While Barack Obama was in Tucson urging everyone to tone down their rhetoric, his Secretary of State was in Qatar ramping up the rhetoric:
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blasted Arab governments for corruption and stalled political reforms Thursday and warned that extremist groups were exploiting this lack of democratic development to promote radical agendas in the Middle East and North Africa.
….”While some countries have made great strides in governance, in many others, people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order,” Mrs. Clinton told the Forum for the Future, a regional conference established to promote democracy and good governance. “The region’s foundations are sinking into the sand.”
Tough words. And with Tunisia and Algeria in something like open revolt, timely too. But no names were named, and it’s not clear if they were named in any of her private meetings either. For the moment, it still doesn’t appear that Yemen or Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Israel or any other country increasingly being taken over by extremist groups has much to fear from the United States.
