For the ninth year we, as a nation, once again came to a grinding halt as we commemorated the events of September 11, 2001 yesterday. Reliving the trauma seems to knock everybody for a loop for a little while. We relive. We reflect. We retell our stories in the wind-up to that day, and the emotions spill over all day. We tend to avoid humor, and stick with the serious. We also tend to stick together. As Americans, we shared an experience that crossed every single division in our lives, and we recreate that mood every year on that date. There is something cathartic about the whole experience. When we awaken to September 12, we are somehow renewed and ready to take up our usual positions in our resident corners.
On Tuesday of last week, as you saw here, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an important, far-ranging speech on foreign policy. The media and the interwebs have been parsing her words ever since. Even foreign countries have rung in with their reactions. So, as we recover from our national 9/11 stupor, I thought I would share here a few of the reactions that I found interesting.
First of all, a position statement: I think Hillary Clinton has a really pretty mouth. Watching her speak is as captivating as listening to her words. I think she likes saying words with the sound /u/ in them because when she does, I think she knows that she makes a kissy-mouth that is very attractive. I have thought all along that in her "Senator McCain will bring .... I will bring.... Senator Obama will bring a speech he made in 2002," statement she put that last "2" there for that reason since I think she meant the speech he made at the Democratic Convention in 2004. She made the kissy-mouth this week, but not at her major Council on Foreign Relations speech.
So now that that Keatsian observation is out of the way, onward to address content. She drew fire from both Mexico and Iran with her remarks. Mexico denied that it is Colombia revisited, and Iran denied that it is becoming a military dictatorship. President Obama sided with the President of Mexico against his own Secretary of State, a foolhardy thing to do given her assiduous approach to her duties, i.e. she is a student par excellence and knows what she is talking about.
A few readers here were surprised that she addressed a domestic issue, the national debt, in her role as SOS. I was not surprised myself since as she stated and I already knew, this issue does come up in her broader negotiations with foreign leaders. It is a concern. And I should point out that it was the first question from the moderator during the Q & A. But the fallout from this remark is more interesting than the reason why it came up. Some (Dick Morris, that toe-sucking bug, included) have called it a shot across the bow of the Obama administration and the signal that there is more trouble in Situation Room Paradise than has been perceived from the outside.
Today's video from Team Hillary Clinton focuses on the rift. When you see her fooling around with her jacket and mike it is because it was the first question when she finished her scripted speech.
Morris and THC were not the only ones to note the formation of a fault line in a heretofore smooth surface. This popped up from DBKP FLASH Headline News.
As I mentioned above, it was the moderator who brought the subject up, and it was the first question. In English, syntax (word order) is the most powerful signal of grammatical meaning. WSJ reports here Hillary Clinton on Japan: A Slip or a Slap? that a Japanese newspaper signaled its understanding of this linguistic feature when it questioned whether the SOS was broadcasting a shift in U.S.- Asian priorities with this remark.
“Look at the Asia-Pacific region. When we took office, there was a perception, fair or not, that America was absent, So we made it clear from the beginning that we were back. We reaffirmed our bonds with close allies like South Korea, Japan, Australia, and we deepened our engagement with China and India.”
LOL! As the article reports, P.J. Crowley was quick to do damage control, if indeed any damage was actually done. Seriously, something always has to come first, in a sentence, in a culture, and in events. We live with asynchronous technology, but life continues in a temporal fashion nonetheless. Perhaps we are beginning to see the closing of one chapter as a new one develops. If that is the case, Mme. Secretary needs to know that her army is out here.
There was much paranoia and hype following the RBC meeting of May 31, 2008 and Hillary Clinton's subsequent suspension of her campaign. Among the many fear-mongering warnings which, I continue to contend, came from what later arose under the co-opted Gadsden Flag as The Tea Party, was the threat of "The Obama Army." Much as I dislike Chris Matthews, and for very good reasons, I believe he had it right in late spring when he suggested that Obama resurrect FDR's CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) with millions of college students out of classes for the semester and looking for ways to cover tuition in a bad job market and oil spoiling the gulf coast. He missed his moment.
Hillary, on the other hand, has done nothing but cooperate with this administration and keep her nose to the grindstone as is her wont. She did not and does not have to do anything to amass an army of her own since we are still here. We never left her. We are pretty well-organized, and we are ready to roll at the first word from her pretty mouth. Something always has to come first.
