Hillary Clinton: Two She-Devils In One

Hillary Clinton stands with Somalia Federal Transitional Government leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. The imperialist state has pledged more military assistance to prop-up the Somali regime battling resistance forces of Al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Hillary Clinton: Two she-devils in one

By Tichaona Zindoga
Courtesy of the Zimbabwe Herald

WHEN United States President Barack Obama spews his "yes we can" adage and promises a new era of relations with the world, he is simply a "smoothed and vanished" devil, as one English writer put it.

But when it comes to Zimbabwe, one wonders why change only means removing President Mugabe and not change in ensuring that indigenous Zimbabweans benefit from their own resources. We in Zimbabwe should tell Obama that "yes we can make the blacks benefit from their resources".

Gone are the days when things are correct because they come from the United States of America, Britain and Europe in general.

Gone are the days when Obama, Hilary Clinton and company can lecture us to remove our leadership in order to demonstrate that we are democrats in their view.

Obama is a fake democrat who is fast slipping into George W. Bush’s shoes.

This is because the world knows he is out to defend an evil system that he does not have the heart or the power to change for all his eloquence and perceived charisma.

Obama can manage to sweet talk people to forget the atrocities they have endured and accept as fact that an economic sanctions regime that the US designs for little Zimbabwe, which is accused of "posing a continuous and extraordinary threat to US foreign policy", is without force or effect.

This is despite the fact that the cocktail of economic sanctions, along with other isolationist and bullish behaviour, denies Zimbabwe access to lines of credit from multilateral lending institutions, and punishes heavily any US citizens who dare do business with Zimbabwe.

This is also despite the fact that an American diplomat trusted the same embargo to finally bring Zimbabwe to its knees, having already pauperised its people to 1950’s levels in just a few years.

If Obama, who has also tentatively reached out to the Muslim world so much vilified under his predecessor George W Bush, can manage to draw applause for such scandalous hypocrisy — as when he postures to love the "people of Zimbabwe" more than their Government — he is more like Hillary Clinton "resetting" relations with Russia which the bad Bush could not do.

And they are both so committed to the world’s least developed continent, Africa and are willing to take Africa as "a partner not as a patron".

Obama said that in Ghana last month, and his ex-rival to the White House, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is on a seven- nation tour of sub-Saharan Africa.

The countries she visited include Kenya, South Africa, Angola, Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Cape Verde.

The trip "will be used to highlight US President Barack Obama’s commitment to the continent".

This has been the earliest in any US administration that both the President and the Secretary of State have visited Africa and Clinton is on a mission to "emphasise Africa as a place of opportunity, built on an ethic of responsibility",

Clinton has also been to India, for example, where she paid tribute to 166 victims of ‘‘Islamist’’ attacks, ruing the fact that such "violent extremism seared our collective memory".

These are some of the incidents that US’ all important imperialism is clothed in the sheepskin robes of development, human rights and fighting terror.

But Clinton has a more belligerent and war mongering side that she does not particularly share with the "smoothed and vanished" Obama devil.

This is the "roaring lion" devil in a form that "few but hunters are attracted", as Charles Dickens put it.

Remember her saying starkly during the White House race against Obama that she would "obliterate" Iran if the latter attacked America’s notorious lapdog ally, Israel?

In March 2004 while Obama was charming voters with his charisma and message of hope and change to war-weary Americans, Clinton was in the roaring lion and devilish mode saying "this is a wartime election".

"For some people, this election is about how you feel. It is about speeches. That is not what it is for me.

"It is about (war) solutions," said Clinton who throughout the campaign was convinced she would make a better Commander-in-Chief of US forces than Obama.

She allegedly "forced" Obama to belligerently say that he would attack Al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan, with or without Pakistani government approval, after she accused him of being "naive in foreign policy".

Such is the roaring lion devil Clinton has been, at least for in the past few years of this decade when it comes to foreign policy, although with the smoothed and vanished Obama devil, she has been content with the subtler of the two.

During her ongoing Africa tour she told journalists in Kenya last Wednesday, ahead of her South African visit that she would influence President Zuma to "strengthen reform" in Zimbabwe.

She said: "I intend to speak not only with President Zuma but other members of his government about what more . . . can be done to strengthen the reform movement inside Zimbabwe . . . and try to use its (South Africa’s) influence to mitigate against the negative effects of the continuing presidency of President Mugabe."

Reform sounds a very good word for anyone, and everyone who promises to "strengthen" it is irresistible, but one cannot help see the devil in Hilary Clinton’s species of "reform" in Zimbabwe.

She of the forked tongue wants to turn African neighbours against one another for the benefit of America’s capitalist interests.

She sees "negative effects" of not only unity among Zimbabweans imbued in the inclusive Government, but African unity at large.

South Africa is the current chair of Sadc, which successfully negotiated the agreement that led to the formation in February this year of the inclusive Government in Zimbabwe between the country’s three main political parties, Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations.

The inclusive Government has improved Zimbabwe's political and socio-economic situations, which had deteriorated in the last decade.

Ironically, it was America's sanctions law, ZDERA — which Clinton helped draft and sponsored — that precipitated that socio-economic deterioration.

But just as Zimbabweans have rallied their energies, albeit with some challenges that could be traced to the likes of Clinton’s America, to better their lives, she tells the world that someone has to "mitigate against the negative effects of the continuing presidency of President Mugabe".

This is an obvious throw back not on the Sadc-brokered deal itself but on the sentiments PM Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the MDC-T, said of the Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, President Mugabe.

He said they had an "extraordinary" working relationship and that President Mugabe was indispensable to Zimbabwe’s recovery.

The Government has many tasks to perform such as drafting a new constitution, stabilising the economy, and improving the life of ordinary Zimbabweans in general.

The inclusive Government also includes Professor Arthur Mutambara and Ms Thokhozani Khupe as Deputy Prime Ministers.

Prof Mutambara is the leader of the other MDC formation while Ms Khupe is deputy president of the MDC-T.

Perhaps Clinton’s words of "continuing presidency" provide something more than the two devils she impersonates.

It evokes the metaphor about dogs barking but wagons continuing with their journeys.