Hillary's Speech to the Council on Foreign Relations

Hat tip International Business Times

This past week, out-going Secretary of State gave a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, where she told them of all the "great things" she and the current administration have done in the area of diplomacy and foreign policy.


http://www.ibtimes.com/hillary-clinton-remarks-american-leadership-council-foreign-relations-full-text-1056708

I draw attention to her answer to a question after her speech:

QUESTIONER: Thank you. My name is Nadia Bilbassy. I'm with MBC television, Middle East Broadcasting Center.

Madam Secretary, some of the successes have been attributed to you is mending or fixing United States relation with Arab and Muslim world. Yet the statistics contradict that. If you look at the Pew statistics, it shows that actually, your favoritism in comparison to the Bush administration is lower and -- in countries like Turkey, Jordan and in other places.

So what is going wrong? Does that mean that America's standing in the -- in the world is on the receding end, that its prestige has been affected?

Thank you.

CLINTON: Well, let me say three things about that. First, I have obviously followed closely public opinion, and I think it's fair to say that the United States, for the last decade, has not been viewed favorably by a very high percentage of the people in any of the countries in the Middle East or North Africa for a number of reasons, some of it rooted, of course, in our strong support for Israel over the many years of Israel's existence as a state. So this is not the Obama administration, the Bush administration, the Clinton administration. This is the views of many people in the region about America. And I think it's unfortunate, because, you know, clearly what the United States stands for is absolutely in line with what the Arab revolutions have been publicly espousing.

Secondly, I think that we have done -- and I take responsibility, along with our entire government and our Congress and perhaps our private sector -- we have not done a very good job in recent years reaching out in a public media way or in a culturally effective way to explain ourselves. You know, I'm always encountering so many conspiracy theories that are totally off-base, wild, made-up stuff that the media in the region promotes about the United States that is absolutely untrue. Our response has been, nobody'll either believe it, or we can't possibly contest it.

I take a different view. I think we ought to be in there every single day. You know, I made a point of reaching out to Al Jazeera when I became secretary of state, because it was unrelentlessly -- or was relentlessly negative about us. And I said, you know, come on, that is not only inaccurate, but it's deeply unfair. And, you know, they -- their response to me was, well, your government never puts anybody on Al Jazeera. I said, well, that's going to change right now. You know, you can't be in the arena and expect there to be a change if you're not willing to get off the bench. And from my perspective, that's our fault. We have let a lot of stuff be said about us, believed about us that is contrary to who we are as a people, what we stand for and what we've done.

I guess thirdly, we in our efforts to support democracy still are held accountable for supporting the governments that were there before democracy. You know, you deal with governments of all kinds. We deal with China. Hardly anybody believes that China fully respects human rights, and it certainly is not a democracy, but we don't get blamed because we do business with China, but we did business with other regimes, and somehow that caused lasting negativity toward us, which I think, again, is unfounded.

So there are reasons for all of the points that you made that go more to the heart of American foreign policy and American values, but we can do a better job in at least disabusing and refuting some of what people are led to believe that is contrary to who we are."

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That's right, Hillary; it's all our fault. It always is. We don't communicate our values well enough. We support Israel. And don't forget our private sector. Don't say anything about Islamic extremism and intolerance. Don't say anything about how the so-called "Arab Spring" has become  nothing more than one form of tyranny supplanting another. Don't express any outrage over what has happened to our embassies and consulates in that region-particularly Benghazi.

"What difference at this point does it make?"

It is all our fault. We need to do a better job of delivering our message and letting other countries know what America stands for. But isn't that the job of our diplomatic corps, Hillary? You list our government, Congress, and even our private sector of failure in that regard, but it is you and the State Department who have the primary responsibility to enhance our relations with other countries, n'est pas?

If anyone on our side is to blame, it is you who have failed, Madame Secretary.