Here’s Hillary Clinton, speaking in Pakistan:
I think that, look, we all know that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is one that is a very serious and difficult problem that we are working hard also to try to resolve. We inherited a lot of problems. If you remember, when my husband left office, we were very close to an agreement because he worked on it all the time. The next administration did not make it a priority and did not really do much until toward the end. And unfortunately, we are trying to make up for some lost time, in my opinion.
The endless attempts by the Obama administration to blame everything on their predecessor are getting worn around the edges, and betray a serious lack of class and of executive strength. But even worse: Hillary’s formulation puts the blame for the Israeli-Palestinian problem in the wrong place–on the U.S. (and, by extension, on Israel) rather than on the death-cult leadership that has long controlled the Palestinian territories.
The assumption that you can make peace with anybody, on reasonable terms, if you just talk long enough and eloquently enough, is ridiculous on its face. But that’s exactly what the present administration seems to believe.
Again I quote Ralph Peters:
One of the most consistently disheartening experiences an adult can have today is to listen to the endless attempts by our intellectuals and intelligence professionals to explain religious terrorism in clinical terms, assigning rational motives to men who have moved irrevocably beyond reason. We suffer under layers of intellectual asymmetries that hinder us from an intuititive recognition of our enemies.
I’m not sure Hillary and Obama really qualify as “intellectuals”…and they’re certainly not “intelligence professionals”…but they clearly suffer from wearing the mental blinders that Peters describes.
Related posts:
A bizarre survey, apparently commissioned by the U.S. State Department, on how to improve U.S. image among Palestinians. Hint: the winning answers involve pressuring Israel and giving more money to Palestinians.
I am not sure that Peters is evaluating Muslim terrorists and their supporters correctly. They have not moved beyond reason; rather, they have not moved beyond the reason that was acceptable in the 7th century.
Both Obama and Clinton are card-carrying members of the “moral relativism” church of the USA. How anyone familiar with the peace process, so-called, could blame Israel and the US is beyond me. As DHL mentioned: the enemy is a savage who would be right at home in the 7th century—just using more deadly toys. The Palestinians will continue until they meet a force that will now longer tolerate their butchery, duplicity, and savagery—and that force will not come from words, but rather deeds. No one in the Arab world wants them—the Jordanians wish they’d go away; this fight will end the way all fights to the death end: some one will die and someone won’t.
These are people from a subculture in which people spend their entire careers talking about doing something but never actually having to do anything. Individuals have long successful careers doing nothing put talking. After a few generations of this, the talking becomes and end in itself. The process becomes the goal.
These naifs are going up against people who kill their own if they show the least disagreement. This won’t be pretty.
When will this nonsense ever end? You know, come 2012 and Obama still hasn’t done anything the left will STILL be blaming Bush. Talk, talk, complain, lobby, bitch, talk, moan, press conference, whine, shoot hoops, talk some more…. this is the Obama presidency so far in a nutshell.
http://www.hackwilson.blogspot.com
Look at the bright side: she isn’t president.
Jonathan…I think the attitudes Hillary expressed in this passage are totally in sync with Obama’s worldview.
Yeah.
By continuing to blame Bush they are actually increasing his legacy and diminishing their own stature. Whether history will judge it for good or ill, Bush acted and Bush changed the world. By positioning themselves as merely reacting to what Bush did, Obama et al are communicating that they cannot act effectively on the same scale as Bush did. They’re making themselves look hapless.
They’ve made themselves look like children forced to live in the shadow of great parent.
The lack of minimal “class” – humility, good manners, graciousness – in this presidency may not be its worst flaw, but it lowers the standard in a bottomless way. It is accompanied by a projection onto others that becomes bizarre.
“As I remember it, the former junior Senator desperately wanted Mr. Bush’s job; he spent the better part of his senatorial term actually trying to get Mr. Bush’s job, as opposed to doing whatever it is Senators actually do in Washington, if anything; and it seems a bit unbecoming to me at this point that, having succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, he finds that his current office is not all he hoped it would be. Ah well, there are more tears spilled over answered prayers than over unanswered ones, as someone much smarter than I am once pointed out. It may have been Mayor Daley, the real one, not the one there now, a man who routinely sent those members of the Cook County Democratic Committee too stupid to sit on the Chicago City Council to Congress, in order to limit the damage they could do.”
Akaky A.B.
Don Sensing has an interesting post in which he identifies five signs of a poor executive:
http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2009/10/barack-obama-and-general-mcclellan.html
Let’s try again…
http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2009/10/barack-obama-and-general-mcclellan.html
David Foster,
I am reminded of Winter’s description of Lt. Dike in “Band of Brothers.” It was something like, “Dike wasn’t a bad leader because he made bad decisions, he was a bad leader because he never made decided at all.”
Shannon, let’s say he has never run anything but his mouth.
I am reminded of Winter’s description of Lt. Dike in “Band of Brothers.” It was something like, “Dike wasn’t a bad leader because he made bad decisions, he was a bad leader because he never made decided at all.”
What’s the lyrics to that Rush song? “If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.”
It is not possible to conduct an UNBIASED opinion poll usinng face to face interviews on Israeli-Palestinian relations in Gaza. The respondents all know that terrorists are watching. They know that if they answer incorrectly they or their families will suffer. These survey results have absolutely no validity. The only value of this survey exists as pro-Iranian propaganda.
“We inherited a lot of problems. If you remember, when my husband left office, we were very close to an agreement because he worked on it all the time.”
I can’t believe nobody has commented on this yet. The SECOND INTIFADA started in September 2000 for crying out loud.