Last week could not have been an easy one for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Traveling to Pakistan, she arrived just as the Taliban began a fresh wave of bombings.  When she headed for Israel, Netanyahu made plain that his government would not stop settlement expansion in the West Bank.  As the week ended and Clinton was on her way to Morocco, Hamid Karzai’s opponent in the contest to become President of Afghanistan, Abdullah Abdullah, abruptly withdrew from the runoff election, citing the corrupt electoral system in that country.

When things go sour in a far off region, it’s easier to avoid comment when you’re at home and don’t have a traveling press corps in tow, with press conferences and on-the-record, town hall-type events occupying a significant part of your schedule.  Clinton did not have the luxury of avoiding comment, so she put on her game face.

In Islamabad, she did her best to overcome the skepticism of journalists, students and women’s groups that repeatedly questioned U.S. motives.

Well into one long, set-piece discussion, she seemed to express frustration with the government of Pakistan:

“It is our information that the leadership of al-Qaida is in Pakistan. We don’t know where, and we are very committed to pursuing them because of their attack on us, but I also believe that the Government of Pakistan is as well. It’s a question of priorities. They are going after their most direct enemy right now, the Pakistan Taliban and some of its elements…I think it is absolutely clear, and I am convinced, that you will never rid Pakistan of the threat of terrorism unless you rid it of al-Qaida. And it’s very personal for me because of what happened on 9/11. I was a senator from New York and spent a lot of my time during my eight years in the Senate working both to help the people who were affected and to try and prevent another attack…So when we have an arrest like we did some weeks ago of a man named Zazi and we find out that he was trained in an al-Qaida camp – not a Taliban camp, an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan – we feel like we have to go to the Government of Pakistan and say, “Somewhere these people have to be hidden [sic] out. We don’t know where.” And I have no information that they know where, but this is a big government. It’s got – a government on many levels, there are local governments and national governments just like there is in any country. Somebody, somewhere in Pakistan, must know where these people are. And we’d like to know because we view them as really at the core of the terrorist threat that threatens Pakistan, threatens Afghanistan, threatens us, threatens people all over the world.

In short, the U.S. Secretary of State seemed to be suggesting that the Government of Pakistan, if it only put its mind to it, would recognize its own interest and produce the information needed for the U.S. to locate and destroy the al-Qaida leadership.

The next day, responding to a mangled question about this, Clinton’s view changed:

QUESTION: Yesterday, you stated that Usama bin Ladin and Pakistani leadership or Pakistanis know where they are – Pakistani officials. I just want to – there is a need of clarification. Is it (inaudible) from Pakistani Government or Pakistani agencies? What will you say?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, what I said was that I don’t know if anyone knows, but we in the United States would very much like to see the end of the al-Qaida leadership. And our best information is that they are somewhere in Pakistan. And we think that it’s in Pakistan’s interest as well as our own that we try to capture or kill the leadership of al-Qaida, because we think that would be a very severe blow to terrorists everywhere. And my point is let’s work together to get that done.

At another point, she remarked how good the U.S.-Pakistani military relationship is:

I think the military-to-military relationship in – between the United States and Pakistan is at a new level of trust and confidence. The relationship between Admiral Mullen and General Kiyani is a close, personal one, not just a professional one. And I think that the military knows that we support them in their struggle against terrorism. We have provided, by far, the most equipment and most support that they have received from anyone. But we do have a system of accountability that we expect when we give people military assistance, and I think your military understands that very well.

So, in essence, no problem.  Our military relations are great, the Pakistani military understands our priorities, and they know we support them.  It seems so reasonable until you look for results.

In Jerusalem, Secretary Clinton saw another half-full glass:  “What [Prime Minister Netanyahu] has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements, which he has just described – no new starts, for example – is unprecedented in the context of the prior two negotiations. It’s also the fact that for 40 years, [U.S.] presidents of both parties have questioned the legitimacy of settlements.”

So, after 40 years of U.S. objections to Israeli West Bank settlement expansion, during which time the settlements have been continuously expanded and Palestinian lands repeatedly seized in contravention of Israeli law, Israel offers to not begin new settlements, just expand existing ones.  A distinction without a difference?

Finally, on Afghanistan, with Abdullah dropping out, Secretary Clinton remained unfazed.  “There have been other situations in our own country as well as around the world where, in a runoff election, one of the parties decides, for whatever reason, that they are not going to go on,” she said.  “I do not think that that in any way affects the legitimacy. And I would just add that when President Karzai accepted the second round without knowing what the consequences and outcome would be, that bestowed legitimacy from that moment forward, and Dr. Abdullah’s decision does not in any way take away from that.”

Yes, technically, Ms. Clinton was right.  There of course have been candidates in U.S. elections who have dropped out before the actual vote.  For example, in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, where the Republican candidate has just dropped out in advance of tomorrow’s election after being ganged up on by outsiders like Palin, Limbaugh and Beck.

Secretary Clinton may have spoken more than she wanted or needed to last week.  But something about this doesn’t feel like legitimacy.  Not in Afghanistan, where the U.N. figures that one-third of the votes cast for Karzai were fraudulent.  Not in Pakistan, where the military seems more in control than any elected government.  And not in the West Bank, where legitimacy is undermined by efforts to change facts on the ground.  By bestowing legitimacy in these cases we obscure legitimacy of a more important kind — the kind that is actually earned.