What they’re saying about Hillary Clinton – 04/25/10
Every week I’m taking a look at some of the more interesting and sometimes off-beat comments the world media has to say about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Here are a few choice excerpts for this week’s report –
What Hillary Clinton Didn’t Say
By Marjorie Arons-Barron
The premise is important – the idea that, if troubled nations abide by the rule of law and have dynamic economies, they can ameliorate the conditions that terrorists can exploit to advance their causes. Everywhere you turn, even where military action is on-going, the success of United States outcomes depends on how we help others develop their governance and human infrastructure.
This was the theme again and again at the annual State Department briefing held Monday in Washington with a group of editorialists from the National Conference of Editorial Writers.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the point person to help Obama make the case for these initiatives in the FY2011 federal budget. Convincing editorial writers from around the country should matter. But, in contrast to her predecessors who for years have shown up annually to field questions and advance their agendas, Madame Secretary stiffed the National Conference of Editorial Writers (including this year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Dallas Morning News) without explanation, failing for the second time to show up as scheduled. In doing so, she turned her back on an important opportunity to get the word out about what United States diplomacy is trying to achieve and what’s at stake.
Marjorie Arons-Barron Blog 04/20/10
It’s Not Just the Usual Suspects Taking Potshots at Israel
By Clifford D. May
The cruelest cut in recent days was made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who called on Israel to “continue building momentum toward a comprehensive peace by demonstrating respect for the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, stopping settlement activity, and addressing the humanitarian needs in Gaza.” She implored Israeli leaders “to refrain from unilateral statements and actions that could undermine trust or risk prejudicing the outcome of talks.”
When Clinton was a U.S. senator representing the state of New York, she seemed to appreciate the existential threat Israel faces day after day. When she was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, she seemed to grasp that, as a matter of both principle and policy, the United States needs to stand up to its enemies and stand up for its allies.
But as President Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton has conducted Middle East diplomacy in a way that can be described as, at best, lacking coherence. At worst — borrowing a phrase from scholar Bernard Lewis — she is helping make America appear “harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.” How can any good come of that?
National Review Online 04/22/10
Hillary Clinton again says she’s tired
By Laura Rozen
Hillary Clinton has said several times that while she loves the job, she cannot imagine being Secretary of State beyond one term. Now, she tells Esquire again that she is worn out by the grueling travel schedule of the top envoy job,
“It wears you out,” Clinton told Esquire. “The jet lag, the dry air on planes, the whole ‘If it’s Tuesday, I must be in…’ kind of thing.”
While there have been periodic rumors that Clinton would do everything from run as Obama’s Veep, to head the World Bank to be nominated for SCOTUS, to run for New York governor, if you take her at her word, she may be looking to do what she cares about in promoting women’s and children’s opportunities from private life, perhaps similar to her husband’s role at the Clinton Foundation.
Politico 04/22/10
Obama’s Bad Cop
By Michael Hirsh
Clinton’s played the heavy with Iran, Russia, and even Israel—and her sometimes hawkish views are finding favor with the president.
Clinton is now influencing policy more than she ever has, especially in close partnership with Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Subtly yet unmistakably, her somewhat greater hawkishness is beginning to show up in policy. While Obama’s no slouch at showing displeasure himself, he’s depended on Clinton to hammer Iran (which is becoming a “military dictatorship,” she recently declared, setting the administration’s new tough tone), and to harangue Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his defiance of U.S. demands for a settlement freeze. She also criticized the Russians in their own backyard over Moscow’s work on an Iranian nuclear-power plant. Clinton politely plays down her role as Obama’s bad cop. “I don’t think there’s anything as formal as that,” she says. “With every tough message that I deliver, it is embedded in a much broader context. It’s not, ‘You’re with us or against us.’ It is, ‘We have a lot of business to do.’?”
Newsweek Online 04/23/10
Hillary Clinton: She stoops to conquer
By Rupert Cornwell
One day, of course, Hillary will no longer be Secretary of State. So what then? The surprising answer may be: not a great deal. Political disclaimers should normally be taken with a generous pinch of salt. But in Hillary’s case there is no reason to disbelieve her when she insists she will not run for president again – and when she says she does not see herself sticking in her present job beyond the end Obama’s first term.
By the time election day 2016 rolls around, she will be 69; only Ronald Reagan was as old when he took office. She maintains that she plans a future of writing and teaching. Enoch Powell once said all political careers end in failure. But in Hillary Clinton’s case the observation is true only in that she failed to crack America’s ultimate glass ceiling. As for the rest: high-powered lawyer, First Lady, senator, Secretary of State – if that’s failure, who needs success?
The Independent 04/25/10
What they’re saying about Hillary Clinton – 3/28/10
Every week I’m taking a look at some of the more interesting and sometimes off-beat comments the world media has to say about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Here are a few choice excerpts for this week’s report –
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi share some laughs.
Tennesee Guerilla Women 3/25/2010
Norman Finkelstein Responds to Clinton, Netanyahu AIPAC Comments
I’m sure all of your listeners and your viewers are familiar with the magnitude of US aid to Israel. I think the important development is what Amnesty International said after the invasion of Gaza.
They said three main things: number one, that the US is by far the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel; number two, supplying those weapons to Israel is not only illegal under international law, it’s illegal under domestic US law; and number three, it said—and I think it’s important for your viewers to hear it—Amnesty International said what happened in Gaza could—and they describe what happened in Gaza as twenty-two days of death and destruction—what happened in Gaza could not have happened were it not for US taxpayer money.
And now along comes Hillary Clinton, and she’s extolling US military aid to Israel. The part that she left out is, number one, it’s all illegal under international and domestic US law, and number two, it was that US aid that made possible—you have to bear in mind—I know your program chronicled the use of the white phosphorus—every white phosphorus shell they found—you can see it in the Human Rights Watch report on the white phosphorus—every one was made in the United States. We are responsible for that war. It’s not just a cliché. It’s a factual matter. We made that massacre happen.
Axis of Logic 3/27/2010
Chavez: Clinton thinks US owns ‘the continent’
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez scorns US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as an ancient thinker, charging her with interfering in Venezuelan domestic affairs.
“She still considers herself the imperial lady. She is behind the times,” Chavez said during his visit to Ecuador on Friday.
“She still thinks the United States is the owner of this continent,” he added.
Press TV 3/27/2010
U.N. soiree may feature Clinton vs. Clinton
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to grab the spotlight with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Haitian President Rene Preval at a major fundraiser next week and in the process shove her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to the sidelines.
U.N. sources say Hillary, representing the Obama White House, will be a “central” figure at the U.N.’s Haiti Donor Conference to be convened at the organization’s New York City headquarters Wednesday. Bill Clinton, as special envoy, has been the U.N.’s point man on Haitian relief efforts over the last several months.
World Net Daily 3/27/2010
Hillary gives Iran a pass on election crackdown.
While “deploring” the violence against the Iranian people following the contested re-election last month of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered Iran an olive branch yesterday during her long-awaited policy address yesterday at the Council of Foreign Relations.
She told the Council –
Neither the President nor I have any illusions that dialogue with the Islamic Republic will guarantee success of any kind, and the prospects have certainly shifted in the weeks following the election. But we also understand the importance of offering to engage Iran and giving its leaders a clear choice: whether to join the international community as a responsible member or to continue down a path to further isolation.
Direct talks provide the best vehicle for presenting and explaining that choice. That is why we offered Iran’s leaders an unmistakable opportunity: Iran does not have a right to nuclear military capacity, and we’re determined to prevent that. But it does have a right to civil nuclear power if it reestablishes the confidence of the international community that it will use its programs exclusively for peaceful purposes.
Iran can become a constructive actor in the region if it stops threatening its neighbors and supporting terrorism. It can assume a responsible position in the international community if it fulfills its obligations on human rights. The choice is clear. We remain ready to engage with Iran, but the time for action is now. The opportunity will not remain open indefinitely.
From the Iranian perspective, it is unlikely that this limited-time offer from the Obama Administration will be taken seriously.
Indeed, Ahmadinejad responded today by saying Iran would “strike its enemies in the face,” and again rejected pressure from the international community to curb Iran’s “right” to develop nuclear power.
The question is, will the Clinton-Obama policy of turning the other cheek only make Israel, an Old Testament nation-state, more likely to take action on its own?
You can read the full text of Hillary’s address to the Council on Foreign Relations here.
