Monday, February 18, 2013

Why Hillary and Obama Do Not Want Benghazi to Matter

What difference … does it make?! erupted Hillary Clinton during the Senate hearings on Benghazi.

The difference it makes, whether it was "simply" a protest or terrorism — a word the secretary of state carefully avoided — is fundamental. (Her exact words were: "Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they'd go kill some Americans?! What difference, at this point, does it make?!" Notice how the Al Qaeda option is carefully avoided, with the two remaining options sounding banally similar…)

Benghazi matters because — like so many other things — it puts the lie to Barack Obama's entire foreign policy outlook — the put-me-(or-keep-me-)in-the-White-House-and-everybody-will-love-us Foreign Policy.

It puts the lie to the entire leftist viewpoint that, regarding other nations, there are no enemies in the world, we are all brothers, and if anyone feels grieved — any nation, any group, any individual — the Apologizer-in-Chief will heal all matters.

And, in this day and age, the resort to the intervention of the armed forces will no longer be necessary.

No, of course, there are the terrorists — do not forget that Obama killed Bin Laden! — although Obama, who hates the word, hopes to convince even them that he is, and that his America is, their friend.  And against those who will not be convinced, the White House is willing to send special forces such as the Seals, but only and invariably small detachments thereof. (Needless to say, the Apologizer-in-Chief had to be briefed three times before he consented to kill Osama.)

It is not that members of Barack "A decade of war is ending" Obama's administration did not care about what was happening to Christopher Stevens, it was that they were too dumbfounded to react.

Democrats were so impregnated with the demonization (with their own demonization) of traditional America and its (shameful use of) armed forces — its Send the Marines mentality — that it was an option that either nobody thought of or that nobody would even consider doing.  ("No no, this can't be happening!" Remember that by killing Bin Laden, Obama decimated Al Qaeda.)
Obama apparently wasn't curious about what was happening in Benghazi 
writes Michael Barone (shookhran to Instapundit).
He wasn't too concerned either the next morning, when after the first murder of a U.S. ambassador in 33 years, he jetted off on a four-hour ride to a campaign event in Las Vegas. I don't think you have to be a Republican partisan to consider that unseemly.

Obama's odd response to the Benghazi attack and the efforts, surely choreographed by his White House, to attribute it to a spontaneous response to an anti-Muslim video, suggest that his first priority was winning re-election — and that Benghazi was an irritant that must not be allowed to stand in the way.

… "A decade of war is ending," Barack Obama declared in his second inaugural. His response to Benghazi, his decision on Syria and his nomination of Hagel suggest he thinks he can draw down our forces and avoid military conflict. 
But let's get back to the No Enemies in the World mindset.

This means there is no nation that is an enemy of America (which derives in turn from the State Department / United Nations / diplomatic atmosphere, where every other person you meet at the UN or in an embassy or in a foreign government ministry is a nice, chummy, suave, well-dressed diplomat — including even most leaders of the nations themselves — which allows for American, or for Western, diplomats to say those people aren't so bad, that people is relatively harmless, that nation can't be all bad (certainly those pleasant types we meet are just like us and can be made to listen to reason), while ignoring tales of oppression and thuggery and murder back in their home countries, and to say that one's own people must be bigoted).

Only the occasional terrorist group (and even they have their — more or less good, more or less understandable — reasons to think, and to react, and to act as they do.)

Because, basically, it turns out that there is one enemy in the world, for both America itself and for the world at large, and it is inevitably America (or the West) itself. Or, rather, its conservative parts, which must be tamed, which must be reeducated, which must be defeated, which must be outnumbered (cf. the left's immigration policy).

No compromise with these clueless haters and bigots — why on Earth should there be?! why should the O stoop so low?! — which explains Obama's Uncompromising Left-Wing Agenda.

Foreign policy must be subdued, so Barack Hussein Obama can go on with his radically transforming the United States.

John Hinderaker (via Instapundit), hopes, as does Ann Althouse,
that Obama–and Hillary Clinton, also–have the decency to be ashamed of themselves.
No, they don't — there is no decency for the left; only for the right — which conservatives never manage to fulfill.  Or, if you prefer, being a leftist is proof of decency, of righteousness, of heroism in itself.

There is no shame. As even somebody as black and as harmless as Benjamin Carson has had the occasion to feel, the only only shame is in having the audacity to oppose Barack Obama.