; she speaks with the bold assertiveness of Obama’s co- 
president, rather than as a member of the cabinet. Which is, indeed,  
precisely what she is, having been ceded the entire realm of foreign  
affairs by a chief executive clearly staggering under the burden of  
his office.

The point is that, once again, American voters are faced with a coup  
at the top. They never voted for a more belligerent foreign policy –  
quite the opposite, in fact – and yet that is precisely what they are  
being given. Obama is the happy, smiling, politically correct face of  
a policy that remains essentially unchanged, which is why his  
secretary of state feels free to travel the world recklessly pushing  
her weight around and insulting everyone within range of her smug,  
grating, hubris-inflected voice.

So you thought you were getting change, eh? Not a chance, not as long  
as Obama refuses to rein in his secretary of state. It is going to  
take more than a mere presidential election to effect fundamental  
change in our interventionist foreign policy. We are in for a long,  
hard slog. So dig in, check that you have enough rations, and get  
ready for a protracted struggle against the War Party – which has by  
no means retired from the field.
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