Today's Guardian interview of Hillary Clinton illuminates her stance on terrorism. This is a flattering interview. Guardian America's editor Michael Tomasky seems to have one foot in Hillary's pocket. Even so, this excerpt is terribly telling. Clinton's tuning her rhetoric to suit her political needs- to distance herself from the stance of the current administration- at the expense of speaking clearly against terror. As the interviewer says, the president and current administration officials have said repeatedly that terrorists hate us for our freedoms. Clinton clearly takes a different view:
"Well, I believe that terrorism is a tool that has been utilised throughout history to achieve certain objectives. Some have been ideological, others territorial... And I think we've got to do a much better job of clarifying what are the motivations, the raisons d'etre of terrorists."
"I think one of our mistakes has been painting with such a broad brush, which has not been particularly helpful in understanding what it is we were up against when it comes to those who pursue terrorism for whichever ends they're seeking."
So it's not, I asked, helpful to America's fight to say they hate us for our freedoms? "Well, some do," Clinton said. "But is that a diagnosis? I don't think it's proven to be an effective one."
Ms. Clinton, that brush is indeed broad. It has had to be, to paint the USS Cole, three airliners, embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, the Khobar Towers, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center, twice. Those terrorists' masterpieces hang in our own national gallery. The brush is wider now, world-wide, well loaded and dripping with the terrorists' favorite shade of crimson, and ready to paint again.
There's adequate proof that Islamofascist terrorists hate and fear our freedoms. We know how they feel about freedom of speech in film, print, and even cartoons. Ask Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or Theo Van Gogh- well, you can't ask him, they killed him, you see- if you have doubts. We know how they feel about freedom of religion- ask apostates who want nothing more than to leave Islam and can only do so under a death threat. Worldwide Islam is more about denying freedoms than ensuring them. Women suffer virtual enslavement under their ideals, according to female authors. It's odd that you, one of the few females in a bully pulpit, are unmoved by this and feel no responsibility to speak out.
Ms. Clinton had nothing to say about a strong response to terror. What does she think might be a more effective diagnosis? She's clear about that.
"One of the lessons that I think we all should take out of the last six-and-a-half years is that ideologically driven foreign policy that is not rooted in a realistic assessment of the world as we find it today is not likely to result in any positive outcome."
The terrorists' policies, foreign and domestic, are driven by ideology. Apologists for terror and even those who merely turn away are helping to make the terrorists' assessment of the world a realistic and rewarding one. The outcome will not be positive.
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