Hillary Clinton's Foreign Policy Deception

[mazzarro]

A good article about the general trajectory of the Obama administration's foreign policy under the leadership of the Hillary Clinton as SOS. And it belies the attempt by Hillary Clinton to distance herself from Obama on the problems now surfacing in regard to the decisions they made on some of the issues.

...

The most aggressive of her claims, that Obama's unwillingness to give support to the Syrian rebels has led to the rise of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) -- is not true. The US and allies have supported the rebels, though the exact numbers and means are unknown as the operations have been mostly covert. The policy was mistaken from the start: it has contributed to more than 160,000 dead in Syria, and in fact helped to open the way for ISIS to threaten both Syria and Iraq. This failure is both Clinton's and Obama's, and to this day is obscured in a cloud of lies and deceit.

Here is what we know. When the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, the US foreign policy and intelligence establishment was caught flat-footed, without any warning, anticipation or policy. Our policy in the Middle East was wholly reactive, and the one glimmer of an initiative -- Obama's Cairo Speech in June 2009 -- proved to be empty words without any follow up.
....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/hillary-clintons-foreign_b_5674467.html

[cheapdate]

1. "...Our policy in the Middle East was wholly reactive"

Bullshit. Policy objectives have limits. We don't control the world. Of course the US "reacted" to events. We didn't stand in the way of the Arab Spring protests and we didn't back Mubarak. I'm satisfied with that much.

I don't mind analysis and criticism, but this kind of backseat driving, 20-20 hindsight bullshit gets old.

It's easy to be a genius when you're not in the driver's seat.