Hillary's 2016 dilemma
If Hillary Clinton runs in 2016, the failed Obama Doctrine will drag her down.
Whether "Obama Destabilized the Middle East on Purpose," as the title of a recent article posted on American Thinker suggests, or, the failure of the Obama Doctrine -- whatever that means in the intellectually-rarified air of Foggy Bottom -- is a result of the arrogant naiveté of a man who thought his years growing up in a Muslim nation entitled him to respect from radical Arabs, negative consequence will befall a potential Hillary Presidential candidacy in 2016.
She now owns a significant share of the failed Obama Doctrine.
Her positive foreign policy success list was, at best, short. Her foreign policy failures list is expanding. She gets no respect, worldwide.
Hillary, Stephanie Power, and Susan Rice were credited with advocating military intervention in Libya to remove Colonel Gaddafi from power. On March 11, 2011, the New York Times noted their influence:
"The change [in Obama's policy toward Libya] became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity."
The "doctrine" is destined to have no clear, lasting definition -- unlike the "Monroe Doctrine -- but America's Middle East policy during the Obama regime will be remember, like Jimmy Carter's behavior toward Iran, as a debacle of major proportions. And it's the "Hillary-Power-Rice Doctrine," too.
Should Hillary become a candidate in 2016, voters will remember how she stood solidly behind Obama and he led the country into the foreign policy equivalent of the place where Adam and Eve were sent after the apple episode in the garden -- The Land of Nod. Nod was the ancient Hebrew word for "wandering".
Is there anything she can do to redeem her image as the smartest candidate among the '08 Democrat Presidential candidates -- according to Howard Fineman back then?
She needs to distance herself from the Obama Doctrine and its evolving negative consequences as soon as she can. But how?
And therein is the dilemma she faces. One moral of this story is: Be careful what you lobby for.