Reply #13: While I agree with you that Clinton was subjected to very hostile [View All]

[karynnj]

reception, I don't think it was 1000 times what Kerry got. Reading the various accounts, Kerry got pounded hard on many of the same issues, but he stayed far cooler. (leading to reports that he was weary, frustrated, and disappointed, rather than angry as Clinton was described.) This was completely personality and it is Kerry, who is more unusual here.

In addition, it was the way Holbrooke and others defined HRC's visit. From Holbrooke's descriptions, they wanted to use her history and star power to reach out to the people as well as have the standard meetings. In hindsight, the events they put HRC in exposed her to a level of hostility that surprised them. The fact is the articles on Kerry's trip and the fact that Holbrooke had difficulties earlier in the year with them should have let them see this as a very risky thing to do - not to mention exceedingly unpleasant for HRC. (They could have given her the chance for outreach with a combination of ceremonial events and an in studio interview with a respected Pakistani news person.) It does show how tough things are that a trip where she was able to announce specific projects that the aid will fund was almost completely hostile.

Scott Horton is revising history less than a week after it happened. It is pretty clear that one goal was the same one Biden, Hagel and Kerry set out to achieve with the aid bill - to try to lower the distrust and anger by directly helping the people. The other was likely to commend the Pakistanis on their antiterrorism effort and to encourage them to continue it. This is what she and other were speaking of before the trip. The fact is that no "new points of connections" were made and there is nothing I read that suggests that Clinton "forced open again a platform for more peaceful relations between the subcontinent’s two major powers".

While I don't think HRC was completely to blame and I doubt her words increased the anger - it was already seething, arguing that this trip had a positive impact is really trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.