We're All Extremists Now

Hillary “Human Rights” Clinton started off her week—or the first public moments of it—sounding almost Condoleezza Ricean, exhorting the Arab world to stand firm against Iran by embracing the sanctions which, in her apparently dimming view, have been effective in impeding the progress of the Persian bomb; and urging the rag-tag lot of tyrants and dictators that comprises the Arab “leadership” to join the battle for Middle East peace by resuscitating the Arab Peace Initiative.

If one is hard put to believe that it’s our toothless sanctions—which the mullahs to date and with good reason have found risible—rather than sabotage that have interfered with the Iranian nuclear plot; or to make out which Arab Peace Initiative Mrs. Clinton meant to invoke—the one devised in 2002 by the then “crown prince” now “king” of Saudi Arabia to deflect attention from the Saudis’ own bloodied hand in the deaths of 3,000 Americans on 9/11, and their contribution to the intifada that was at that moment raging against the Jewish State? The one as “re-launched” in 2007 in preparation for the massive waste of time and manpower that culminated in the Annapolis Conference on Middle East Peace? The one sweetening the dreams of Haj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, as he conspired with Hitler in Berlin in 1941 to annihilate the Jews of Palestine?—that is not the worst of it.  

Worse was the appalling declaration that came at the end of her peroration: 

Clinton called for greater openness, tolerance and development in the region to blunt extremism, especially among Arab youth, that can breed terrorism. . . . She stressed that such problems are universal and, noting the recent shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, said extremism exists in the United States and must be combatted. . . . “Look, we have extremists in my country,” Clinton said. “A wonderful, incredibly brave, young woman congressmember, Congresswoman Giffords, was just shot by an extremist in our country. We have the same kinds of problems. So rather than standing off from each other, we should work to try to prevent the extremists anywhere from being able to commit violence.”

And worst of all is that it wasn’t just a wild flinging slip of the Clintonian tongue—Mrs. Cautious Goody-Two-Shoes doesn’t have all that many of those, although “congressmember” is pretty good—this was an intentional assertion about the incontrovertibly insane Jared Loughner, which she repeated yesterday afternoon:  

“Based on what I know, this is a criminal defendant who was in some ways motivated by his own political views, who had a particular animus toward the congresswoman,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN. “And I think when you cross the line from expressing opinions that are of conflicting differences in our political environment into taking action that’s violent action, that’s a hallmark of extremism, whether it comes from the right, the left, from Al Qaeda, from anarchists, whoever it is. That is a form of extremism.” . . . Clinton added, “So, yes, I think that when you’re a criminal who is in some way pursuing criminal activity connected to—however bizarre and poorly thought through—your political views, that’s a form of extremism.”

This isn’t the first time the nostalgie de la Wellesley-radical boue that lingers like a hangover over the otherwise utterly conventional liberal thinking of our current secretary of state has brought ignominy upon U.S. foreign policy—even her boss, whose own past love affair with leftist anti-Americanism and moral equivalency still periodically flares up from the embers, performed admirably enough on the mass murder—and I dare say it won’t be the last.

But oh how the longing for some relief from them all intensifies daily. The moment they’re off to roam the halls and grace the conference tables of the U.S. Institute of Peace can’t come soon enough . . .