It was never love at first sight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In 2007 and 2008, the black senator from Illinois beat Hillary for her nomination by convincing Democrats that he was leftist and anti-Wall Street, unlike Hillary, and her husband. Hope and Change, no more Republicans but also no more Clinton. Clinton then voted as a senator for the October 2002 invasion of Iraq. He didn't (he wasn't in the Senate yet). And in the end the Democrats chose Obama and the Americans elected him in 2008 and re-elected him in 2012, even if the pro-Wall Street team of the Clintons was brought to Washington.
Now Clinton is evenly matched and says that Barack Obama's foreign policy in general, and that towards Syria in particular, is reduced to a slogan without an organizing principle. Obama sends word (private meeting-clash on the Middle East with deputies and senators last weekend) that this is horseshit, literally horse dung, an expression which according to Merriam-Webster dates back to 1923, considered vulgar and not in use in professional and well-mannered environments, which could be translated into an equally refined Italian with "cazzate" and which implies for those who say them, that is the horseshitter, the concept of..."cazzone". This is the exchange of courtesies between the President and the lady who, for four years, from the beginning of 2009 to the beginning of 2013, was his Secretary of State. She too must have protested, as she now says, but she has never resigned in controversy.
On the one hand there is Obama's policy in the Middle East, unrealistic and distracted – the president is only interested in one sector, Asia, the rest is internal politics – and which is now considered by all to be a failure. He has reached out to the "Arab Spring", he has abandoned allies like Mubarak, the Arab Spring has vanished like fog in the sun and the bearded men of jihad have sprung up. Never mind the Libyan disaster, his fault too but above all Nicholas Sarkozy's: it was right to dump Gaddafi, but if there was a better substitute, not just chaos. In Syria, Obama severely threatened Assad for his massacres but without arming the "moderate" part of the rebels and without ever striking, limiting himself to strong humanitarian aid to refugees. Impossible to arm the moderate opposition, too ineffective, Obama now says in various interviews. But former ambassador to Damascus Robert S. Ford, a 30-year veteran of Africa and the Middle East who resigned over controversy in February 2014, says that's not true, he claims much more could have been done. The Pentagon itself reiterated two days ago with an authoritative spokesman, speaking not only of Syria but also of Iraq, that the military have been "very clear and consistent" in denouncing the extremist risk in the region. This does not easily translate into action because among the opponents of the unpresentable Assad are the extremists of the new Syrian-Iraqi transnational Caliphate. Who to help against whom?
Until yesterday, therefore, the fundamental principle of foreign policy, first of all of the Middle East, seemed to be for the Obama White House the one enunciated in the formula Don't do stupid shit which has become, for decorum, Don't do stupid stuff, "don't do things stupid”, considered a synthesis of the thought of the White House on the Middle East especially starting from last April, then used by the president himself several times according to the New York Times and considered the synthesis of the Obama Doctrine in foreign policy. Actually a "wise" banality and a screen for missed choices. "Great nations need great inspiring ideas and 'don't do stupid things' is not an inspiring idea" Hillary Clinton now says in an interview in which she also laments the lack of choice on who to help against Assad in Syria, "an inaction which has left a big void, which the jihadists have now filled".
A low blow to the president, not very popular in domestic politics and very unpopular in foreign policy, with an eye to the 2016 presidential elections and therefore the need to distance oneself. And a return of the "courtesies" of 2007 and 2008.
