In the case of Israel the truth according to Ms Clinton is that Israel was in the deadest of dead wrong zones to continue the construction of Jewish housing developments in Jerusalem. While she did not mention it, there was a historical context to the continued construction.
Quite simply put, the US has tacitly approved of both construction in Jerusalem and its status as an undivided city within Israeli territory. When the government of Israel moved quickly in the wake of the Six Day War to declare Jerusalem to be both (a) undivided and (b) the capital of Israel, the US made no protest. While we did not move our embassy to Jerusalem, there was no other sign of even the mildest disapproval for the Israeli action.
Nor did the US utter the slightest dissent when each and every Israeli administration after 1967 moved to create "facts on the ground" in and around Jerusalem. The Israelis made no secret of their actions and we entered no demurrers.
Ms Clinton and her boss, Mr Obama, have reversed historical course. Regrettably, neither worthy has seen fit to acknowledge this reality let alone justify it. Both have proceeded to pressure Israel while giving the other side, the Palestinians, a free pass on any obligations to the "peace process." This self-evident "tilt" must be excusable in their minds because Israel is a "friend" and the Palestinians are not.
The Secretary of State's remarkable inability to either acknowledge the historical trajectory of US policy regarding Israeli construction in Jerusalem or explain the reasoning behind the sudden reversal is matched by her geographically based definition of the word, "friends." Consider her recent flying visit to Central America and her even more recent day trip to Mexico.
The subjects of both the Central American and Mexican jaunts were twofold: drug smuggling and illegal immigration. The first got most of the press play. The second, however, was by far the more important both to the US and our regional interlocutors. (It should also be mentioned that both drug running and illegal immigration are joined shoulder and hip, Siamese twins sprung from the same seed.)
Leaving aside the standard issue Hillary Clinton brand of schoolmarmish hectoring which dominated both sets of meetings, the major issues discussed were (a) the amount of money the US would be spending in Mexico and elsewhere and (b) to what end(s) would the money be expended. Some, even most of the greenbacks would be spent on traditional military and police needs, the importance of which were attested to by the presence and words of Secretary of Defense Gates and JCS Chairman Mullen. That was all rather typical yadda-yadda.
The surprise came with the second category of expenditure, the category which was particularly embraced and extolled by Ms Clinton. She termed this category to be "community development" which, from the description she provided, seems to be a lite form of nation-building. Apparently Ms Clinton and presumably her superior, Mr Obama, have convinced themselves that an approach which has proven to be an expensive failure in South Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan will work in a miniaturised form in Mexico and elsewhere in the region.
Of course, the "new" emphasis on "community development" underwritten by the gringos was applauded warmly by the Mexican government. Likewise other regional governments.
Reading the tales of largess soon to flow and the expressions of gratitude already pouring from those who are scheduled to be on the receiving end should have filled one with the warmth of friendship offered and accepted. But, this was not the case. For the offer and eager acceptance of money for denatured nation-building is not an act of genuine friendship.
Rather, the dangling of gigabucks was like the "friend" who gives the car keys to an obviously drunk associate.
The US as well as the countries of the region would have benefited far more from a gesture of friendship akin to that offered by Secretary Clinton to AIPAC and the government of Israel. We all would have been far better off if Ms Clinton had told a few blunt truths which need to be heard and heeded on both sides of the Big River.
Honesty and policy alike would have been properly served if the American secretary had told her listeners that the primary responsibility for both illegal immigration and the explosive growth of drug smuggling (and related violence) resided with the governing elites of Mexico and the other countries of the region. Illegal immigration and, to a lesser extent, drug smuggling are a necessary, expectable, and totally understandable response of a desperately impoverished people to their condition and the oppression which surrounds it.
The hoi oligoi of the region and Mexico in particular have assured poverty and repression are endemic. These ruling elites have pursued a set of social, economic, and political policies which have benefited those on top at the expense of those below.
Normally, the result of decades, generations of self-serving rule would have resulted in offensive insurgency, revolution if you prefer the less technical term. Offensive insurgencies have resulted in countries at a relative remove from the Rio Grande: in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala.
While lesser, more distant countries have fought and bled in wholesale amounts as a result of the combination of poverty and repression, Mexico, the "Mr Big" of the region, has been immune for nearly a century. This immunity has not come about as a result of benevolent or proper use of the vast natural resources available in Mexico. Nor has it been the consequence of the government, the elite, effectively employing the energy, talent, and skills of the large Mexican population.
Mexico has been immunized by geography. The US is conveniently next door. As the proprietors of the Land of the Big PX, the Yanquis provide the necessary safety valve for the most ambitious, most capable, most highly motivated segments of its population.
Emigrants, both legal and otherwise, not only remove themselves from the Mexican economy, they send literally billions of dollars in remittances every year. The combination goes a long way to assuring Mexicans do not demand a less unjust economic reality down south as well as lowering direct governmental expenses on domestic affairs.
Drug smugglers provide lucrative employment to many. The black economy in Mexico and elsewhere in the region is both vast and growing. The ripple effects of the black economy spread throughout the larger economy with results beneficial not only to the hoi polloi but the hoi oligoi as well.
The graft, corruption, and related rot are quantitatively greater but not qualitatively different from the pus filled cavities which have long riddled the police, judiciary, and government in Mexico and elsewhere in the region. It simply means more money flows through more channels again to the benefit of the hoi oligoi far more than the lesser sort of folk.
As a collateral benefit the great Mexican war on drugs provides a mechanism for further repression of any potentially uppity peasant. (Of course our government knows all about this given our significant experience at limiting civil and personal rights in order to wage the "war on drugs" more effectively.)
This entire herd of elephants was in the rooms where Secretary Clinton spoke. But, as we are not a "friend" of Mexico or the other nations of Central America, as we are a "friend" of Israel, she did not see fit to remind her listeners of their direct, material, even central responsibility for having created the problems of illegal immigration and drug smuggling.
She did not, for example, point out that the Mexican state has the resources necessary to propel the Mexican people to a high level of prosperity and, thus, social and political cohesiveness. She did not note that proper development of the offshore oil fields as well as necessary upgrading of the old fields would provide the necessary wherewithal to bootstrap the Mexican economy, state, and people into the developed world of the Twenty-first century.
Neither did she mention that Mexican agriculture and industry continued to languish in the main somewhere in the backwaters of previous ages. Nor did she urge her listeners to put aside the false god of nationalism in favor of promoting full development of the greatly underused human resources of either Mexico or the region generally.
In short, Ms Clinton was no "friend" of the Mexicans. She promised unneeded and counterproductive charity, "community development" funded by the US rather than the badly needed full usage of the internal resources both natural and human of the region, a process which could be facilitated by international investment.
A genuine "friend" would have demanded that the local elites live up to their responsibilities. A genuine "friend" would have required that the local elites quit looking to the US government, the US economy, the American people to carry the freight, to bear the responsibility for local, willful failures.
This would have been, in Al Gore's term, "an inconvenient truth." It would have been the truth even so. By falling in with the Mexican version of the politics of victimization she did nothing but assure the victimization of the Mexican and Central American people by their own governing elites would continue--as would the smuggling of drugs, the illegal immigration, and the violence which accompanies both.
At least Ms Clinton was consistent in one way. Her words to Israel were not those of a "friend." Neither were her highly selective words to the Central Americans. With "friends" like Ms Clinton, and, by necessary implication, President Obama, who needs enemies?
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