Hillary Clinton leaves State Department with renewed turmoil in the Middle East

When the outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the employees at the State department in Washington Friday, February 1, giving an optimistic view, "I am so grateful that we've had a chance to contribute in each of our ways to making our country and our world stronger, safer, fairer and better," an extreme Marxist-Leninist rebel group attacked the American embassy in Ankara, Turkey the same day, and the Middle East was in utter turmoil.

She left a legacy of an unsettled world not only in the Middle East but enhanced Islamist/Jihadist terror activities in the northern part of Africa especially Mali.

The incoming Secretary of State John Kerry who is taking his oath of office before Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor at the time this report was filed inherits the turmoil and unstable world in the Middle East and Northern Africa when he sits at his office on Monday.

Even as Clinton struck an optimistic tone in her remarks, Friday’s terror attack on the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey, remained a reminder of the challenges facing the State Department as Kerry takes the reins. Clinton made note of the attack in her farewell speech, telling employees that “of course, we live in very complex and even dangerous times, as we saw again just today at our embassy in Ankara, where we were attacked and lost one of our foreign service nationals and others injured.”

Hillary Clinton nevertheless said the world is a safer place, in her farewell address to state department staff on her last day as America's top diplomat.

Msr. Clinton, 65, leaves the post after four years, visits to 112 countries and nearly a million air miles. She is now discussed as a possible candidate for the 2016 presidential election.

Earlier in the day, Mrs. Clinton officially tendered her resignation to President Barack Obama, her former bitter rival in the 2008 race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In her letter, she said she was more convinced than ever of America's strength as a global leader and its potential to be a force for good.

Mrs. Clinton's time in office will also be remembered for the attack last September on a consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed a US ambassador and three other Americans. She has apologized for that security failure.

She leaves office with a slap at critics of the Obama administration's handling of the September attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya. She told The Associated Press that critics of the administration's handling of the attack don't live in an "evidence-based world," and their refusal to "accept the facts" is unfortunate and regrettable for the political system.

Clinton told the AP that the attack in Benghazi was the low point of her time as America's top diplomat. But she suggested that the furor over the assault would not affect whether she runs for president in 2016.

Hours after Clinton made those remarks to the AP, a suicide bomber linked to a domestic left-wing Marxist terror group exploded a device just outside the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, killing himself and a guard.

- Asian Tribune -