Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Policy Experience

The Hillary Clinton Machine continues to tout the experience that would make her the most qualified candidate over her inadequately qualified competitors vying for the Democrat presidential nomination. Yet she has rarely spoken, other than generalities, of any specific qualifications she has acquired in her storied career that make her the most qualified.

It would only take a rudimentary knowledge of recent history or a basic search to substantiate the fact that she has never endeavored in a high executive capacity; She has never managed anything of any consequence; She has very little aggregate experience in the Senate. She actually has less practical experience than most of her rivals that would qualify her as Commander-in-Chief.

The experiences she was involved in during high-level politics where disastrous. One of the first disasters she created after moving into the White House was the the Travel-Gate scandal. She tried her hand at health care reform with the monumental failure of Hillary-Care. The only documented experience she has was either an absolute failure or tainted with corruption or both. Dating back to the days as partner in the Rose law firm and its involvement, along with her husband, Susan and James McDougal and Vince Foster, et al in the Whitewater real estate scandal to her present day scandals relating to taking millions of dollars of dirty campaign money, there has been nothing but a trail of failure and corruption.

She, also as the “smartest women in the world and foreign policy genius”, was ”duped, tricked, and misled” into voting for the Iraq war by George Bush. According to the left, Bush’s cerebral capacity is suspect–so where does that leave the “smartest women in the world?

Clinton did speak this past week about how she risked her life performing foreign policy work for her husband’s administration. She spoke of one terrifying and life threatening trip she took to Bosnia in 1995. The landing was in a “corkscrew” fashion to avoid sniper fire. Then the takeoff from the tarmac was an all out race to dodge sniper fire. She also added that,” if a place was too dangerous, too poor or too small, send the first lady.”

This is the kind of foreign policy experience the other candidates are lacking. Who accompanied her on this, in her words, “life threatening mission”? The Marines? The Navy Seals? The Army Rangers? Perhaps a squadron of Air Force fighter jets? No! She was accompanied by an invincible platoon consisting of Sinbad the pajama wearing comedian, singer Sheryl Crow and Clinton’s 15 year old daughter, Chelsea, on a goodwill mission. Is this the type of crew anyone would choose if they were really going into a life threating situation? Is there a modicum of plausibility that this trip would have any more danger attached to it than a routine trip to Boise, Idaho?

In finality she has absolutely no redeemable record of political, professional or personal experience that would make her the most qualified person running for the presidency.

Which leads us to this past weekend’s interviews she had with Wolf Blitzer and George Stephanopoulos concerning U.S. foreign policy with Pakistan. Hillary Clinton demonstrated her foreign policy acumen with flair.

The ensuing is one question and answer from her interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. The entire interview transcript can be read here.

Blitzer: This is a damning indictment of President Pervez Musharraf. Some are calling on him to step down, do you believe he should step down?

Clinton: What I believe is that he should meet certain conditions and quickly. We should immediately move to free and fair elections. Obviously, it’s going to take some time for Benazir Bhutto’s party to choose a successor. Nawaz Sharif has said that he won’t participate at this time. I believe again some kind of international support for free and fair elections in a timely manner would be incredibly important. If President Musharraf wishes to stand for election, then he should abide by the same rules that every other candidate will have to follow. We also want to see a resumption of the move toward an independent judiciary. I think that was a terrible mistake. This is an odd situation, Wolf. The people in the streets are wearing suits and ties, they are lawyers, they are professionals, they are the middle class of Pakistan, which really offers the very best hope for a stable, democratic country and that is in America’s interest, but more importantly, it is in the interest of the Pakistani people.

Here is an excerpt from an interview Hillary Clinton did with George Stephanopoulos this past Friday.

Speaking about the possible delay in the Pakistani elections after the assassination of Bhutto, Sen. Clinton said: “I think it will be very difficult to have a real election. You know, Nawaz Sharif has said he’s not going to compete. The PPP is in disarray with Benazir’s assassination. President Pervez Musharraf could be the only person on the ballot. I don’t think that’s a real election.”

Hillary Clinton, who is running on her foreign policy experience, believes she is the only one able to lead from the first day because of her extensive experience–especially in foreign policy. She feels she is the only one able to address the issues with Pakistan, a country with a nuclear arsenal, a suspended constitution, a hand picked Supreme Court, the Taliban and Al Qaeda vying for some percentage of control in the country–and potentially has the capability to become one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

There is just one problem with her analysis of Pakistan’s political state–she doesn’t know one thing about the country or its political infrastructure and apparently neither does her staff.

Per her answers, she states that after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, her party, the PPP, is in disarray. She said Sharif has decided not to run. She then added that Musharraf will be the only one on the ballot. One problem with that answer–Musharraf was elected in a democratically held election this past October for a term of 5 years. He is also not running in the January elections, which have been moved to February, because the election is for seats in the Pakistan parliament.

The Pakistani People’s Party (PPP) headed by Bhutto is a hereditary party, her son is the leader now because it was willed to him by his mother. Bhutto inherited her seat from her mother who inherited it after the death of her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Not only did Clinton state that the party is in disarray, but she also stated that Benazir Bhutto inherited her seat after the murder of her father. Her father was prosecuted, convicted then executed. Then it went to his wife. There was never a choice in who the leader would be. The PPP is not a democratically run party.

She also stated that Sharif decided not to run. He did not decide not to run, he can’t. He is barred from running because he is a felon. Bhutto could have run for Prime Minister because Musharraf pardoned her, but he has yet to pardon Sharif.

Clinton actually believes that there would be a three way race in Pakistan between Musharraf, Bhutto and Sharif.

Former President Bill Clinton has stated that the country would be taking a chance if voters nominated someone with less experience in Washington. He also said that her experience in Washington better prepares her to “deal with the unexpected.” This is true because the first unexpected thing she would have to deal with, after being enlightened about Pakistan, would be the fact that her knowledge about Pakistan was on the same level of her knowledge of the Constitutional limitations on government in this country–which is not smarter than a 5th grader.

The interesting thing about experience is that just because you have it, that does not mean you learned anything from it. If everyone learned from experience on the same level then everyone would be at the top–and there is usually only room for one.