Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrapped up three days of campaigning for war in Pakistan by exasperatingly declaring that “we’re not getting through” to the Pakistanis. It seems her talks not only convinced few people, but her smug, dismissive attitude likely cemented Pakistani attitudes about America’s designs on their nation.
When asked yesterday why Pakistanis should trust America’s “long-term commitments” after the US abandoning the region in 1989, Clinton declared “it’s difficult to go forward if we’re always looking in the rearview mirror.” When pressed on the massive civilian casualties from US drone attacks, she would only say “there is a war going on.”
And there is most assuredly a war going on, but Pakistanis are increasingly getting the sense that it isn’t their war, even though the US is demanding that they do much of the fighting. Millions of Pakistanis have been displaced in the US-provoked fighting, the whole country is subject to regular suicide attacks and military expenditures have virtually bankrupted the government.
But even with all of that Clinton still accused Pakistan’s government openly of harboring al-Qaeda’s leadership and dismissed Pakistani criticism as “negative feelings.” The Secretary of State may have failed in “getting through” to Pakistanis, but the Pakistanis don’t seem to be faring any better at getting through to her.
I liked the photo where she is wearing a headscarf, I think it pretty much tells the whole story of her woebegone appearance there in Pakistan…. I can't wait to see Zahoor's cartoon in the Daily Times of Pakistan, it's in English. Here is todays
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=200…
That is an excellent summary, Jason. Calling her smug and dismissive was spot on. What else to expect from Clinton who is defending the indefensible and who places little value on the lives of others? She is more interested in pursuing global domination and they are expendable pawns in her homicidal game of geopolitical chess.
"US abandoning the region in 1989"
Apparently this is a widespread Urban Legend. At
http://original.antiwar.com/scheuer/2009/05/05/ob…
we read:
"Notwithstanding Riedel’s assertions, in the late 1980s and early 1990s U.S., Western, and UN diplomats consistently tried to dictate to the Afghans what kind of government they should have. That troika wanted to staff the new secular and centralized Kabul regime with Afghan technocrats; secular Afghans who, like Hamid Karzai, spent the war safely in India, America, or Europe; "Gucci" mujahedin who were nominally Islamic, received wartime aid, but did no fighting; and even former members of the Afghan communist regime. In other words, all were welcome to join the new Western-mandated Afghan government except those who wore beards, carried AK-47s, were devoted Islamists, and fought to expel the Soviets.
In the immediate post-Soviet years, then, Washington spent tens of millions of dollars to try to form exactly the same type of strong and centralized Afghan government – the type of regime that historically causes war in Afghanistan – it is trying to form today. And in a lethally ironic case of déjà vu, the father of current Afghan President Karzai – a far more honorable and competent man than his son – was one of the West’s favorites, and he was guided by Zalmay Khalilzad, the same U.S. diplomat who has brought us the recent disasters in Kabul and Baghdad. In addition, the talented U.S. ambassadors Robert and Phyllis Oakley and Peter Tomsen led numbers of U.S. and UK bureaucrats, contractors, and NGOs into the country to teach Afghans the West’s democratic ways, as well as how to organize and administer national budgets, establish the rule of law, and create a strong central regime. This wildly misplaced intervention went so far as to bring in teams of American lawyers and judges to teach the Afghans a Westernized judicial system to replace what we knew was all that silly old Islamic and tribal stuff."
Obviously the Mujahadin were supposed to do all the dirty work and take all the casualties, and then be shunted aside as "superfluous" and undesired.
One Pakistani said it all about Obama's policies. The US drone attacks were "executions without trial".
Hillary must have skipped out on the imperial warmonger prep courses when she was at Yale, otherwise she would have insisted that anyone can understand Imperial English if it is merely spoken loudly enough . . .
Dear former supporters of Hillary Clinton,
You may not be aware that over the last few days, Hillary Clinton has been on a formal visit to Pakistan. Clinton's visit is getting little coverage in the US mainstream media – but a lot of coverage in the region and other parts of the world. The media coverage has not been good – quite the opposite – it has been dreadful – for her visit has devolved from diplomacy to very public exasperation with her hosts.
Clinton's mission to Pakistan was troubled from the start. Upon her arrival in Peshawar, a car bomb exploded killing at least 86 people and injuring "hundreds' more in a direct protest against her presence.
Clinton visited several cities in order to "sell the war" to the Pakistani people. In lackluster speech after speech, Clinton seemed aloof, depressed and a tragically ineffectual figure.
When confronted by questioners about the sharply rising number of civilian casualties from US drones in Pakistan, her response was a haughty, "There's a war on."
Granted – she had the assignment from hell – sell a war of western aggression to a nation that has been on the front line of Soviet invasion into Afghanistan to her north and the vast and inimical Indian subcontinent to her south – but, yesterday when Clinton declared that she was "not getting through" to the Pakistanis it became clear that she is really not comfortable with her role in the Obama government.
Earlier this year, stories circulated that Clinton had been "gagged," and she was ending her period of imposed silence with a major policy address to the Committee on Foreign Relations. In that speech, Clinton used the podium to make aggressive threats against Iran – a nation that Obama had been attempting to engage in direct talks about nuclear arms and normalization of relations. In effect, Clinton was assuming the role of Commander-in-Chief – instead of her own office – and playing to the neocon hawks in Washington who had done everything in their power to prevent her from becoming president.
During the strategic discussions on Afghanistan, Clinton has consistently toed the Bush-Cheney-neocon line of ratcheting up troop levels to maintain a permanent military presence in the war torn region against attempts to design an exit strategy from the quagmire. Her foreign policy allies are all military neocons: Petraeus, McChrystal and Mullen – rather than Obama, Biden, Jones, Kerry and many others who are desperately seeking an exit strategy and endgame from the costly and fruitless conflict.
Now, her personal treatment of the Pakistanis is being described as "smug and dismissive." (see below)
The handwriting is on the wall. Clinton seized the opportunity to become Secretary of State, but she has discovered that her responsibilities simply do not mesh with her personal abilities, ambitions or interests.
To have watched a brilliant legal student metamorphose from a liberal antiwar campaigner during the Vietnam Era and an advisor to the Senate Watergate investigation to a successful attorney and First Lady of Arkansas then the White House where she led the fight for a national health service – to her very ill-conceived campaign for the presidency in 2007-08 where she tilted right to appeal to the dwindling, white and masculine Blue Dog population in the Democratic Party and now her current role as a belligerent, warmongering Secretary of State is nothing less than an American tragedy.
I am sad to say that if I were advising Obama, I would urge him to consider replacing Clinton with someone more capable of understanding the history, the culture and the mindset of the people with whom they are dealing – rather than seeing their role as the leading agent for projecting American military power where it is unwanted, unwelcome and obviously counterproductive.
"Not getting through"….(translation) The Pakistanis are not buying my load of bull****. Hillary has always worried me. If my memory serves me right she was the one who persuaded Bubba to bomb Serbia after he called her. Did anyone notice how awkward and uncomfortable she looked and felt with that head scarve on? Will she do the Burka thing when/if she visits our "dear friends" the Saudis?
I've just published an article on the future of Pakistan.
Recent history in Pakistan is similar to events in Iran during the rule of the Shah. Both leaderships were strongly backed by the US, and were involved in widespread repression or attacks on their own people. Both regimes followed policies that were deeply unpopular domestically. In Iran, this led the revolution of 1979 which created an Islamic Republic. Could something similar happen in Pakistan?
Clinton's failure in Pakistan should not be surprising. Her diplomatic skills actually are quite limited. Her foreign policy knowledge is even more limited. She is a war monger who has the Air Force mentality that any problem can be solved through bombing. If you have a hang nail, the Air Force solution is drop a 500 lb bomb on it. Problem solved. We have to question why Obama appointed her Secretary of State. For that matter, we need to ask why he appointed Timothy Geihtner as Treadury Secretary and Larry Summers as his chief economic advisor, and why he listens at all to Robert Ruben. None of these people are problem solvers. Every one of them is a problem creator. Clinton blindly supported Bush's invasion of Iraq, lying to the American people about having read secret intelligence on Iraq when she had not even entered the room in which the information was secured. She then said she sent her staff to read the material, but no one on her staff had a security clearance that would permit them to enter the room. Thus she lied twice. That is one thing Hillary is excellent at–lying. Ruben, Geihtner and Summers were part of the architects of our "financial meltdown." There should be no wonder why the war in Afghanistan goes from bad to worse while the economy is continuing to sink slowly, with a whole new and massive round of home foreclosures on the horizon given Obama's appointments. He need to fire the lot of them, stop pandering to wrong-wing Republicans and Demoblicans and start being president of the U.S. instead of the hired hand of the capitalist class.
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