Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

News

Government troops shooting protesters in Syria

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Now that violence has broken out in Jordan and Syria, countries where we have much more vital strategic interests, will Obama open up a fourth and a fifth military front as well?

Excerpt:

Even as the Obama administration defends the NATO-led air war in Libya, the latest violent clashes in Syria and Jordan are raising new alarm among senior officials who view those countries, in the heartland of the Arab world, as far more vital to American interests.

Deepening chaos in Syria, in particular, could dash any remaining hopes for a Middle East peace agreement, several analysts said. It could also alter the American rivalry with Iran for influence in the region and pose challenges to the United States’ greatest ally in the region, Israel.

In interviews, administration officials said the uprising appeared to be widespread, involving different religious groups in southern and coastal regions of Syria, including Sunni Muslims usually loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The new American ambassador in Damascus, Robert Ford, has been quietly reaching out to Mr. Assad to urge him to stop firing on his people.

As American officials confront the upheaval in Syria, a country with which the United States has icy relations, they say they are pulled between fears that its problems could destabilize neighbors like Lebanon and Israel, and the hope that it could weaken one of Iran’s key allies.

The Syrian unrest continued on Saturday, with government troops reported to have killed more protesters.With 61 people confirmed killed by security forces, the country’s status as an island of stability amid the Middle East storm seemed irretrievably lost.

For two years, the United States has tried to coax Damascus into negotiating a peace deal with Israel and to moving away from Iran — a fruitless effort that has left President Obama open to criticism on Capitol Hill that he is bolstering one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world.

[…]Indeed, the crackdown calls into question the entire American engagement with Syria. Last June, the State Department organized a delegation from Microsoft, Dell and Cisco Systems to visit Mr. Assad with the message that he could attract more investment if he stopped censoring Facebook and Twitter. While the administration renewed economic sanctions against Syria, it approved export licenses for some civilian aircraft parts.

The Bush administration, by contrast, largely shunned Damascus, recalling its ambassador in February 2005 after the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Many Lebanese accuse Syria of involvement in the assassination, a charge it denies.

When Mr. Obama named Mr. Ford as his envoy last year, Republicans in the Senate held up the appointment for months, arguing that the United States should not reward Syria with closer ties. The administration said it would have more influence by restoring an ambassador.

Diplomacy only works when it is backed by the CREDIBLE threat of FORCE. For two years, Obama didn’t show that he was willing to use force, and it emboldened the Iran-backed Syrian government to behave violently. Look at how Obama fumbled the Iranian election, where civilians were being shot down in the streets. That’s what causes violence – appeasement of evil. If evil people thought that they were going to have to pay a price for being evil, then they wouldn’t be evil. Obama made friends with bad people – he emboldened them to do bad things.

What is the strategic advantage of war in Libya?

From ABC News.

Excerpt:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that Libya did not pose a threat to the United States before the U.S. began its military campaign against the North African country.

On “This Week,” ABC News’ Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper asked Gates, “Do you think Libya posed an actual or imminent threat to the United States?”

“No, no,” Gates said in a joint appearance with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “It was not — it was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest and it was an interest for all of the reasons Secretary Clinton talked about.  The engagement of the Arabs, the engagement of the Europeans, the general humanitarian question that was at stake,” he said.

Why didn’t the Obama administration go to Congress before engaging in military action in oil-rich Libya?

During his campaign for the Presidency, in December, 2007, Barack Obama told The Boston Globe that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

Earlier in 2007, then-Senator Hillary Clinton said in a speech on the Senate floor that, “If the administration believes that any — any — use of force against Iran is necessary, the President must come to Congress to seek that authority.”

Bush debated the war in Iraq for 6 months and got permission from Congress before going in. Why couldn’t Obama do it? Why does Obama have to rush to war?

News

Feminists push liberal sexual agenda at United Nations

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Story from the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt:

The theme of CSW this year was “access and participation of women and girls to education, training, science and technology.” However, rather than reading, math, computer skills, and vocational training, a number of panels and events focused instead on “comprehensive” sex education. For example, the Population Council hosted a side event during CSW with International Planned Parenthood Federation and the International Women’s Health Council to introduce advocates from other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and delegates from around the world to their new It’s All One Curriculum: Guidelines and Activities for a Unified Approach to Sexuality, Gender, HIV, and Human Rights Education. The curriculum’s ultimate goal: “to enable young people to enjoy—and advocate for their rights to—dignity, equality, and healthy, responsible, and satisfying sexual lives.”

The creators of this curriculum claim that its perspective is appropriate for all young people globally, irrespective of their culture. Parents and policymakers alike might be surprised, if not horrified, upon examining some of its content. For example, the first unit is entitled “Sexual Rights are Human Rights,” which ignores anything controversial about that assertion and enumerates a variety of so-called sexual rights alongside the more generally accepted political and social rights. The section on relationships discusses “long-term domestic relationships or partnerships,” listing marriage as one such type of relationship often entered into out of social, religious, or economic pressures. It calls for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Not only does the curriculum advocate for same-sex marriage and the normalization of homosexuality, it also calls for the acceptance and legalization of prostitution (euphemistically referred to as “sex work”) and unencumbered access to legal abortion, which it asserts as a human right. It asserts that parenthood and marriage need not be related and that gender is a social construct that varies across time and culture. It encourages students to explore their sexual desires and says “sexuality may be expressed by oneself or with others.” Absent in the several hundred pages of curriculum and activities is any positive mention of abstinence, other than including it as a possible means of contraception or an effective way to avoid contracting a sexually transmitted infection.

Ever wonder where this stuff comes from? It comes from the political left. And it’s paid for by U.S. taxpayer dollars.

 

Commentary

Why do feminists ignore the plight of women under Islam?

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Here’s an opinion piece from the Jerusalem Post. (H/T ECM)

Full article:

In 1995, then first lady Hillary Clinton spoke at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. There Clinton seemed to embrace the role of championing the rights of women and human rights worldwide when she proclaimed, “It is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights…If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”

Yet as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton – like her fellow self-described feminists – has chosen to single Israel out for opprobrium while keeping nearly mum on the institutionalized, structural oppression of women and girls throughout the Muslim world. In so acting, Clinton is of course, loyally representing the views of the Obama administration she serves. She is also representing the views of the ideological Left in which Clinton, US President Barack Obama, the human rights and feminist movements are all deeply rooted.

Since the height of the feminist movement in the late 1960s, non-leftist women in the West and Israel have been hard-pressed to answer the question of whether or not we are feminists. Non-leftist women are opposed to the oppression of women. Certainly, we are no less opposed to the oppression of women than leftist women are.

But at its most basic level, the feminist label has never been solely or even predominantly about preventing and ending oppression or discrimination of women. It has been about advancing the Left’s social and political agenda against Western societies. It has been about castigating societies where women enjoy legal rights and protections as “structurally” discriminatory against women in order to weaken the legal, moral and social foundations of those societies. That is, rather than being about advancing the cause of women, to a large extent, the feminist movement has used the language of women’s rights to advance a social and political agenda that has nothing to do with women.

So to a large degree, the feminist movement itself is a deception.

I am strongly opposed to third-wave feminism, but I certainly care more about women than Hillary Clinton does. I actually speak out against the oppression of women in Muslim countries. Clinton is a coward and a sell-out.