Inside the Mind of Hillary Clinton's State Department

Relations between the United States and Israel have reached a low point.

How else to explain why officials in the Israeli Foreign Ministry have leaked conversations they have been having with officials of Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports:

For months before the most recent attacks on U.S. embassies in North African states, Foreign Ministry and U.S. State Department officials had been arguing over developments in these countries. Senior figures in Jerusalem claimed that Washington was burying its head in the sand and ignoring the increasing radicalization in states such as Tunisia and Egypt.

Married are they to their own gauzy narrative, senior American diplomats have willfully ignored the rise of Islamic radicalism in the Middle East.

The report continues:

Senior Foreign Ministry officials say their conversations with their Washington counterparts have focused on what Jerusalem terms "radicalizing trends" against not only Israel but also against the United States and the West in general.

One of the most recent such meetings took place a week ago, during a visit to Jerusalem by the acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, A. Elizabeth Jones.

"The Americans were constantly trying to supply explanations and excuses for events in the post-revolution Arab states, and simply ignored the problems," one senior Israeli official said, adding, "In practice the administration's ability to affect events in the Arab world has decreased immensely."

Israeli officials pointed out to the State Department that the new, supposedly moderate government of Tunisia has recalled all of the female ambassadors who served with the previous government.

Misogyny, anyone?

The Hillary Clinton State Department chose to ignore the implications. And, it refused to pay heed when the new Tunisian government  redefined its relationship with Israel.

According to Haaretz:

A similar pattern emerged as to Israeli efforts to prevent a clause being added to the new Tunisian constitution outlawing normalization or contacts with Israel. The Foreign Ministry asked the United States to intervene, but was not satisfied by the response. "They told us, 'Don't worry, it's going to be all right, the clause will be left out,' but the clause is still in there," the official said.

Israel has also called American attention to the fact that for the past year Egypt has been dragging its feet over talks on reopening the Israeli embassy in Cairo. U.S. appeals have failed to speed things up.

As Muslim countries explode in violence against the United States we are seeing what happens when you send a bunch of amateurs to conduct foreign policy.

Watching it all from the sidelines, Andrew Sullivan has thrilled to the fact that Hillary Clinton has been a model of competence and composure throughout.

Perhaps because he has spent so much time fawning over Barack Obama, Sullivan can no longer distinguish between the look of a resolute leader who is in charge and the look of a deer caught in the headlights.

Whatever perspicacity Sullivan once possessed, it has long since abandoned him.  He has descended to the next circle of journalistic Hell, below the circle of political flacks into the circle of the mindless idolaters. 

In Sullivan’s words:

I never, ever, ever thought I'd say this: but Hillary Clinton's composure and competence and humility over the past four years as secretary of state make me want to see her president one day.

Let’s see. Hillary Clinton’s State Department was directly responsible for security at American Embassies and Consulates.

How did that one work out?

By willfully blinding itself to the political realities in the Middle East Hillary’s State department left our diplomats exposed and vulnerable.

Speaking of competence, when our Cairo Embassy was besieged it put out a now-famous statement denouncing a filmmaker.

By now the proper authorities are trying to make us believe that the a low level embassy official wrote and released the statement, in defiance of a direct order from Washington forbidding it.

If you believe that, you have probably descended to the Sullivanian level of mindless idolatry.

How does the oh-so-competent Hillary Clinton State Department explain why it took nine hours for our government to repudiate the statement?

And then, when you are trying to wrap your mind around Clintonian incompetence, ask yourself how well our State Department has managed the relationship with our one true ally in the region, Israel?


[Addendum:

Neo-neocon quotes a former Foreign Officer on the situation in Benghazi:

If the resources did not exist for whatever reason to have a properly set up and secured facility in Benghazi, why was it there? That is a question for the people at State management and for the Secretary. Who approved placing such a weakly defended facility in a highly unstable location? What was the purpose and usefulness of the facility weighed against the risks of having it there? Some bad calls seem to have been made.

Remarking on the situation in the Hillary Clinton State Department, this writer observes:

When I was at State, the atmosphere under the Obama misadministration was even more unreal than usual. The fawning over Obama and Hillary Clinton knew no bounds. The press releases and the internal conversations seemed to reflect the nattering of a cult rather than sober deliberations. We would have “serious” people tell us, “The world loves President Obama.” There was a feeling that somehow we were at a magical turning point in the history of humanity.

Neo’s post is well worth a read.]