Clinton Confirmed; A Pragmatic Hawk as Sec of State
The United States Senate overwhelmingly voted to confirm former Senator Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State yesterday. 94 members of the Senate voted ‘yes,’ against only two who voted against.
The vote makes Clinton the third female secretary of state in U.S. history, after Albright and Rice.
Although some questions arose regarding donor’s to her husband’s foundation, most expected Clinton’s confirmation to go smoothly, and it did.
Clinton is an interesting secretary of state for President Barack Obama; the two disagreed strongly with each other on major issues of national security and foreign policy during the campaign. Clinton said she opposed direct negotiations with Iran without preconditions, while Obama favored them. Obama would have voted against the Iraq War, or so he says, Clinton voted for. Clinton is considered a hawk, while most see Obama as a dove.
The two share similarities nonetheless. Both are dedicated to global democracy, to working with international organizations, and favor far-going diplomacy. They also have the wish to ‘improve the world’; Clinton’s work for women rights functions as an example. Both have ideals but are pragmatic ideologues; they will change their idealistic approach if it fails to produce positive results.
We will see whether the two can work with each other or whether they will end up working against each other. For now, the U.S. has a strong pragmatic ideologue-hawk as secretary of state, which is change I can believe in, for Condoleezza Rice often proved weak.
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I would not say that they are both dedicated to global democracy. they are quite dedicated to talking about global democracy, but at least one of them is also dedicated on abandoning the only Arab constitutional democracy in the world. Dedication require a lot more than mere words, which is all either have given to the cause of democracy anywhere but here.
I always said the best thing do do with her is ship her out of the country.
This is probably as close as we could get.