The Weekly Standard: Did Hillary Clinton help bring down Tunisia's Ben Ali?

[Enrique]

First of all, given this source, we should assume it's 100% B.S. The last thing we should do imo is take anything in this neocon rag at face value. Second, none of us should be surprised that the neocons would praise Hillary. Why wouldn't they? Third, the part I put in bold comparing her favorably to Bush made me :rofl:


http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/did-hillary-clinton-help-bring-down-tunisias-ben-ali_533753.html#read-more

(...)

Over the last two years the Obama administration has rightly been excoriated for ignoring human rights issues throughout the Arabic-speaking Middle East. The White House gave a free pass to allies, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that the Bush team had pressed for reforms. The adversaries that the previous administration sought to isolate like Syria, which locked up its own dissidents while murdering Lebanese activists, Obama wanted to engage. But Thursday afternoon in Doha Secretary Clinton fired a shot across the bow of the Arab political order.

In the Middle East, Clinton said:

one in five young people is unemployed. And in some places, the percentage is far more. While some countries have made great strides in governance, in many others people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order. They are demanding reform to make their governments more effective, more responsive, and more open. And all this is taking place against a backdrop of depleting resources: water tables are dropping, oil reserves are running out, and too few countries have adopted long-term plans for addressing these problems.

In taking the side of Arab individuals against their ruling regimes, Clinton was reminiscent of the most optimistic days of the Bush administration’s freedom agenda, circa 2005. It is worth wondering what Clinton’s words might have indicated to both the regime and its opponents.

Everyone in the region will want to know where the Americans stand on last week’s happenings in Tunisia. Is Obama publicly hailing the “courage and dignity of the Tunisian people,” while privately dreading how the fall of a U.S. ally might affect regional stability? Is the administration frustrated that events on the periphery of the Middle East are overtaking their policy priorities in what they perceive to be the red-hot center of the region, namely the Arab-Israeli peace process? Or does a president with seemingly little room to maneuver on domestic policy ride a wave of optimism in a part of the world to which he seems especially attached?

(...)

[dipsydoodle]

1. Yup

100% bullshit.

[Submariner]

2. Little Billy Kristol's bird cage liner

He's ALWAYS wrong. Even his father thought he was a numb skull.