Hillary on Pakistan: An “Existential Threat”
By SusanUnPC on April 23, 2009 at 7:41 PM in Afghanistan, Current Affairs, Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Taliban
I treasure the Hillary Clinton who spoke to the House Foreign Affairs committee members: She’s feisty, focused, determined, no-nonsense, outspoken, nobody’s fool, and thanks to hard, hard work and burning of midnight oil, armed with a full knowledge of history and current issues at her fingertips. [Update: Watch the entire hearing. h/t B.] This is a follow-up to my earlier story, “Taliban Encroachment in Pakistan Grows at Terrifying Pace: What Does the U.S. Do?.” (Stay tuned for another story on Pakistan by John Batchelor.)
“Video: Hillary Clinton Says “Existential Threat” in Pakistan (22 April 2009),” EnduringAmerica.com, April 22, 2009:
Hillary Clinton has made headlines this morning with this warning: “I think that we cannot underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan by continuing advances, now within hours of Islamabad, that are being made by a loosely confederated group of terrorists and others who are seeking the overthrow of the Pakistani state, a nuclear-armed state.”
Clinton has called on the Pakistani people to rise up against the threat in the Northwest Frontier Provinces: “”I don’t hear that kind of outrage and concern coming from enough people that would reverberate back within the highest echelons of the civilian and military leadership of Pakistan.”
On April 23, 2009, at the House Foreign Affairs Hearing:
MORE from Hillary on Pakistan, and the government ceding territory to the insurgents:
The State Department has posted Secretary Clinton’s entire opening remarks and video, “National Security Through Diplomacy,” from the April 23rd hearing. Here is the portion related to Pakistan:
But progress in Afghanistan, we believe, depends on progress in Pakistan. And we do seek supplemental funding of $497 million. I take very seriously Chairman Obey’s comments and cautions. And Mr. Chairman, my view on this is that in order to manage, we have to make these commitments. We have to keep our pledge at the Tokyo Donors’ Conference. Other nations seek Pakistan as we now do, and therefore came forward with $5.5 billion in commitments. We have to try to strengthen civilian law enforcement, particularly in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in the Northwest Frontier Province.
And there are humanitarian needs that we think serve our national security interests, which we have, in my view, never sufficiently built on. Following the earthquake in Pakistan, Pakistani public opinion toward America improved dramatically, because we were there with both military and civilian assets to help the people who had been stricken by the earthquake. We never followed through. We never had a strategy to say, “We’ve made some progress in these areas. What more do we need to do to consolidate that?”
Key to our new strategy for both Afghanistan and Pakistan is to hold ourselves and our partners accountable and we are committed to doing that. We obviously are going to set performance measures. I remember very well for six years on the Armed Services Committee trying to get accountability measures for both Iraq and Afghanistan, trying to get what we then called benchmarks. We never got them. We’re going to prepare them. We’re going to share them with you. We’re going to work with you to try to figure out what are the ways we can tell whether we are successfully managing and/or solving our challenges. …
FULL VIDEO:
Additional reports and video:
From Secretary Clinton’s opening remarks to the House committee on Foreign Affairs:
Now, I know that many of your questions today will deal with longstanding concerns: Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, certainly the Middle East, the fallout from the global financial crisis. I will speak briefly to those, and I look forward to answering any questions you might have.
As you know, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the President has outlined a strategy centered on a core goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida, and to prevent their safe return to havens in Afghanistan or Pakistan. We combined our strategic review with intensive diplomacy, and nations from around the world are joining our efforts. More than 80 countries and organizations participated in the international conference in The Hague, and a donors’ conference just concluded in Tokyo raised over $5 billion.
(Release: November 13)
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Warm Up The Nukes.
India will not tolerate an unstable enemy neighbor that has nukes. They will probably launch a pre-emptive strike if Pakistan appears likely to fall into Taliban hands. Perhaps the question that needs to be adressed is, what will be the response after India strikes?
Well, from what I’ve read [and who knows what's going on behind closed door] there are contingency plans for securing those nukes in a “worst case scenario.” Doesn’t mean it will be easy or guaranteed but I don’t think anyone is thinking they can leave this mess to chance.
But I have to say, listening to Hillary Clinton’s comments in the final vid, I think we should thank our stars that HRC and her capable staff and the Defense [Gates] and NSA [Jones] are seasoned and competent professionals. Hillary was pooh-pooed over the statement: Ready on Day One.
I wonder if the Far Left gets it now.
Hardly. It will be our fault before it is done, if it isn’t already our fault. Preferably it will be George Bush’s fault if at all possible. Thank goodness we have our best “community organizer” on top of it. Not on top of the situation… on top of organizing the media in so far as fault is concerned.
correct; and i guarantee you that deep down, even Ocultists have more confidence in HRC than they do in their messiah. they know that he’s all hot air and she’s about getting the job done and doing what’s best for america.
OPEC should be throwing more than a few bucks in these pots – can we tax them ???
Thanks for posting this Susan. Listening to that last video of Hillary, I so appreciate her straightforward approach as always. Her heartfelt appeal on behalf of protecting the lives of USAID workers and civilian contractors is amazing. I was shocked by the statistic that 1 in 10 have been killed there, while in the military, the casualty rate is 1 in 57.
I remember the last time Hillary made me proud by standing resolutely and firmly in her convictions.
Hillary Clinton and Tom Daschle may have said it as boldly as anyone—
“Members of al Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001,” said Clinton and Daschle, “are known to be in Iraq” said Clinton and Daschle, “America must launch a preemptive war.” They were so convinced of this, they wrote it into law.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/833612/posts
But history is a fluid commodity these days. They don’t make it like they used to.
So, Ben, let me see if I have this right. In 1998 FIRST LADY HILLARY CLINTON along with Sen. Daschel, was writing legislation to go to war with Iraq?
You should consider taking a course in remedial reading comprehension before you post again, unless you really believe that in 1998 FIRST LADY HILLARY CLINTON along with Sen. Daschel were being extremely prognostic about an event to occur in 2001.
Ben, unlike some, I am willing to admit when I make a mistake and I misread part of the free republic article. However, I still dispute the contents of the article and will until there are links provided. There are no dates given and no sources. Believing you would not link to her speech in the Senate in October, 2002, I’m including part of the transcript and, if you are really interested in the truth, you will read it. If you are only interested in reading something which reinforces your opinions, it is your decision. SoS Clinton will continue to serve this country as she has most of her life without your pride or lack of pride in what she has accomplished. A closed mind means living in a suffocating box. Read what she said about Iraq. Her depth of understanding might surprise you.
“So, Mr. President, the question is how do we do our best to both defuse the real threat that Saddam Hussein poses to his people, to the region, including Israel, to the United States, to the world, and at the same time, work to maximize our international support and strengthen the United Nations?
While there is no perfect approach to this thorny dilemma, and while people of good faith and high intelligence can reach diametrically opposed conclusions, I believe the best course is to go to the UN for a strong resolution that scraps the 1998 restrictions on inspections and calls for complete, unlimited inspections with cooperation expected and demanded from Iraq. I know that the Administration wants more, including an explicit authorization to use force, but we may not be able to secure that now, perhaps even later. But if we get a clear requirement for unfettered inspections, I believe the authority to use force to enforce that mandate is inherent in the original 1991 UN resolution, as President Clinton recognized when he launched Operation Desert Fox in 1998.
If we get the resolution that President Bush seeks, and if Saddam complies, disarmament can proceed and the threat can be eliminated. Regime change will, of course, take longer but we must still work for it, nurturing all reasonable forces of opposition.
If we get the resolution and Saddam does not comply, then we can attack him with far more support and legitimacy than we would have otherwise.
If we try and fail to get a resolution that simply, but forcefully, calls for Saddam’s compliance with unlimited inspections, those who oppose even that will be in an indefensible position. And, we will still have more support and legitimacy than if we insist now on a resolution that includes authorizing military action and other requirements giving some nations superficially legitimate reasons to oppose any Security Council action. They will say we never wanted a resolution at all and that we only support the United Nations when it does exactly what we want.
I believe international support and legitimacy are crucial. After shots are fired and bombs are dropped, not all consequences are predictable. While the military outcome is not in doubt, should we put troops on the ground, there is still the matter of Saddam Hussein’s biological and chemical weapons. Today he has maximum incentive not to use them or give them away. If he did either, the world would demand his immediate removal. Once the battle is joined, however, with the outcome certain, he will have maximum incentive to use weapons of mass destruction and to give what he can’t use to terrorists who can torment us with them long after he is gone. We cannot be paralyzed by this possibility, but we would be foolish to ignore it. And according to recent reports, the CIA agrees with this analysis. A world united in sharing the risk at least would make this occurrence less likely and more bearable and would be far more likely to share with us the considerable burden of rebuilding a secure and peaceful post-Saddam Iraq.”
Look Ma, no teleprompter!