08 March 2013

Their travels with Hillary

While the State Department reporters traveled the world with Hillary for the last four years talking about the importance of the participation of women in the political process, Iran was building a bomb, Assad was killing 70,000 of his people, North Korea was testing a missile that can now reportedly reach Los Angeles, and China and Japan have reached the brink of war over a set of small, uninhabited islands. On each of these issues Secretary Clinton did little to meliorate the situation, ceding America’s influence to the ineffective international community or ignoring the problem altogether.

Though they asserted so in criticism, one can only hope that the Foreign Policy Journal is correct in writing that Secretary Kerry is “not a Clinton on U.S. Foreign Policy.”

Nevertheless, as she prepares her 2016 presidential campaign, America’s political reporters are content to claim Hillary Clinton a successful secretary of state despite the fact that they struggle to show evidence to prove the point. Is there one single priority foreign policy issue that Hillary Clinton resolved or can be credited with for doing the heavy lifting?
All true, and there is more where it comes from, most of it bull's eye.

And, somewhat surprisingly, from Daily Beast:
In practice, the administration's "nuanced diplomacy" meant downgrading the promotion of freedom and human rights, viewed suspiciously as Mr. Bush's policy rather than a long-standing bipartisan commitment.
As a June 2012 Pew poll revealed, in much of the Muslim world, where the administration's humble posture was supposed to have had its greatest effect, U.S. popularity generally declined during Mr. Obama's first term. (Only 12% of Pakistanis, for example, held a favorable view of the U.S., down from 19% at the end of Mr. Bush's presidency.)

Meanwhile, the administration's obsession with multilateralism and the hectoring of traditional allies like Israel have yielded few concrete gains.
Sad.

4 comments:

SnoopyTheGoon said...

I suppose the Pakistanis are not entirely happy at being exposed for having sheltered OBL and, of course, civilian deaths resulting from drones being used to take out terrorists invariable lays the blame on the US, rather than the terrorists using the civilian population as human shields.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Oh, the Pakis don't like us. Boo hoo. Can Lurch solve it all when the Hildabeast didn't. Frankly? I don't care.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

That is true too, however conducting a policy of "engagement" with various enemies also contributed to the fall in sympathy, I would guess.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Can Lurch solve it? I somehow doubt it. It is not just the question of a better talker.