Sun Sentinel Broward Edition

Hillary Clinton is clearly unqualifie­d to become president

- By Thomas Sowell

There are no sure things in politics, but Hillary Clinton is the closest thing to a sure thing to become the Democrats’ candidate for president in 2016.

This is one of the painful but inescapabl­e signs of our time. There is nothing in her history that would qualify her for the presidency, and much that should disqualify her. What is even more painful is that none of that matters politicall­y. Many people simply want “a woman” to be president, and Clinton is the best-known woman in politics, though by no means the best qualified.

What is Clinton’s history? In the most important job she has ever held — secretary of state — American foreign policy has had one setback after another, punctuated by disasters.

U.S. interventi­on in Libya and Egypt, underminin­g government­s that were no threat to American interests, led to Islamic extremists taking over in Egypt and terrorist chaos in Libya, where the American ambassador was killed, along with three other Americans.

Fortunatel­y, the Egyptian military has gotten rid of that country’s extremist government that was persecutin­g Christians, threatenin­g Israel and aligning itself with our enemies. But that was in spite of American foreign policy.

In Europe, as in the Middle East, our foreign policy during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state was to undermine our friends and cater to our enemies.

The famous “reset” in our foreign policy with Russia began with the Obama administra­tion reneging on a preexistin­g American commitment to supply defensive technology to shield Poland and the Czech Republic from missile attacks. This left both countries vulnerable to pressures and threats from Russia — and left other countries elsewhere wondering how much they could rely on American promises.

Even after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Obama administra­tion refused to let the Ukrainians have weapons with which to defend themselves. President Obama, like other presidents, has made his own foreign policy. But Clinton, like other secretarie­s of state, had the option of resigning if she did not agree with it. In reality, she shared the same flawed vision of the world as Obama’s when they were both in the Senate.

Both of them opposed the military “surge” in Iraq, under Gen. David Petraeus, that defeated the terrorists there. Even after the surge succeeded, Clinton was among those who fiercely denied initially that it had succeeded, and sought to discredit Petraeus, though eventually the evidence of the surge’s success became undeniable, even among those who had opposed it.

The truly historic catastroph­e of American foreign policy — not only failing to stop Iran from going nuclear, but making it more difficult for Israel to stop them — was also something that happened on Clinton’s watch as secretary of state.

What the administra­tion’s protracted and repeatedly extended negotiatio­ns with Iran accomplish­ed was to allow Iran time to multiply, bury and reinforce its nuclear facilities, to the point where it was uncertain whether Israel still had the military capacity to destroy those facilities.

There are no offsetting foreign policy triumphs under Secretary of State Clinton. Syria, China and North Korea are other scenes of similar setbacks.

The fact that many people are still prepared to vote for Clinton to be president of the United States, in times made incredibly dangerous by the foreign policy disasters on her watch as secretary of state, raises painful questions about this country.

A president of the United States — any president — has the lives of more than 300 million Americans in his or her hands, and the future of Western civilizati­on. If the debacles and disasters of the Obama administra­tion have still not demonstrat­ed the irresponsi­bility of choosing a president on the basis of demographi­c characteri­stics, it is hard to imagine what could.

With our enemies around the world arming while we are disarming, such self-indulgent choices for president can leave our children and grandchild­ren a future that will be grim, if not catastroph­ic.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institutio­n, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is tsowell.com.

 ??  ?? Sowell
Sowell

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States