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| via National Peace Foundation, circa 2006 |
The article Obama was hoping someone would write: Some in Arab World Wary of Clinton.
There is possibly no person President-elect Barack Obama considered for secretary of state who is more reliably pro-Israel than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the woman to whom he appears likely to give the job sometime after Thanksgiving. .. Yet Clinton is also the former first lady who famously broke with her husband’s administration in 1998 and said Palestinians should have a state of their own. Ten years later, the comment seems unexceptional, but at the time it prompted the White House to make clear she was speaking only for herself.
[...] Other diplomats and foreign policy experts say Clinton would bring to Foggy Bottom one of the leading voices in the Senate for a new U.S. commitment to more aggressive diplomacy. They say she would push hard for a Middle East peace deal, in keeping with the activist approach taken by President Bill Clinton in the final years of his administration. …
I guess Clinton’s kiss of Mrs. Arafat, considered a handshake or an insult depending on the judging party, has been forgotten.
But what’s being written today only strengthens the case I made on Friday.
However, progressives are already whining, and Obama hasn’t even taken the oath of office yet. I’m certainly not surprised, especially since most people supporting Obama never got that he was a pragmatic centrist from the start, as I proved conclusively a long time ago. But just imagine if a bunch of new people world leaders didn’t know, who also were anti war, now were being considered for Obama’s State department, NSC, etc. “Naive,” “immature,” sending the “wrong signal to the world,” with our enemies waiting to pounce, would have been the cry. Of course foreign policy appointments will be “conservative,” as some would say, though I prefer known quantities that send a message of stability. Obama’s viewpoints will be the change agent in his foreign policy, with solid hands that people already know to make his case.
The truth is that things move slowly in the big Washington wheel; with the world wheel positively glacial paced, requiring known, trusted hands on deck. Enter Clinton, possibly Jones, the ones likely given the task of implementing Obama’s policy prescriptions, with Hillary offering Obama a real chance to break the stalemate in the Middle East by virtue of their partnership, one seen as hawkish on Israel even though Obama’s AIPAC speech was nothing less. Again, with the help of Clinton and the perceptions of her reputation on Israel (fitting a strong New York senator), Barack Obama is poised for a Nixon in China moment, which bears repeating in the face of articles now unwinding in the press.
If you didn’t read Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski earlier this week, there’s no time like the present.
Though for me, the most critically important gift Clinton offers is in Pakistan, the country of my obsession.
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