THE HILLARY HOAX – AT 8:24 A.M. ET:  The crises around the world have focused attention on the soon-to-end tenure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Now, of course, Hillary has her own press claque, and applause, upon command, is plentiful.  But the fact is that her record is abysmal, in part because of the non-president for whom she works, and in part because Hillary has never been particularly good at actually accomplishing anything.

When she was senator from my state of New York, she accomplished nothing.  But her campaign rallies were famous for the number of mink coats and the presence of the glitterati.  And the fawning reporters.

She is typical of the left.  She's less interested in whether something works in practice than whether it works in theory.  Consider, for example, her supposed "commitment" to women's rights.  Big talker on that subject, that Hillary.  But, as Commentary points out, look at the actual record during her time as secretary:   

As Clinton’s term winds down, women will form the central pillar of her legacy. Alas, Clinton will be remembered not for women’s empowerment, but rather for their betrayal. In short remarks to a gathering of Egyptian women, Clinton said she told Mohammad Morsi, Egypt’s new president and a longtime Muslim Brotherhood activist, that democracy has to be inclusive. In her press conference following her meeting, however, her talking points about inclusion seemed to be little more than throw away lines. The fact of the matter is that while feminists might be fighting for new rights, Egyptians feminists appear to now be fighting for rights that are being stripped away.

Clinton’s actions regarding the rehabilitation of the Taliban are far more shameful. Clinton has made reconciliation of the Taliban a central pillar of her political strategy to end the Afghanistan war. Wars can end in either victory or defeat. Reinstalling the Taliban—who remain as ferociously opposed to women’s rights as ever—is nothing other than embracing defeat. The idea promoted by her diplomats in emails to Afghan officials that the Taliban simply reflect Pushtun culture is an argument less rooted in fact than in a desire to excuse the Taliban’s worst excesses by embracing cultural relativism.

President Obama has named Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an as among his closest international friends. That’s all well and good. But it should be no reason to speak out against the purging of women from the civil society, or a murder rate of women that, according to Turkey’s own statistics, has increased more than 1,000 percent during Erdo?an’s rule.

Clinton may cloak herself in the feminist mantle, but her record is something else. Legacies rest more on fact than on handlers and sympathetic journalists. The simple fact is that under Clinton’s watch—and largely because of her policies and silence—women in the Islamic world have suffered their worst setbacks in generations.

COMMENT:  But you may be sure that Hillary's groupies in the press will try to cover this up.  They'll still boost her as a presidential candidate in 2016, and she may just make it. 

We seem to be in an age where truth and accomplishment mean little, since each can be adjusted by those writing a "narrative."  Hillary's failures go well beyond women's rights, of course, but some must be attributed to Obama's hopeless policies.  Hillary carried them out, though, and never even hinted that she might resign in protest.

She should be toast.  That she's not says something very painful about our political culture.

July 18, 2012