Hillary Clinton
Discredits American Foreign Policy (An Nahar,
Lebanon)
"The image
of Hillary Clinton in South Africa dancing enthusiastically exposed the ethical
tone deafness of the head of American diplomacy. That picture tells residents
of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo all they need to know about the cruelty
of American foreign policy. ... But we need to give Obama and Clinton credit: they have
done about as good a job as possible presiding over diminished American influence.
That has been no small accomplishment."
This text represents a critical point of view of American
foreign policy that is closest to the Republican Party narrative, which accuses
the Obama-Clinton duo of “discrediting” it.
After Clinton has spent nearly a million miles in the
air, American influence continues to diminish.
The image of Hillary Clinton in South Africa dancing
enthusiastically exposed the ethical tone deafness of the head of American
Diplomacy. That picture tells residents of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo all
they need to know about the cruelty of American foreign policy.
The real power of foreign affairs rests in the hands of
the White House, and more specifically the Obama campaign. All major foreign
policy decisions - in Iraq, Afghanistan, the battle raging in Syria and the challenge
posed by the Iranian regime, have been made at the behest of the needs of
the campaign. All that remains for Mrs. Clinton is hoopla and a hectic travel
schedule.
Much has been made of the amount of time she has spent in
the air. She is now, officially, the most traveled secretary of state in American
history. According to a recent statistic, she has travelled 843,485 miles and
visited 102 countries. (this was before her latest African dance. No doubt
those keeping count will update the figures). On one of her tours, she had
breakfast in Vietnam, lunch in Laos, and dinner in Cambodia. It's official, she
is always fun, lively, and drawing everyone's attention.
This discredits U.S. foreign policy. If it is written of Truman’s
secretary of state, Dean Acheson, that “he was present at the creation" of
the post war global system at the end of WWII, then historians who bother writing
about Mrs. Clinton will consider it a waste of time, testifying to the erosion
of American power within the international system.
After she took up her post in 2009, she announced that the
so-called “Freedom Agenda” put in place by the previous administration would be
done away with. In April of last year, she didn’t hesitate calling it an
"ideology of a bygone era.” This is what her president wanted from the beginning.
Carrying the banner of change in international affairs, the man who captivated crowds
in Paris, Berlin and Cairo was in his heart unsettled in his attitudes, and
apprehensive about projecting American power beyond its borders.
Posted by Worldmeets.US
When they work together, presidents and secretaries of state
can alter the course of history. Take, for example, Truman and Acheson and
their response to the demands of history when Britons were no longer able to fulfill
their imperial role. Similarly, Ronald Reagan and George Shultz drove Soviet
Communism to the grave, restoring confidence to the American people after the
diplomatic setbacks of the 1970s and the humiliations suffered by American power
in the era of Jimmy Carter. But we need to give Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton credit: they have done about as good a job as possible presiding over diminished
American influence. That has been no small accomplishment. They wagered that Americans
not only wouldn't notice - but that they would be altogether disinterested in
the decline of American power abroad. And they were right..
However, the ineffectual nature of the current secretary
of state is not unprecedented. Mrs. Clinton had no say in the decision to withdraw
from Iraq. In fact, it was Vice President Joe Biden who was the president’s key
adviser. And we haven't heard much from her regarding Afghanistan, except for
a statement last month that it is a "key non-NATO ally." She also
misread the Arab Spring, saying that Hosni Mubarak was “a close family friend”
and that his regime was stable. For a long time to come, she will be remembered
for holding on to a political sophistry that is, of course, the
administration's current approach to the Syrian revolution.
Not having anything invested in the Syria situation except
talk, she never tires of raising the specter of jihadists joining the fight: “Those
working to exploit the misery of the Syrian people, either by sending in
proxies or by sending in terrorist fighters, must recognize that that will not
be tolerated, first and foremost by the Syrian people.”
Take Aleppo, the ancient city and former booming economic
and commercial capital of the country that is now being barbarically showered with shells as
if it were a foreign city. All Mrs. Clinton can say is: “we must very
clearly define expectations and avoid a sectarian war.”
Syria has slipped - as was inevitable - into an
interminable dispute, and a comprehensive civil and sectarian war between the majority
Sunnis and Alawites
who hold the reins of power. But Mrs. Clinton has nothing better to offer than
the trivial and nonsensical observation that: “we need to find faster ways to
stop this bloodbath and start the political transition. And we should ensure
the safety and security of state institutions [translated quote].”
These are comments by someone wasting time at the expense
of the Syrians, and trying to buy time for a president who handed her the job knowing
that there would be someone like him at the State Department, and not someone
who would practice the type of diplomacy that believes in weilding American influence and the
burden the United States must shoulder in the world.
One need not be overly sarcastic to understand the thinking
of the secretary of state and her closest political strategist, her husband
Bill Clinton. They've adapted well to the defeat Obama inflicted on them in
2008. The role Bill Clinton has been assigned at the Democratic Convention, as
the person best suited to reassure centrists and independents that Barack Obama
is fully within the party's political center, constitutes an investment in the
future. And on the morning following the presidential election, the Clintons
will be ready. They will await Obama’s victory and then gradually climb back to power.
In the case that Obama is defeated, they will come to the
traumatized party's rescue. Mrs. Clinton will point to a rich and far-ranging professional
career. With all those air miles to her credit, she won't need to repeat the
fictional story about having to land under fire in Bosnia in 1996. She will
never mention the hopes she initially held for Syrian President Bashar Assad, who she saw as a reformer, or the massacres
he has committed against his own people. Her supporters will argue that all is well
at the Department of State, and that Hillary completed her mission through what
she likes to call “People-to-People Diplomacy.”
