Hillary Isn’t the Monster
- 03.08.2008 - 11:55 AMI was at first relieved to learn that Senator Barack Obama had chosen Samantha Power as a foreign policy advisor. Her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
To her credit, Power disavowed her most controversial idea–that American troops be sent to Israel and the Palestinian territories–but troubling questions remain. If she thinks Clinton is a monster, what does she think about the dictators of Syria and Iran? She doesn’t approve of them. That’s obvious. But neither she nor Obama has ever been so “undiplomatic” as to suggest that they’re monsters.
Though not actual monsters, they are indeed monstrous.
Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seeks nuclear weapons and has compared the state of Israel to “bacteria” after threatening to wipe it off the map. Power called Clinton deceitful, but that goes ten-fold for Syria’s Bashar Assad, the assassin of prime ministers, the armorer of Hezbollah, and the car-bomber of liberal Lebanese journalists.
It has been said before that conservatives rely too much on military force and that liberals rely too much on diplomacy. Perhaps that’s true. In any case, I suspect the liberal yearning for dialogue with the likes of Ahmadinejad and Assad might be less troublesome if advocates of diplomacy gave some sign that they consider the tyrants and terrorist regimes of the Middle East to be more of a threat than election opponents.
We have met the enemy. And it isn’t us.
| »Back to Contentions | »Back to Commentary |
March 8th, 2008 at 12:35 PM
How can I say this without sounding vicious, if not even envious toward those who attended Harvard University? Oh well, what the heck. I might as well get on with it. Samantha Power appears to be an elitist yuppie placing her wet finger into the air to see which way the wind is blowing. Ambitious people attend Harvard. The want to “make it.” Their I.Q. is very high. They are not dummies. However, they often tend to be intellectual whores. The leftist establishment runs things at Harvard—and therefore it’s best not to rock the boat if you desire to get ahead. It’s really that simple.
The New York Times and its partners within the MSM community have done enormous damage. But so have Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Columbia, Yale, and the other “elite” schools. At this moment, many people realize that the Times no longer deserves respect. Hopefully, in the very near future—they will also come to the same conclusion regarding our “elite” schools of higher education.
March 8th, 2008 at 1:12 PM
Michael, all good points, but I doubt the sincerity of Miss Power’s backtracking on invading Israel to set up a Palestinian state (and that is exactly the net effect of what she said), which seems very much to have been forced out of her in the heat of a presidential campaign. The timing and the goofiness of her disavowal are suspect. However, this is now a very minor point about someone who is now yesterday’s news, unless Obama wins (doubtful) and brings her on board his administration (something I will here and now predict should he become the next prez).
That said, you’ve hit the nail on the head about something that’s bothered me for a long time. Too many Dems and liberals of all stripes seem to think the bad guy on the world stage is the man now in the White House and the evil neocons who lead him around by the nose, not the actual thugs, bullies and despots around the world committing genocide and funding/hiding terrorists. I recall the bumper stickers in ‘04 that said ‘Defeat Sauron, Vote Kerry’ and the MoveOn ‘BushHitler’ meme that far too many Democrats wildly applauded. The juvenile hatred of most Dems for Republicans is one reason why middle America doesn’t trust them, and another reason why come November they will once again pick a grownup over the party of spoiled, nasty boys and girls.
March 8th, 2008 at 1:35 PM
The post speculates that “liberals rely too much on diplomacy.” But they can rely on diplomacy only to the extent that diplomacy does something positive. In the case of Iran, for example, diplomacy has done nothing but give that country more time to develop a nuclear weapon. The diplomats then shrug their shoulders and say, “We tried.”
In contrast, the military action in Iraq has prevented Saddam Hussein from ever starting up his nuclear program again.
What do the liberals have to show for their diplomacy? A nuclear North Korea and a soon-to-be nuclear Iran.
March 8th, 2008 at 1:44 PM
At the very least, Ms. Power has a verbal accountability problem. I think David Thomson is onto something, in that Power seems to pop off about things in the manner of someone accustomed to modern academia, with its peculiar mix of adolescent “freedom” of expression and police state ideological constraint. In academia, you can call your colleagues and political leaders anything you want, but you cannot suggest that empirical evidence implies women don’t, on average, have the same aptitude for scientific abstraction as men.
Power wasn’t ready for prime time, as an adviser to a presidential candidate. I can’t even imagine Condoleezza Rice — or Zbigniew Bzrezinski, for that matter — blathering away unaccountably, as Power seems to have done on more than one occasion.
Power’s basic posture on foreign policy is, however, evident in her reflexive distaste for bolstering the military of a long-besieged ally. Such advisers to a president, we don’t need.
March 8th, 2008 at 1:57 PM
It does appear that Obama has (had?) an approach that is harsher on our allies (putative and real) than our enemies. He says we need to be more demanding of the Iraqi government (fair enough) and that we need to more aggressively go after al-Qaeda in Pakistan even if the Islamabad government doesn’t permit us to take such actions.
And yet, he argues, we must talk openly and with no pre-conditions to Iran and Syria and North Korea. A harsh approach, so he claims, to those regimes only exacerbates tensions.
One high standard for our allies; another lower one for our enemies.
This is reminiscent of the line that it may be unwise to be an enemy of the US but it’s positively deadly to be her friend.
How much of this is electoral politicking and boilerplate to placate the left remains to be seen. Both candidates do seem to be backtracking at least vis-a-vis Iraq.
Sorry Arianna.
March 8th, 2008 at 2:30 PM
Theodore Roosevelt advised: “Speak softly, but carry a big stick.” The stick, however, is only as effective as our adversary’s perception of our willingness to use it.
I offer this parable of the Farmer and the Donkey.
It wasn’t that long ago when a farmer looked to buy a mule from his neighbor. He asked the neighbor if the mule had any particular problems.
“No,” was what his neighbor replied. “This mule will do anything you ask him to do. All you have to do is ask him nicely.” Then he added, “Just make certain you never mistreat my mule if you buy him.” The price was fair, and the mule looked healthy, so the farmer bought the mule.
The very next day, the farmer wanted to begin his spring plowing and break some new sod that was pretty thick with prairie grass. So, he burned off the top layer of grass and sharpened his plow blades so the horse could pull the plow through the tough roots and ready the field for planting. He hitched the mule to the plow and said, “Git up!”
The mule, however, had no intention of pulling that plow and paid no attention to the farmer at all. The farmer tried talking nicely until his face nearly turned blue. Then he stomped angrily over to the farm where he bought the mule.
“I think you lied to me,” he told his neighbor. “You said all I had to do was talk nicely, and the mule would do anything I asked of him.”
That’s when the neighbor picked up a wooden two-by-four that was leaning against his barn. He strode right over to the farmer’s house without saying a word. He walked right up to the mule and hit it in the head with the two-by-four. After walloping the mule, the man walked up by the mule’s ear and whispered, “Please pull that plow.”
The mule started moving as fast as he could, pulling that steel plow through the tough prairie sod. “I thought you told me to never mistreat your mule,” the farmer told his neighbor with a questioning look on his face.
The farmer hesitated and said, “Like I said - talkin’ nice to him works every time. But, sometimes you have to get his attention first.”
March 8th, 2008 at 2:30 PM
Ms. Powers reflects the preferences of many educated female Democrats: Obama over Clinton. She also reflects something disquieting about Mr. Obama: woeful inexperience. Mr. Obama may well have superior communication skills, but as the old commercial said: “Where’s the beef?”
The two Democratic candidates appear to have identified key constituencies within the Democratic Party that the other does not have. If the bifurcation continues until their convention, a combined ticket would seem to be critical for their success in the general election in November. But if Mrs. Clinton is on the ticket, Ms. Powers’ days of advising on foreign policy are toast.
March 8th, 2008 at 9:41 PM
There is a well-established untreatable mental illness, a dementia acquired in the Boston area known as Charles River Valley Fever.
The illness is endemic on both sides of the River. The patient acquires a fixed delusional psychosis consisting of insufferable arrogance, feelings of personal brilliance approaching mania, associated with ill-grounded assertions of intellectual and moral superiority.
Ms. Powers and Mr. Obama, having been infected at Cambridge, are only the most currently prominent patients. Ralph Nader and John Kerry come to mind as sufferers. Many individuals are exposed in their youth but often recover in adulthood.
There is no treatment
March 8th, 2008 at 9:55 PM
Totten is playing a game of appearances. He trys to walk a line of journalistic impartiality when he actually seems to be more interested in giving a whitewashed version of an attempt to remake the Middle East in our image, or at least control it to the extent we require to have our way. I don’t think he cares much for the region he covers as much as he cares to imagine the region bending his way. He loves the White Man’s Burden and being able to pat the good children on the head for being such nice boy and girls. Like his man Rudy Giuliani, he has a thug’s certainty.
March 8th, 2008 at 10:04 PM
I’m not very familiar w/ Samantha Power’s work, or reputation, though I do remember reading of her research on genocide.
Something that I’ve noticed in the various accounts, and statements, that I’ve read regarding her resignation is that she is consistently described as ‘passionate’, without qualification, by people in and around the campaign. You’ll see this description several times from different sources in some articles and it’s become a stock element of her portrayal on television.
I’m wondering if this description is intended to imply that she’s too strident a/o a bit of a loose cannon. Liberals sometimes describe people who they sympathize with, but regard as too radical, in this way. For instance you’ll often read that 70’s radical militants were ‘passionate’, Che Guevara was ‘passionate’ etc..
But is Ms. Powers actually known to be especially passionate or idealogically committed? - is she just passionate by default? To label her this way without specifying the object of her passions seems like a condescension.
What I’m wondering is whether individuals aligned with the Obama campaign are trying to throw Ms. Powers under the bus in order to insulate the campaign from statements she’s made to the Scotsman and BBC. If she’s seen to lack restraint and judgement, it’s much easier to dismiss the significance of her remarks.