LA Times:
The statement triggered alarm bells in the Persian Gulf, which would likely suffer the consequences of any war between Iran and the U.S. In a harshly worded editorial, the Saudi-based daily Arab News trashed Clinton's comment today as insane:
This is the foreign politics of the madhouse. It demonstrates the same doltish ignorance that has distinguished Bush’s foreign relations. It offers only violence where there should be negotiations and war where there could be peace. At a stroke, Clinton demonstrated to everyone in this region that if she were the next occupant of the White House, Iraq-like death and destruction would be the order of the day.
The paper generally stays true to the line of the Saudi government, which is a key U.S. ally. But criticism of the remark also came from even friendlier quarters.
In the United Kingdom, which has been a steadfast U.S. ally in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as on the issue of Iran, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, a ranking British diplomat, criticized Clinton's remark as gratuitous:
While it is reasonable to warn Iran of the consequence of it continuing to develop nuclear weapons and what those real consequences bring to its security, it is not probably prudent ... in today's world to threaten to obliterate any other country and in many cases civilians resident in such a country.
Watch a video of how she "evolved" into being an obliterating hothead on The Nation
And also read The intemperate candidate
Seizing upon a question as to how she would respond to a nuclear attack by Iran--which doesn't have nuclear weapons--on Israel, which does, Hillary mocked reasoned discourse by promising to "totally obliterate them," in an apparent reference to the population of Iran. That is not a word gaffe; it is an assertion of the right of our nation to commit genocide on an unprecedented scale.
Shouldn't the potential leader of a nation that used nuclear bombs to obliterate hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese employ extreme caution before making such a threat? Neither the Japanese then nor the Iranian people now were in a position to hold their leaders accountable, and to approve such collective punishment of innocents is to endorse terrorism.
2 comments:
Fabulous. You'll be able to look down your Patrician Persian nose for as long as she holds the post.
HRC is Sybil. That's what makes me wary of her in such an important position. But did Obama have much choice? He needed to neutralize the Clinton machine by integrating it into his own. I don't see how else he could have done it, short of a vice-presidency.
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