WEEKLY STANDARD
by Noah Pollak
June 9, 2014

In her new book, Hillary Clinton picks out a few foreign policy topics that she thinks are now safe, even helpful, to express disagreement with the course taken by the Obama administration. She wanted to arm and train the Syria rebels, while Obama did not. She thought it unwise to call for Hosni Mubarak to step down immediately, while Obama wanted him gone.

She acknowledges that the Obama administration’s demand for a settlement freeze from Israel as a precondition to talks with the Palestinians “didn’t work.” Yet she also seeks to exculpate herself from this failure by claiming that she was against the policy from the beginning. According to the Washington Post, she “disagreed with Obama and then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel on a demand that Israel halt all new settlement construction. ‘I was worried that we would be locking ourselves into a confrontation we didn’t need,’ she writes.”

A confrontation indeed ensued – a long and nasty one that continues to this day and has been perhaps the most consistent feature of the administration’s foreign policy. Yet for all her alleged opposition to the policy that launched the confrontation, no one save President Obama himself played such a prominent role in provoking it, amplifying it, and prolonging it.

…..Clinton today is attempting to recast herself as a more sensitive and evenhanded figure on these matters. She would have us believe that her role in the administration’s campaign of criticism, pressure, and crisis-creation against Israel was one of reluctant participant, a loyal official carrying out her duties despite having tried to dissuade the president from a mistaken policy.

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