Outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is doing a victory lap around the networks this week, taking bows and basking in the admiration of a largely sycophantic media that agrees with President Obama’s glowing praise of her service. We know his praise, as well as the willingness of many in the press to buy into the notion that her willingness to spend a lot of time on airplanes is the same thing as a record of genuine achievement, is strictly political boilerplate. Clinton was a cipher at Foggy Bottom doing Obama’s bidding and has few, if any, actual successes to her credit along with disasters like Benghazi (for which she inexplicably took full responsibility but not blame). But it’s hard to see how her part in directing America’s involvement in the Arab Spring will be seen by history as anything other than placing her in the ranks of the most incompetent stewards of American foreign policy in the country’s history.
Anyone who doubts that evaluation need only ignore the softball interviews and breathless anticipation of another Clinton run for the presidency in 2016 and instead look at accounts of what is going on in Egypt today as the head of that country’s military described it as descending into “chaos.” Since as we noted yesterday, the president told “60 Minutes” that the transition from the Mubarak dictatorship to the current Muslim Brotherhood regime in Cairo was an administration success, those proclaiming Clinton among the greatest of our secretaries of state have some explaining to do.
Even as “60 Minutes” interviewer Steve Kroft was making sure the president and Mrs. Clinton felt safe from being made to look stupid or bad, tens of thousands of protesters had taken over Tahir Square registering their anger about the fact that the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi has assumed the same tyrannical powers as Mubarak. Today violent clashes are spreading throughout the Egyptian capital as a sense is taking hold that, as the New York Times put it, “the state is unraveling.”
The significance of the statement from Defense Minister Gen. Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi is that the sidelining of the military during the transition after Mubarak’s fall was very much Clinton’s handiwork. While the administration probably gets more blame than they deserve for the end of Mubarak’s rule, they haven’t gotten enough for the way they helped smooth the way for the Brotherhood’s ascendancy. Clinton used the leverage that the more than $1 billion in American aid Egypt gets from the United States in order to force the generals to stand aside and let the Brotherhood take power. Neither she nor the president has shown the slightest inclination to use that same leverage to push the Brotherhood out or even to make it loosen its grip on total power.
Anyone doubting the importance of this in terms of Clinton’s legacy needs to understand that on her watch, the most populous Arab nation has moved from being a force for moderation in the region to being in the grip of an Islamist government that is not only hostile to our values (as Morsi’s anti-Semitic rants and his equally hateful explanations for them illustrate), but also has re-established good relations with our enemies like Iran, strengthened terrorists like the Hamas regime in Gaza and threatened the peace with Israel.
This is a diplomatic setback of the first order. But instead of speaking out in order to try and restrain Morsi from killing his opponents or supporting those Egyptians who want to know how it is that they have swapped a secular dictator for an Islamist one, Clinton and her boss have made it clear that they will continue funding him. If this is their idea of foreign policy success, we’d hate to see what failure looks like.
And this 'great success' will without doubt be followed by even 'greater successes' with Kerry now in charge of the normally despicable State Department and Adolph Hagel going into the Defense Department, to be renamed the Surrender Department. As Maurice Chevalier sang in Gigi, I'm Glad That I'm Not Young Anymore.
"I'm Glad That I'm Not Young Anymore" nOr as Governor Reagan remarked to one of my contemporaries who told him "We are the future" (and sad to say I was part of the 'we' he was talking about), "Thanks for the warning. I'll sell my bonds."
Well, the good news for Clinton is that Kerry may be so despicable that she may well look like a regular Talleyrand by comparison. Now THAT is damning with faint praise.
Victory lap? What victory?
You know, Egypt and Libya. THOSE victories.
Truth be told , Hillary is not dumb, say, like a Madelaine Albright. She could have engaged in conduct as Secretary of State that would have been a credit to her nation, but Hillary-being a Clinton-took the expedient and easy way out as is the wont of the Clintons(plural). As I have never tired of saying, the Clintons have always been about three things, and three things only: Their personal power, wealth, and fame, and all other considerations can go to hell. I think it is the Chinese curse that says, " may you live in interesting times". Well, here you go.
All this fawning over Clinton reminds me of the policy of the multicultural , and equality driven first grade schoolroom, whereby all the students are given an "A', lest a child feel "inadequate".
The notion that we can affect this sort of thing by preaching is a silly delusion.
On a day where I had to read the disgustingly nauseating sycophantic lap dog bullsxxxx that is Terry McAuliffe's memoir for a project, the sycophantic lapdog bullsxxxx accompanying Hilary for being an incompetent Secretary of State is a reminder of the chilling effect media corruption has had on the democratic process in which being an adored Democrat will let you go further than anything else because the media is so anxious to create Democrats who will be beatified for the ages (and tear down and demonize any Republican capable of being an innovator) that they will ignore all scandal, all corruption and all general incompetence associated with these hacks who disgrace the idea of where America's leaders are supposed to come from.
'What difference does it ma . . . ' Oh, forget it . It's hopeless. Everything said up top is right on. n nKerry will make SecState Clinton look like an overacheiving genius by comparison, and shoe her in to the Presidency, where, following the fiasco that will have been Obama, she will be hailed as a genius once again. n nWe are lost. n nThe suuccess of the Clintons, at our expense, is instructive and emblematic of what is wrong with America today.
Barring exceptional circumstances or accidents of fate, few cabinet members are destined to leave Footprints in the Sands of Time. They are, after all, the president’s employees, charged with carrying out his policies. Such has been Hillary Clinton’s lot as Secretary of State, and the best that one can say of her performance is that it was marginally competent.
The Stupid Party, as Governor Jindal so rightly called it, has begun its campaign of vilification.
why don't you explain to us, why Hillary was a great SofS?
hillel n ndo you ever have anything constructive to contribute or are you here to sling your clever shallow little one liners and and then think 'winner'? n nWhy don't you explain to us, so even the party of stupid, can understand what makes Hillary a good, if not great SofS?
Hopeless. He's a smarmy little turd, though Mom tells him he's brilliant, but she wishes he'd get out of the basement and get a job. n nWhen no one else is listening, he tells her he can't find one, because Obama has ruined the economy forever.
The incongruence between this regime's actual fruits and it's characterization of these fruits as representing 'successes' never ceases to astonish and bewilder. If civilian casualties in Afghanistan decline but our troop casualties increase, Obama-Clinton consider that a success. If a loyal ally, albeit a dictator, is deposed and replaced by an Islamist dictator who is no friend of the US or any Western nation, it's considered a 'success'. When government employment surges while private sector employment tanks it's considered a 'success'. And so on and so forth. This regime and its sycophant media have turned the truth on its head and have represented lies as the truth.