Hillary Clinton remains the odds-on favorite to win the presidency, and a more depressing opening to a column is difficult to conceive. She is front and center in the decline and fall of the American political system and a prominent exhibit in how the bar for presidents has been reduced almost to ground level. Consider the following.
Go and watch the movie “13 Hours” about the heroism of the US Special Forces team who saved dozens of Americans from certain death in Benghazi. If you can overlook the earthy language typical of militaries, one thought emerges from the aftermath of this diplomatic debacle: the utter irrelevance of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the assault on the American compounds there. The American President and the Secretary of State, the two individuals primarily responsible for the safety and security of American diplomatic personnel abroad, were simply AWOL.
When the phone rang with the emergency at 3:00 AM, Hillary Clinton didn’t answer, turned over, pulled the blanket and pillow over her head and went back to sleep.
One can debate whether this was incompetence or venality. Both politicians are completely unmentioned in the movie, and the only indirect reference to subsequent events is when, almost eight hours into the assault, an American television feed reported that in the US officials were saying the attack was a “street protest,” one of those under assault said: “Street protests? There are no street protests. What are they talking about?” The Clintonian explanation falls short; there wasn’t the fog of war as much as there was the murk of mendacity.
There were two main failures. The first was the refusal by Clinton to bolster security at these compounds despite intelligence warnings – and prior and repeated pleas from the Ambassador –that such was needed, and long before the Arab terrorist strike occurred. The second was the refusal by Obama and his underlings to order American Special Forces stationed in Italy – just four hours away, and fueled and ready to go – into Benghazi on a rescue mission. Of the four Americans who were murdered, three were killed more than ten hours after the assault began. Repeated radio requests for assistance were simply turned down without explanation.
It is easy to understand how Obama’s dream of becoming the first President in almost a century not to send American forces into combat on his own accord has cost and will cost American lives. It is even easier to understand the price the United States has paid across the globe for such fecklessness, and it underscores the bravery of the troops who fought and fight without the support of the ruling political establishment but for love of country and their brothers in arms, honor and duty.
Some of these points were raised in the risible Benghazi hearings in Congress, a spectacle that did not do justice to the men who fought and the politicians who let them down. To the mass media, Hillary Clinton emerged the victor, presumably because she didn’t break down on the witness stand and confess her guilt. The fact that she lied repeatedly (classic takeaway: the email to her daughter blaming the attack on Al-Qaeda elements at the very same time she’s peddling to the public the lie about the Mohammed-mocking video as the proximate cause of the attack) was willfully ignored, perhaps because Hillary Clinton lying is not exactly breaking news. (I met her in 1992, sat three feet from her across a table, and asked her two questions. Both answers were lies. This was four years before the late Bill Safire labeled her “a congenital liar.” Today, even provable lies are ignored because they are so commonplace.)
But the hearings were designed to fail. Rather than have one or two lawyers ask questions, the
sessions were a merry-go-round, with too many preening politicians and others simply fawning for the camera. There were too many participants with too little time to accomplish anything substantive, much like the current Republican debates.
A number of Republican representatives asked probing, uncomfortable questions, but even those questions took far longer than necessary considering the limited time each questioner had. All Hillary had to do was obfuscate for three or four minutes, even under tough questioning, and the session was over. Well, not quite over, because the microphone then shifted to the Democrats who pummeled her with brutal questions such as: “On a scale of 1-10, how great are you, 20 or 100?” Or, “These hearings are terrible. Will you ever be able to forgive us?” Vicious, nasty questions that somehow she was able to parry…
There was none of the momentum that examiners seek to develop when a hostile witness is being questioned, no continuity in the interrogation, and too much opportunity given to her to ramble and kill time. First-year law students would know to frame questions that required just a yes/no answer, and first year associates would know how to follow up and focus on points when she was caught dissembling, rather than abruptly shift the line of questioning.
There were inconsistencies, ineptitude, lies, and policy failures all exposed but they were lost in the sea of befuddlement and bewilderment that did a disservice to the country and the victims.
It is clear that both Obama and Clinton prioritized saving their necks and developing cover stories rather than explain what they did or didn’t do, why assistance was not sent, and why people were left to die, all in order to protect a political narrative. Few will remember how, for almost two months after September 11, 2012, CBS hid an interview with Obama at the time in which he declined to label the attack “terrorism,” and even fewer will remember how Candy Crowley – the “moderator” in the CNN debate between Obama and Romney – leaped to Obama’s defense with an utter falsehood.
It is outrageous that Hillary is never asked about this matter but even to be asked about it at this point would not make a difference. The Obama team has perfected the two-step dodge. When they are asked about something nefarious or corrupt that has happened, they say they cannot answer because the matter is under investigation. That investigation then takes months. If the investigation is ever finished, and the results are even detrimental, they then say that “this is old news that has already been investigated,” or “you should ask the Justice Department.” If only Nixon had been this clever; well, even that might not have saved him, because at the time there were Republicans in Congress who actually had a functioning conscience. If there is a Democrat in Congress who has a conscience and is not a partisan hack, please identify yourself.
Even the Clinton email scandal has been buried under an avalanche of falsities, prevarications and sheer corruption. It is obvious that she broke the law multiple times through the mishandling of classified information. It is unconscionable that she will likely get away with it. Even if the FBI recommends an indictment, the US Attorney need not prosecute, and even if she is indicted, Obama can always issue a complete pardon. And even if she was indicted and not pardoned, the Democrat electorate today is such that they would vote for her anyway.
She has evaded real scrutiny by claiming to have made a “mistake” out of a desire for convenience, and that has so far successfully concealed the real scandal: not the server itself but the reason why the private server, walled off from the prying eyes of the public, the media and prosecutors, was used in the first place. My guess is – and this has been reported without much publicity – that the private server was necessary to monitor and delete at will proprietary information relating to the management and activities of the Clinton Foundation, one of the biggest pay-for-play entities in the world. Bill and Hill created this lucrative organization as a money-producing machine, hidden from the public eye, in which, under the guise of doing “good works” (apparently, barely 10% of their intake of hundreds of millions of dollars annually is spent on anything productive) they use the machinery of government to assist their donors with contracts and contacts. They rake in tens of millions of dollars every single year, and it seems there are numerous people just out of government on their payroll.
It is interesting how the latest reports revealed that all the revenue is funneled to a Canadian charity, which then subsidizes the Clinton Foundation with its largesse, all benefiting from Canadian law that shields the identities of donors to charitable organizations – unlike US law.
And the whole scam depends on Hillary Clinton being elected to the White House – a windfall to all their donors if she wins and a great misfortune to them if she loses. There is a lot more riding on this election than the future of this country and the free world.
Only someone counting on the ignorance of the electorate could proclaim herself a “proven fighter” (for what? Against who or what?) and a “proven leader” (for who and for what?) and get away with it.
As New York Senator, she accomplished nothing – no major initiatives, no legislation, no ideas – although I have heard she did provide good constituent service. And as Secretary of State? Forget for a moment that the world is in a shambles, and that the situation in every area of the world has deteriorated. Forget that the Middle East is aflame, that she has open disdain for Israel’s Prime Minister and a blind spot when it comes to Israel’s true interests, that relations with Russia have been “reset” to the Cold War, that Europe is being overrun by Muslims and their terror, that traditional US allies are dismayed or dejected at their treatment from this administration, that the United States on her watch ceased being a world leader, that nuclear proliferation among evildoers is the real legacy of this administration, and that the forces of malevolence across the world are on the march.
Forget all that and ask a simple question: is there one place on the globe where Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State was able to advance a single American foreign policy interest – the very task of the office she held? I can think of none. And that qualifies her for … a promotion? Only in America.
The current disarray in the Republican Party –some of it natural to the primary process, some of it sidetracked by side shows – does not bode well for the election or the country. The media will protect Hillary like an etrog, even in the unlikely event that she is indicted. They have that much invested in her election.
But not as much as Hillary and her donors have invested. And there is nothing hilarious about that.
