Hillary Clinton: World Bank President?
No, she’s not really qualified for the job, but she’ll bring the Bank a higher profile.
And it will be a good thing to have 2 women running the big international financial institutions.
Gorilla says: “They can’t do any worse!”
Or so one must conclude after hearing Secretary of State Clinton warn of “serious consequences” if a terror attack on the US could be traced back to Pakistan.
The difficulty with such an obvious bluff is that last weekend’s terror attack was directly traceable to Pakistan, and there’s not much we can do, short of invading the country, to encourage the Pakistanis to defeat the Islamic extremists in their midst.
The Pakistani government’s afraid of a civil war, while the Pakistani military is still playing all sides against the middle in hopes that some advantage can be gained in a post-US Afghanistan.
Instead, we get yet another pointless, inside Washington State v. Defense argument, wherein the Defense Secretary suggests we’re ready to take orders as far as military assistance to Pakistan is concerned.
Will we cut off such assistance if the next Pakistan-based attack is more devastating? Will we declare war on Pakistan?
Of course not, so why engage in this kind of idiotic, defensive rhetoric? Is it to make the Administration sound tougher to voters in November?
The latest terrorist attack should suggest to our leaders and the American people that the Administration’s doing a pretty good job of defending the country against terrorism.
What’s still lacking is an intelligence community that can deliver the goods in terms of identifying, locating, and eliminating terrorist leaders inside Pakistan.
Gorilla asks: “Why not be a bit more offensive and ask Panetta’s boys and girls why they still can’t find their own shadows?”
Hillary Clinton, backing down on Israel for America, as everyone in the world knew would happen.
Why?
Here’s Matthew Yglesias pointing out the obvious: there’s no political support whatever in the United States for any kind of retaliation against Israel, no matter what Israel does.
So, back will go George Mitchell for another round of proximity talks.
Israel will come to the table for a serious negotiation only when it decides that its future as a Jewish state is under threat. Both demographics and time are on the Palestinian side and the Israelis aren’t completely stupid.
The Palestinians will come to the table for a serious negotiation only when they decide that some kind of state is better than another 60 years of being stateless.
At the moment, neither side is serious about peace, so the US shouldn’t waste any further time on forcing them to get serious; both sides know we have zero leverage.
Gorilla says: “Getting Republicans to vote for any bill introduced by any Democrat is a walk in the park, when compared to getting Jews and Palestinians to divvy up their park!”
Between a dictatorship of theocrats and a dictatorship of generals?
Dunno, but Secretary of State Clinton seems to want to make such a distinction in Iran.
Theocrats? We won’t deal with them, but they may be less inclined to repress their people.
Militarycrats? We won’t deal with them, but they don’t care what happens to their people.
So, what are the choices for others in the region, according to Secretary Clinton?
1) Do nothing about Iran.
2) Go nuclear, like Iran.
3) Ask the US for help, either to defend against Iranian nukes or provide nukes for some post-Cold War version of collective security.
We apparently prefer option 3.
And it’s all utter nonsense.
Why should we again promote arms proliferation in a region where our only interest is the free flow of oil?
Might it not be better to cut a deal with the Iranians and balance our interests between Shiite and Sunni dictatorships?
Might it not be even better to reduce or eliminate our dependency on unstable petrocracies, perhaps via stiff consumption taxes on fossil fuels, thus making energy alternatives economically viable?
What we’ll do instead is absolutely nothing in an election year, don’t after all want to be called soft on the Axis of Evil!
Gorilla says: “You can take the politician out of the diplomacy, but you can’t take the diplomat out of politics!”
Hillary Clinton’s in Moscow, and has decided that the time has not yet come for further sanctions on Iran.
The Russians are being a bit more cooperative, at least on bilateral issues like missile defense and nuclear arms reduction, and have made it clear they’re not ready for more sanctions until there’s more diplomacy. The Chinese feel the same way.
All of this is good news, because we appear at last to be heading towards a bilateral deal with Iran. It will take time, it will not be easy, but it’s the only sensible way forward. America has more important issues than whether a non-nuclear, fifth-rate regional power stands in the way of our gradual withdrawl from the other two fifth-rate, non-nuclear regional powers: Iraq and Afghanistan.
Gorilla thinks: “Hillary knows that dancing with the bear is a lot better than being voted onto the island!”
Hillary Clinton’s in Kenya and she’s concerned the Kenyans are not doing enough to investigate and hold accountable those Kenyan officials who instigated and/or participated in the 2008 post-election violence. In fact, the Hague may launch an investigation if the Kenyans don’t get busy soon.
“I know this is not easy; I understand how complicated this is,” she said. “How do you go about prosecuting the perpetrators without engendering more violence?”
Gorilla answers: “Well, actually it’s quite simple. Our officials keep talking about moving forward, give a free pass to those who authorized and committed torture, provide a permanent government guarantee against moral hazard, ignore domestic and international law, close their eyes, and click their heels together three times. We invented a new policy device, but that comes naturally to a highly developed, innovative, yet responsibly reluctant political class. It’s called Professor Marvel’s Impunity Machine.”
