Thursday, July 26, 2012

"Rock star" Hillary a no-hit wonder

The rock star’s motorcade weaved its way through the streets of the city, lined with angry residents chanting for the “star” to leave town as they shouted insults, tossed shoes, tomatoes and water bottles to underline their contempt. No, the rock star wasn’t a Beatle who offended Imelda Marcos or Southern bible-belters, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a stop in Cairo on her final “rock star” tour of the world before she “retires” from politics, or so she claims. “Rock star” is the appellation the New York Times applied to Clinton last month (“Hillary Clinton’s Last Tour as a Rock-Star Diplomat,” written by Steven Lee Myers), in a nauseatingly flattering piece entirely devoid of perspective. “I would argue that Mrs. Clinton is perhaps the most significant secretary of state since Dean Acheson, who helped unify the relationship between modern Europe and the United States,” it quotes Google chairman Eric E. Schmidt, a Clinton supporter in 2008. Republican senator Lindsey Graham—who as a South Carolinian obviously has little pleasant to say about a black president—gushes “I think she’s represented our nation well. She is extremely well respected throughout the world, handles herself in a very classy way and has a work ethic second to none.”

As noted above, she is not “well respected” everywhere or by everyone, and “classy” is not the word I would use to describe her response to a question by a Congolese student back in 2009. And it is certainly embarrassing to compare Clinton to Acheson, who had a hand in not just shaping Cold War policy, but NATO, the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine. Clinton’s most significant achievement as Secretary of State, according to the UK’s Daily Mail, is

“Since becoming secretary of state in 2009, Clinton has logged 351 days on the road, traveled to 102 countries and flown a whopping 843,839 miles, according to the State Department.” After breaking the “record” of 98 countries visited, “Not content, she tacked on another two countries — Mongolia and Laos, where she was the first secretary of state to visit in 57 years and only the second ever — on her latest trip. And she has another six months to go before she reaches her self-imposed deadline to step down and take a breather.” This is apparently what Graham means by “hardworking.”

I admit I am no fan of Hillary. The often bizarre and self-pitying behavior exhibited by herself (like the RFK assassination allusion) and her adherents (Harriet Christian, Bill’s meltdown during the South Carolina primary, feminist commentators like Bonnie Erbe who belittled and called on Barack Obama to step aside after the primaries). When under pressure, her behavior was in sharp contrast to Obama’s coolness, particularly when he was faced with such media assaults as the Rev. Wright “scandal.” Hillary, on the other hand, exhibited wild swings in temperament when confronted by adversity. While Obama seriously miscalculated when he believed that the Republicans would prefer to work with him rather than heed the racial paranoia of the party’s hardcore constituency, one should not assume the “what ifs” of a Hillary administration; as documented in the book “Game Change,” Hillary regarded anyone who did not pledge personal loyalty to be an enemy, which calls into question her ability to work with others (we only have to look to the 1993 health care reform battle). Hillary seemed only to function with the support an almost cult-like following; however, she seemed to have an inability to keep order within the cult, as each had a different idea on how to “serve” her. The Clintons could also be accused of having patronizing, demeaning attitudes concerning race, a sort of “love us or leave us” shtick; Bill insisted that white people would not vote for Obama, while Hillary insisted that she represented “working people, white Americans” at one campaign stop. I also have this suspicion that the Clinton’s were behind the Rev. Wright “exposé.”

To return to the New York Times piece, a strange narrative is described regarding Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng and cookstoves, an episode used to emphasize how foreign affairs is expertly handled in Hillary’s capable hands. Clinton arrived in China to view how China was progressing on their recent agreement to support the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, one of Hillary’s pet projects. The goal of the alliance is to put 100 million clean stoves in 100 million homes by 2020. Although the developing world is the principle target, China is expected to be a significant consumer of these stoves. The Global Alliance website has a video which depicts Somali women supposedly walking six miles to collect branches on a barren landscape, sometimes attacked by irate landowners whose land is being stripped by these marauders. The message is, of course, stilted and heavy-handed: “The land is being destroyed. The women must gather wood to survive. The wood is heavy. The burden causes injury and premature births. This is the story of one billion women (a made-up number, but who’s counting?). Women spend hours cooking each day. Cooking fires contribute to global warming. Fires put out black carbon in the atmosphere. Smoke makes women sick. Mothers keep children close to keep safe. Respiratory disease kills children. Mothers die too (the problem, as shown in the video, is improper ventilation; there are no stove pipes to channel smoke out safely).” With these new stoves, which use ethanol rather than wood, the women and children are seen clapping and dancing joyously as they view a demonstration.

However, last April another Times report found that there is scant evidence to support the Alliance’s lofty claims. A trial run for the stoves in India was particularly disturbing. 2,600 cookstoves were distributed in a rural India community, and their use was observed over a four-year period. The Times reported that

“The study found that acceptance and, crucially, usage, of a new stove wasn’t universal even initially, and usage declined rapidly over time, as stoves broke down and households failed to make the necessary repairs or investment in maintenance. Some households who’d voluntarily entered the lottery refused the new stove, even though it was heavily subsidized. Other households that accepted the improved stove continued to use their old stove alongside the new.”

As for the health benefits the new stove was alleged to provide,

“The researchers found, in the aggregate, no statistically valid evidence that the stoves had any measurable impact over a wide range of health outcomes, including lung function, infant birth weight, infant mortality, or even the chance of getting sick…Lastly, and most disturbingly, the researchers found that those who adopted the new stoves actually saw a decline in their living standards compared with their neighbors who hadn’t. They spent more time maintaining their new stoves (even though, as we saw, this wasn’t enough to keep the stoves usable in many cases), which took them away from income-earning opportunities, and there was no significant reduction in fuel costs or time spent cooking.”

As usual, the West never takes into consideration cultural mores, and tries to change what has worked for a millennium. Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser wrote in an op-ed piece that the failure of the India experiment “doesn’t imply that we should give up trying to improve indoor air quality — but it does mean we need to think about behavior as well as technology. Dumping stoves into the developing world isn’t going to alter the long-standing advantages of traditional methods. If we want to help people in poor countries, our engineering skills alone won’t be enough.”

And this is supposed to be one of Hillary’s successes as Secretary of State?

The other part of the story was the Chen controversy. When Chen escaped house confinement, his first demand was medical attention and for authorities to treat his complaints about harassment from local authorities. Chinese authorities apparently granted these desires behind the scenes, but then Chen demanded to leave the country; after some public tit-for-tat, the Chinese government allowed him to leave “officially” as a visiting American student. Upset that months of preparation for the cookstove summit would be go awry, Clinton was forced to accept the initiative of the unnamed diplomat who met Chen in secret and advised that he be taken to the American embassy. Reports—or rather opines the Times—“The next challenge was to resolve Chen’s fate in a way that wouldn’t scuttle essential Chinese cooperation on the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, the worsening conflict in Syria, the fighting between Sudan and South Sudan, cyberattacks emanating from China — and cookstoves. No one close to her would dare put it quite this way, but a question at the heart of her legacy is this: As important as the plight of Chen might be, what is it compared to the deaths of nearly two million people a year from toxic smoke in their kitchens?”

Where’s the Pepto?

I’m not sure how many people would die if the U.S. and China ever got into a shooting war, but as we have just heard, there is not much more consensus on how many people would die because they did not have those cookstoves—in fact, more people might die of starvation because they didn’t have their traditional cooking devices, just so Hillary can advance her personal gender agenda. Again, this is because activists in the West believe that just because the infrastructure supports for their modern convenience toys don’t exist (fuel stations and trained repairpersons, just for starters), that is no reason not to concoct a narrative of victims (women and children) and victimizers (men)—even if in ways they don’t understand, that they are victimizers as well. I suppose it is also useful to point out that China has not been very cooperative in the past concerning those other pesky issues, and it was clear that it was throwing her a face-saving bone in regard to those cookstoves. There is no point in bloating this puff-piece any more than necessary.

As Obama’s first term in the White House winds down, and Hillary serves out her last few months, the media and even Republicans have come out in praise of her. “Libya was a good showcase into who she is. I said at one time during this debate, Thank God for strong women” said Graham. I saw one magazine cover call her “Head of State.” How pompous. How full of “it.” Hillary is praised for making the State Department her personal fiefdom—which she has done by ruthlessly packing it with her disciples and yes-people, the Clinton “cult.” She cannot tolerant dissent within the ranks; she takes it “personally.” Even criticism of Clinton’s performance as “head of state” is couched in empathetic terms; the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens only faulted her for “loyalty” to Obama, and she “could not be held accountable for the failures of a president she understood to be a lightweight.” The problem with that statement is that the facts indicate that Obama is no more a “lightweight” than Clinton. As a senator, Obama teamed with Richard Lugar to craft a non-proliferation initiative. What did Hillary do? During the 2008 primaries she claimed to “help bring peace to Northern Ireland.” But the actual negotiator, George Mitchell, confessed that the First Lady’s role was limited to being “one of many people who participated in encouraging women to get involved, not the only one." Irish commentators at the time expressed surprise at the audacity of her claims. Her stories about dodging bullets in Bosnia had as much credibility as her tale about “negotiating” open borders in Kosovo: "I cannot recall any involvement by Senator Clinton in this issue," said the top American envoy involved in those negotiations. Clinton also claimed that she knew how to “handle” China—based on a speech she gave on women’s issues in Beijing in 1995.

Clinton has survived with her manufactured “image” intact partly because she wasn’t involved in the bruising domestic policy battles, and because the Clinton name still has some “cachet.” The fact that most people think of Bill before Hillary is due to his perceived empathy with common people, while Hillary is limited to being a “symbol” to certain demographics. That her stature is dependent upon that of her husband’s was doubtless the reason for her going off-the-handle when that male Congolese student’s question about whether she discussed policy issues with Obama was mistranslated to refer to Bill. “My husband is not secretary of state, I am. If you want my opinion I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband.”

Obama has been criticized for not allowing Clinton “free reign.” Again we are dealing with excuses to explain Clinton’s lack of a single imposing accomplishment. Her “all-in” approach to the Palestinian problem is symptomatic of an inability to understand the fineries of negotiations. Is this because she lacks the true skills required of delicate diplomacy? While it was Obama who has been criticized as being “anti-Israel,” it was Hillary’s comments that have provided that impression. And we should not forget that Hillary’s true passion has been her “gender agenda.” She may have time to make the occasional pointed speech about Syria or Russia, but these sound less like policy statements than her personal opinions.

And all too often, it was Obama’s—not Hillary’s—instincts that were correct. Obama knew that country was tired of the Iraq adventure and wished to linger there no longer than necessary; but Hillary wanted the military to maintain an indefinite presence. But this would have only made U.S. troops there a continuing target for militant action. As implied by Graham’s comment, Hillary was credited for the successful conclusion of the ousting of Libya’s dictator, yet this was anti-Obama talk. Clinton opposed intervention in Libya during the uprising there; Obama, however, supported compelling Europe and NATO to take a lead role in a “no-fly” air campaign to support the Libyan rebels. This campaign was in fact a victory for Obama, with Clinton playing only a grudging supporting role. Yet Lindsay referred to it as a “victory” brought about by a “strong woman.” One suspects that Republicans are trying to this late-stage praise campaign to draw Hillary cultists, still angry about 2008, away from Obama in 2012.

There is some speculation that Clinton will run for president in 2016. She will claim to have foreign policy experience that her opponent will presumably not have. That may be true. But it is also true that she was no less an “amateur” in foreign policy than what the new Edward Klein book brands Obama as president. Opponents would no doubt point to her lack of accomplishment, and the fact that in regard to domestic policy, her “experience” is still of little more substance than her years as First Lady.

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