George Rebane
Hillary Clinton’s public copy on Benghazi is that she will not respond to any more queries about her involvement in that tragedy on her watch because that would be playing politics “on the backs of our dead.” This by any reading is, of course, playing politics to the maximum on the subject, especially since her leadership and response to crises will be of greatest interest to Americans if/when she runs for president. Although we have a fairly good idea about her in/ability in the realm of international diplomacy, the real bottom line here is that we have no idea whether she can handle that 3AM call given how she utterly failed to handle the 3PM call that kept ringing for months leading up to 11 September 2011, before she picked up and then blew it.
But that’s just a peripheral preamble to what I want to highlight as another peek into the workings of a liberal (of the self-declared progressive kind of) mind. In the carefully leaked chapter of her forthcoming book Hard Choices, she continues the prevarication on the video’s role in Al Qaeda’s attack on the Benghazi consulate with a logical tour de force. There she advances the new proposition that the video could still have played a role in supporting the attack, since (seat belts please!) no one has yet proved that the video did NOT play such a role. Now requiring the proof of a negative to resurrect and eliminate a discredited factor, when a sufficient cause for the attack has already been established, is vintage liberal logic.
Of course, the sad part is that the nation’s innumerate hordes have no ready defense against such a cynical bamboozle, and will include it as another legitimate aspect of Benghazi when they weigh the pro/con arguments about Hillary’s errors and omissions while SecState.
As a Lucky Strike Extra and another view of the liberal mind, I’ll throw in the negotiated return of AWOL SFC Bo Bergdahl, who was held captive for almost five years by the Taliban. To effect the release, Obama broke the law and negotiated with terrorists, releasing to them five accomplished Taliban leaders from Gitmo who had made their bones with American blood. And our out-of-depth SecDef Chuck Hagel then papers over the administration’s latest intransigence by claiming we did it all because (wait for it) … suddenly Bo’s “safety and health were in jeopardy.”
Beyond another blatant breach of law, two aspects of this swap come to mind. First, we are told the sergeant’s capture by the Taliban was made possible after he went AWOL from his secure compound. This puts his status somewhat afar from a happily repatriated “prisoner of war” (so ascribed by very liberal and unabashed Hillary supporter Sen McCaskill, D-Mo) taken while performing his assigned military duties. The liberal spin now is that this was an urgent POW exchange. Second, recall how we staunchly refused such negotiations with terrorists in Lebanon after they kidnapped and then killed our GIs serving there (they even published the picture of one of our colonels they had hanged from the ceiling when the US refused their demands). So now on whose hands will be the blood of Americans that these freed senior ragheads will next help kill? It is clear that the promised fundamental transformation of America is well underway.
Finally, we have to note again the awful speech Obama gave last week at West Point where he claimed that our military was stronger than ever when compared to that of our natural and potential enemies. For openers, that blatant lie was quickly corroborated by Lt. Gen. Wang Guanzhong, the Chinese military's deputy chief of general staff. At the recent Shangri-La Dialogue where SecDef Hagel also spoke, the Chinese general laughed off our bravado against ongoing Chinese expansionary moves and taunted us to bring it on.
At West Point President Obama continued emphasizing the existential failures of the Obama Doctrine by admonishing the more than respectfully sober cadets that, since America’s military is “the best hammer in the world, we shouldn’t look at all problems as being a nail.” A strong and mature national leader wielding the ‘best hammer’ would have simply shut the f#%k up and omitted this underwhelming metaphor. He would have realized that all world leaders know exactly how our hammer compares with theirs. What Obama needs to do is take a page from Teddy’s playbook to walk quietly and carry a big stick. But when you continue beating swords into food stamps, I suppose you have no alternative but to wave your hot air augmented shrinking stick. Still, why do you also have to assure our future officer corps that in the coming years the country will not even need a big stick to put backbone into its diplomacy?
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