SecState in a Headband?

SecState in a Headband? December 16, 2009

So, the Obama administration’s “smart diplomacy” on Iran is not working. And this is very troubling, indeed. Iran is test-firing increasingly advanced missiles at a time when, as Ed Morrissey notes, the B+ President Obama has awarded himself includes having both “made progress toward halting” nuclear weapons in North Korea and um…cancelling our installation of missile shields in Eastern Europe.

Read all of Ed’s piece, and then consider for a second how difficult it is to be president, particularly when you’re a president who has promised something like “world peace and unicorns and sanctions” to your base, built on foundations of endless, and naive talk.

Speaking of “naive,” that was a word then-Senator Hillary Clinton often applied to then-Senator Barack Obama’s foreign policy ideas, until she became his Secretary of State. And speaking of Hillary Clinton, let us remember how inconsistent she can be. In 2006, she railed of the Bush Administration that it was:

. . .a mistake for the U.S. to have Britain, France and Germany head up nuclear talks with Iran over the past 2 1/2 years. Last week, Iran resumed nuclear research in a move Tehran claims is for energy, not weapons.

“I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and chose to outsource the negotiations,” Clinton said.

This from the same woman who once denounced Bush for “arrogantly proceeding without the international community…” regarding Iraq.

He disregards the “international community” and calls Iran an “axis of evil”, that’s bad. He includes the “international community” in handling Iran, and that’s bad, too.

Let’s not lose sight of that point. When Bush went into Iraq, with soldiers from the UK, Australia, France Italy and even Fiji assisting, that was arrogant uni-lateralism. When he bowed to his critics and allowed Europe to lead the way in a multi-lateral dealings with Iran, that was “outsourcing” diplomacy and wasting critical time.

Given how ineffective the multi-lateral approach has been, I am inclined to agree with Mrs. Clinton about the waste. It’s all rather irrelevant, now, since there is a new government in place in the United States, one that -we are told- is not at all arrogant, and that all nations just love to pieces as it practices “smart” diplomacy, and not “stupid American cowboy” diplomacy.

One of these days I will sit down and write a list of all the countries we had excellent working relationships with in 2008, that have been dissed and disappointed by America in 2009, but for now, I just want to say that Senator Hillary Clinton was correct about Obama’s foreign policy naivete, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not serving her own ambitions well by tying herself to Obamian policies that will continue to fail, as long as they are rooted in a “trust and don’t bother verifying” philosophy.

You know, the sort of philosophy that says, “awwww, the Lockerbie terrorist is dying? Aw…that’s sad. And we’re like…compassionate and stuff! Let’s release him so he can go home and die…or, umm…disappear, as the case may be.”

Also, I’m sorry, but no Secretary of State who wants to be taken seriously should be in a headband. Mrs. Clinton looks tired, yes, and she should. But that headband, to me, is saying, “I am in a bind…” Or, it says “they’ve got me stuck in Wonderland.”

Oh, indeed you are, Mrs. Clinton. I think your own foreign policy might have been smarter than Obama’s, but his is the one you’re charged to deliver.

H/T Gateway Pundit

Related:
Jennifer Rubin: Hillary Clinton, Dictators and Doubletalk and Hillary admits failure on Iran


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