WarSclerotic

Hillary’s ‘Serious Lack of Competence’ Cost lives at Benghazi, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, June 29, 2016

Hillary’s actions in Libya were an implementation of the policy called for by foreign policy professionals for years: to ignore whatever a study of Islamic doctrine and law might reveal about the thought processes and motivations of Islamic jihadis, and to assume that they’re motivated by the same mix of pragmatism and self-interest that motivates secular Western urban cosmopolites, i.e., people just like themselves.

The foreign policy establishment that is irrevocably committed to these politically correct fantasies must be swept out. And to elect Hillary Clinton President of the United States would be, in D. W. Wilber’s words, “lunacy on a grand scale.”

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Former CIA officer D. W. Wilber noted in The Hill Monday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s actions leading up to the Benghazi attack, and the Obama administration’s foreign policy in Libya as a whole were “lunacy on a grand scale”: “Additional security was denied even though intelligence reports clearly indicated the presence in Libya of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups hostile to the United States.” Hillary’s “trust in the various militia factions to set aside their longstanding differences and establish a governing body in the war torn country illustrates another amateur mistake.” But it wasn’t. It was a professional mistake.

In reality, Hillary’s actions in Libya were an implementation of the policy called for by foreign policy professionals for years: to ignore whatever a study of Islamic doctrine and law might reveal about the thought processes and motivations of Islamic jihadis, and to assume that they’re motivated by the same mix of pragmatism and self-interest that motivates secular Western urban cosmopolites, i.e., people just like themselves.

This is the kind of disastrous miscalculation preached by establishment foreign policy wonks including the likes of the puerile and silly Will McCants (and the Qatar-funded Brookings Institution in general), Max Abrahms (and the Council on Foreign Relations in general), and a host of others that the State Department and other foreign policy entities hire by the pound.

The foreign policy establishment is a bipartisan creation, and both parties refuse to challenge its hegemony. The Republicans, as the House Select Committee on Benghazi hearings showed Tuesday, continue instead to let Hillary and Obama off the hook, and don’t even come close to challenging the entrenched foreign policy bureaucracy. Breitbart News noted that the final report from Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC)’s committee refused “to blame President Obama or then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as refus[ed] to say directly if Clinton lied to the American people regarding the Benghazi attacks.”

The Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell said of Gowdy after the Tuesday hearing: “It was up to him to get to the truth, and he punted. Just as with the IRS investigation, the Republicans lacked the fortitude to confront those responsible.”

Bozell detailed the many failures of Gowdy’s inquiry: “The causes, events and circumstances regarding the attacks on the American personnel and facilities at Benghazi are still a mystery to the American people. Who denied the multiple requests for additional security for the compound? No answer. Who is being held responsible for the deaths of these men? No answer. Why did this administration deliberately lie about the video? No answer. Should the Commander-in-Chief be held responsible for the multiple failures of the military? Should the Secretary of State be held responsible for the disastrous consequences of State Department decisions? Not according to this report. They wouldn’t even state that Hillary Clinton lied about the video though her own emails, read by committee members, prove she had! But they did blame a ‘rusty bureaucratic process.’”

That “rusty bureaucratic process” is a product of the foreign policy establishment that led us into this mess. Hillary Clinton is just their most prominent exponent — which does not in the least exonerate her. It’s just to say that not only does Hillary Clinton’s influence over the U.S. government in whatever capacity need to be decisively rejected; the whole foreign policy establishment needs to be swept out, cherished and unquestioned assumptions rejected, and the edifice remade by people who are more realistic and unafraid to base policy on unpleasant realities rather than upon politically correct wishful thinking.

Even worse, right after the Benghazi massacre, the father of one of those slain there recounted that Secretary of State Clinton spoke to him at a memorial service about the Muhammad filmmaker, saying, “We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted.” And she did. The filmmaker, who went by several different names, had a record full of run-ins with the law, and at the time of the Benghazi attacks was out on parole. A condition of his parole, however, was that he not go on the Internet – which he apparently did in order to upload the notorious video to YouTube.

For that, he was arrested and imprisoned for several months, thereby becoming the first political prisoner in the U.S. for Obama’s war on free speech and enforcement of Sharia blasphemy laws. There can be no doubt that he was imprisoned not for the technicality of the probation violation (while thousands of more serious probation violators walked the streets), but for insulting Muhammad. His arrest was a symbol of America’s capitulation to the Sharia. He was nothing more than the fall guy who became the first offender against the new de facto federal crime of blasphemy against Islam.

That, too, was a reflection of the foreign policy establishment’s determination to compel Americans to stop doing anything and everything that any Muslim might construe as offensive to Islam. Reflecting the establishment policy also were Hillary’s fatuous words: “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people, and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” In response to that, Donald Trump recently opined that Hillary was “in total denial, and her continuing reluctance to ever name the enemy broadcasts weakness across the entire world — true weakness.” Clinton wants, he said, “to take away American’s guns and then admit the very people who want to slaughter us. Let them come into the country, we don’t have guns. Let them come in, let them have all the fun they want….The bottom line is that Hillary supports policies that bring the threat of radical Islam into American and allow it to grow overseas, and it is growing.”

Trump’s point was sound. In what way was it not? Combining unrestricted immigration and a massive influx of Muslim migrants, among whom the Islamic State has promised to embed jihadis, with a disarmed American population is simply an invitation to jihad massacres on a frequency never hitherto imagined. Could there be an Orlando-style attack every day? Why not, in the America of the near future that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are busy preparing for us?

Trump declared: “The burden is on Hillary Clinton to tell us why she believes immigration from these dangerous countries should be increased without any effective system really to screen.” Again, his point his sound: all those, including Hillary, who are busy excoriating Trump for the “racism” and “bigotry” of his immigration proposal have not bothered to suggest any alternative plan for preventing jihadis from entering the country. Hillary and the rest of the political and media elites would rather see Americans subjected to jihad mass murder on a huge scale than do anything that is politically incorrect.

The foreign policy establishment that is irrevocably committed to these politically correct fantasies must be swept out. And to elect Hillary Clinton President of the United States would be, in D. W. Wilber’s words, “lunacy on a grand scale.”