by Mark Silva
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady who once was considered the Democratic Party's most likely candidate for president - and who sharply challenged her rival, Barack Obama, over his contention that the United States can make headway in negotiation with its fiercest adversaries - today praised the president for making "a very significant turning point'' with his appeal to the Muslim world from Cairo.
"He planted seeds, he encouraged people to have to have a conversation and to think hard about their perspectives and points of view,'' Clinton, secretary of state in the Obama administration, said today in an interview airing this evening on FOX News Channel's On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.
"I think he also challenged Americans,'' Clinton said of Obama. "He went right at how we can't have stereotypes for other people, as we don't want to have stereotypes about us... This was a speech that I believe will be viewed historically as a very significant turning point....
"One of the most important points that he made was how if the Palestinians had pursued a different path of non-violence, of following an example of a Gandhi, or a Dr. Martin Luther King, who knows where we'd be right now,'' Clinton said. "That violence is not the answer. It does not change hearts and minds, it hardens them."
Clinton, who traveled through Cairo with the president today, said the team's teamwork is essential to the mission at hand: "Thiis is a very important part of our new diplomacy, our outreach, our policy of engagement and partnership."
"It is really critical that we make clear, as the president did in this magnificent speech he gave, that we want to work with people all over the world, regardless of religion,'' she said. "We have no feeling of hostility or conflict with Muslims everywhere... I thought that it was important that we all be here to send a strong signal that America is doing what the president said we would do in his inaugural address. You know, stretch out his hand and hopefully people will unclench their fists."
Clinton, it could be said, has found religion.
Comments
Mark, really, you couldn't restrain yourself from that snarky last line about religion?
Posted by: Joe | June 5, 2009 11:32 AM
Let's use Hillary's words, "I think he challenged Americans. He went right at how we can't have stereotypes for other people.."
Yeah, democrats don't want to stereotype muslims, but sure do stereotype americans, republicans, republican women.
Obama wouldn't attack muslim women, but he attacks american women.
Obama can't even maintain a civil discourse in this country with republicans. There is constant sterotyping, name calling, vicious attacks on the women in the party.
Not okay for muslims, okay for republicans.
Hillary is out in the cold and buried.
Posted by: Pat | June 5, 2009 12:25 PM
Hillary's political game is hard to figure.
Posted by: Inky | June 6, 2009 12:53 PM