Powerline Pittypats

Apparently they’ve redecorated over at the wingnut Powerline blog, transforming the former “man cave” into something straight outta Planet Frou-Frou, with fainting couches strewn all about and smelling salts conveniently located on all the spindly, antique side tables.

Back in the day, you could count on the Powertools to let loose a rousing chorus of “huzzahs” whenever George W. Bush indulged in his trademark dick-swinging machismo on the foreign policy front: You’re either with us or agin’ us! Dead or alive! Smoke ‘em outta their caves! Bring it on!

After all, Powerline is the blog that brought us this quote in 2005, which shall live on forever in blessed memory:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

But let Secretary of State Hillary Clinton make a couple of forthright assertions that are not drawn from 50s Westerns, and the Powertools go all nancy-pants on us:

UNDIPLOMATIC DIPLOMACY

Isn’t a diplomat supposed to be—you know—diplomatic? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton doesn’t seem to think so. On her current visit to Pakistan, she managed to insult both her own government and Pakistan’s in the space of a few minutes.

The Associated Press has reported on interviews and a Q and A session that Clinton gave in Islamabad. I came across it via The Corner, where John Hannah was appalled by this partisan attack by Clinton on her own government:

As a way of repudiating past U.S. policies toward Pakistan, Clinton told the students “there is a huge difference” between the Obama administration’s approach and that of former President George W. Bush. “I spent my entire eight years in the Senate opposing him,” she said to a burst of applause from the audience of several hundred students. “So to me, it’s like daylight and dark.”

One can only agree with Hannah’s comment:

Does anyone advising President Obama and the secretary of state really believe that this kind of partisanship and trash-talking abroad about another American president is going to buy us much long-term goodwill among either our friends or our adversaries? Do they imagine that this sort of thing really helps to advance U.S. national interests?

Actually, yes. I know you guys don’t get it, but all available evidence shows the rest of the planet is massively relieved your “genius” is no longer cranking out “masterpieces” on the world stage.  Drawing as wide a distinction as possible between his disastrous administration and the current one is good PR. The Powertool further harrumphs:

…[T]his report of Clinton slandering the government of Pakistan…is equally appalling, but for different reasons:

While U.S. officials have said they believe Osama bin Laden and senior lieutenants have been hiding in the rugged terrain along the border with Afghanistan, Clinton’s unusually blunt comments went further as she suggested that Pakistan’s government has done too little to act against al-Qaida’s top echelon.

“I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” Clinton said in an interview with Pakistani journalists in Lahore. “Maybe that’s the case. Maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t know.”

Is it really the position of the U.S. government that Pakistan’s leaders could kill or capture bin Laden et al. if they wanted to, but they have chosen not to do so? That is an explosive charge, and one that to my knowledge is false… So was she just idly musing when she accused Pakistan’s government of deliberately harboring al Qaeda’s top leadership?

Does either of the above instances represent how a competent, professional diplomat would behave? I don’t think so.

Actually, I think it’s about damned time someone raised that issue instead of just continuing to shovel billions of dollars at a Pakistani government that doesn’t control all its factions like “genius” used to do. It’s widely believed that Pakistan’s ISI has been in league with al Qaeda and the Taliban from the beginning. I was under the impression that this was an article of faith among wingnuts especially.

Now, these points are debatable. You could even make a good case that Secretary Clinton shouldn’t have brought it up publicly or should have worded it differently—as long as you haven’t spent the past eight years waving pom-poms for bulls-in-China-shops like Bush and John Bolton, that is.

If you’ve done that, your sudden concern for the niceties of diplomacy sound kinda hypocritical. So sack up, Powertools. Secretary Clinton has your diplomacy swinging:

“I think it’s important, if we are going to have the kind of cooperative partnership, that I think is in the best interest of both of our countries, for me to express some of the questions that are on the minds of the American people,” Clinton told CNN’s Jill Dougherty.

In the CNN interview Friday, Clinton said she was not suggesting that someone inside the government might be complicit with al Qaeda or might be failing to follow through in fighting the terrorist group.

“No, no,” she said. “What I was responding to is what I have been really doing on this trip, which is there exists a trust deficit, certainly on the part of Pakistanis toward the United States, toward our intentions and our actions. And yet we have so much in common, we face a common threat. We certainly have a common enemy in extremism and terrorism, and so part of what I have been doing is answering every single charge, every question.”

Trust “is a two-way street,” she added. While Pakistan’s military operation has been “extremely courageous in both Swat and now in South Waziristan, success there is not sufficient,” she said. “... I just want to keep putting on the table that we have some concerns as well. And I think ... that’s the kind of relationship I’m looking to build here.”

Huzzah!

Posted by Betty Cracker on 10/30/09 at 11:49 AM • Permalink

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