That a shot emanated from a female MSNBC anchor on
Meet the Press while NBC covered Women's Biathalon today is ironic. The
implications are more insidious than anything the mundane minds at FOX
News can invent.
When the plainly inimical FOX channel has a long-time Hillary Clinton supporter like
Lanny Davis on and claims he cannot come up with a single thing she accomplished as Secretary of State, it is
easily corrected by Davis himself. When the folks who are supposedly on her side come after her we begin to perceive a developing theme.
Today on
MTP,
Andrea Mitchell implied that Hillary used her post at the State
Department to line up donors for a presidential campaign. I will not
embed the video. The link is
here.
This is not only reprehensible behavior on the part of Mitchell but a
dead giveaway of what is amounting to the MSNBC backlash against
Hillary who has not said a word about running much to their frustration.
The idea that Hillary, a dedicated public servant, used her position for personal and political gain was
first floated on Morning Joe by
the father of one of the co-anchors, a noted progressive political
consultant. Many Hillary Clinton loyalists do not trust Zbigniew
Brzezinski. We expected better from Mitchell, but like the print
journalists assigned to the Hillary Clinton beat (Maggie Haberman, Amy
Chozick, and most recently, Brianna Keilar) girls just wanna have jobs.
So we can expect that they will do as directed by management and aim
and fire to avoid skiing the penalty loop.
For those who need
their memories refreshed and those who never paid attention in the first
place, here are just a few of Hillary's accomplishments while at the
helm of the State Department edited and reprinted from a
previous post.
The
State Department under Hillary Clinton did what it could in the face of
a silent, hesitant President during the Green Revolution. Aware that
people in the streets of Tehran and other cities were depending on
Twitter to communicate life-and-death information and learning that
Twitter intended to close down for maintenance, Hillary Clinton
prevailed upon Twitter to leave the lines of communication open. They
did, as those of us who spent those weekends retweeting important tweets
from Iran can attest.
She was instrumental, as well, in getting hard sanctions against Iran which helped bring about the current detente.
From
April until she fell ill in December of 2012 Hillary Clinton attended
at least five meetings of the group called Friends of the Syrian People
and was scheduled for another which she could not attend due to her
illness. The Friends of the Syrian People have been working on
international sanctions to divest Syria of chemical weapons and to
assist the refugees of that civil conflict.
Hillary Clinton and
Russia's Sergei Lavrov worked exceedingly well together and achieved the
very crucial New START treaty. This was immense, a great victory for
both diplomats and both countries. Their relationship remained solid
throughout her tenure.
Here are a few other things she did.
>For
the first time in its history she completely overhauled the State
Department , USAID, and interagency cooperation with her
Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR).
>For the first time in history she
called all of the chiefs of mission together at the State Department for annual conferences.
>She instituted an
Office of Global Women's Issues.
>In June 2009 she
provided benefits to domestic partners of foreign service diplomats for the first time.
>She brought previously neglected countries back to the table with numerous
memoranda of understanding and countless business initiatives.
>She kept the
alliance between Afghanistan and Pakistan stable despite enormous challenges.
>She
reopened the vital supply route from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
>She ensured U.S. access to the vital
Manas airstip in Kyrgystan.
>She
Salvaged the Turkey-Armenia accords which she was supposed to simply witness when they suddenly nearly fell apart.
>She brought issues like human trafficking as well as violence against women and LGBT communities to the international table.
These
are a few things that come to mind. I probably have left out some
important events. Hillary Clinton has left an indelible mark on the
State Department and has brought its operations into the 21st century
with her integration of social networking into our outreach to the
world. She was a tremendously effective Secretary of State and a hero
to many, our own troops at war among them. We can be appreciative of
her selfless service and proud of the job she has done.
To suggest
that she, in any way, used her post for any gain beyond those for the
country she served so patriotically is highly contemptible.
Hillary Clinton
UN News Centre
