Hillary Clinton, a PR Fantasy with no Credentials Worthy of a Presidential Wannabe

Hillary Clinton had it nailed. She would do the grand tour to roll out her Opus Magnum, "Hard Choices," clear the room of all Democrats who might be possible rivals for the Party's 2016 presidential nomination, and then sit back until early 2015 to formally announce her candidacy. ~~~~~ But politics is a dangerously unpredictable business. And Mrs. Clinton has just learned that. She pinned her foreign policy credentials on her tenure as Secretary of State. But, in announcing early in her book tour that she agreed with the foreign policy of her boss, President Obama, she didn't count on Iraq blowing up in his...and her...face. Americans blame the Obama administration's push to withdraw all American troops from Iraq in 2011 for the catastrophic advance of the terrorist jihadist ISIL through northern Iraq. "A policy of weakness and accommodation that came from the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton team has led to "very serious and negative results," said Mitt Romney, the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee, in a Fox News interview. "There's almost not a place in the world that's better off because of [Clinton's] leadership in the State Department." And as America's top diplomat during the failed 2011 Iraq-US troop negotiations, Hillary Clinton's role is sure to be dissected as a major cause of the unravelling of the American military's work in Iraq. In an October 2011 interview with CNN, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton downplayed the importance of keeping troops in Iraq, saying American forces would still have plenty of capacity to deal with situations that might arise. "We have a lot of presence in that region, in addition to a very significant diplomatic presence in Iraq, which will carry much of the responsibility for dealing with an independent sovereign democratic Iraq, and we have bases in neighboring countries." Many analysts predicted al-Maliki's crackdown on the Sunni minority in the country would revive a dormant insurgency, but speaking recently at the Council on Foreign Relations, Clinton said the insurgents' success was unforeseeable. "I could not have predicted however, the extent to which ISIS could be effective in seizing cities in Iraq and trying to erase boundaries to create an Islamic state. That's why it's a wicked problem," she said. Hardly a promsing start for someone who wants to be America's Commander-in-Chief and assume responsibility for US security. In the 2008 presidential campaign she tried to atone for her 2002 pro-Bush Iraq invasion vote that angered the left wing of her Democrat Party by becoming one of the Senate's vocal anti-war voices. She opposed the Iraq surge and voted to block it in a bill that never got to a final vote. Later, she said that while the increased troops had helped improve security temporarily, the surge ultimately "failed" in its broader goals. She did, in August 2007, call on the Iraqi Parliament to replace al-Maliki with "a less divisive and more unifying figure," prompting an angry response from the leader. But, remember that in 2007 the sunni insurgency against repressive al-Maliki actions aimed at them had already resulted in a sunni-shiite bloodbath that only US troops could put down. So Hillary Clinton was not being visionary - she had only to read the daily headlines. Now, her response to the situation in Iraq is dependent on the man who used her Iraq policy against her in the 2008 presidential campaign - Barack Obama. As a probable 2016 Democrat presidential candidate and one of Obama's top foreign policy officials, the strength of her foreign policy record - and by extension, her most often cited expertise as a reason for making a White House bid - rides on the success of Obama's foreign policy. ~~~~~ And how is Obama's foreign policy viewed by Americans? It's in the tank. A majority of Americans disapprove of President Obama's handling of the widening crisis in Iraq - and overall dissatisfaction with his foreign policy agenda has shot up among both Republicans and Democrats, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Fifty-two percent of Americans say they don't like how Obama is dealing with the violence in Iraq, while just 37% approve, the poll showed. "I voted for him because he said, 'Give me four more years and I will fix everything,' but nothing is being fixed," Michelle Roberts, 34, a Democrat from Salem, Massachusetts, told the New York Times. The poll also found 58% of Americans disapprove of Obama's foreign policy strategies - a jump of 10 points in the last month to its highest level since he took office in January 2009. Nearly a third of his own party don't approve of his handling of foreign policy, according to the poll results. The Times pointed out that the lack of support across the political spectrum has helped fuel a plunge in the President's approval rating - now at a dismal 40% - with 54% unhappy with his job performance, up 6 points since last month, the survey found. Despite voters' poor opinion of Obama's Iraq strategy, 51% of voters support his decision to send 300 military advisers to Iraq. Fifty-six percent said they would support the use of drones in Iraq to deal with militants known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, which is gaining ground in the northern parts of Iraq. A little over half of Americans also favor the idea of working with Iran in a limited capacity to try to resolve the situation in Iraq. ~~~~~ Dear readers, Hillary Clinton's foreign policy successes do not exist. When we hear that she has 40 years of political experience, we can laugh. She spent seven years as a Senator, during which time she introduced not one piece of major legislation nor made any important contribution to anyone else's. She spent four years as Secretary of State, where her failures include Benghazi, the Iraq troop withdrawal, Syria, North Korean and Iranian nuclear negotiations, and Palestinian refusal to sit down with Israel to work out a peace deal. The other 29 years, she rode the coattails of her husband, Bill Clinton, racking up more failures - her healthcare plan similar to Obamacare that she couldn't get Congress to consider, the questionable death of a member of her senior staff, Whitewater corruption charges that sent her partner to prison. And, don't cry for me, Arkansas, when Mrs. Clinton tries to play a poverty card. She has never been poor in the soul-crushing sense that many Arkansas citizens were poor under her husband's watch and are still poor. Hillary Clinton is a fraud, a creature created by PR advisors and political gurus she pays to churn out an image that American voters might be persuaded to buy in 2016. Hillary is not even a good politician - the proof? Her failed book tour rifled with "I couldn't foresee that" and her shredding by journalists who actually wanted to make her look good. If the Clintons want another four years in the White House, they ought to find the moral courage to field the real politician, like him or not, Bill Clinton. At least he has a record to run on and successes to hold up for discussion. Hillary is simply a fantasy created by PR mirrors.