Obama’s Foreign Policy: Amateur Hour at the White House
So why did he appoint Clinton despite all this? Was it purely political — to (as LBJ so famously said of someone of a different gender) have her inside the tent pissing out rather than outside pissing in? Perhaps. But it is also likely that Obama considered Clinton’s lack of knowledge to be a feature rather than a bug. After all, a relative neophyte would be less inclined to interfere with his own policies or to challenge him with his/her own greater expertise. This was also true of Obama’s selection of Leon Panetta to head the CIA and then Defense, and his choice of Thomas Donilon as his National Security advisor.
Obama likes to think of himself as the smartest person in the room. He prefers to surround himself with mediocrities and/or trusted yes-men/women and party operatives. The result? Well, we’re seeing it in Benghazi.
We don’t know exactly who made the most egregious errors in Benghazi: Obama, Clinton, Panetta, or Donilon, or whether they all had significant roles in the debacle and the ensuing coverup. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and plenty of incompetence.
At Breitbart, for example, Colonel Hunt reported early on that it was Hillary who had made the general decision not to order a greater security presence at Benghazi:
Hunt told Breitbart News that the new State Department Rules of Engagement for Libya, approved and signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton since the 2011 fall of Khadafi’s regime, severely compromised the safety and security of murdered Ambassador Stevens and all American diplomatic staff in Libya.
He also stated that the decision not to staff Benghazi with Marines was made by Secretary of State Clinton when she attached her signature to the State Department Rules of Engagement for Libya document. Breitbart News has subsequently learned that under those rules of engagement, Secretary Clinton prohibited Marines from providing security at any American diplomatic installation in Libya.
Hunt told Breitbart News that…”We allowed a contractor to hire local nationals as security guards, but said they can’t have bullets. This was all part of the point of not having a high profile in Libya.”
What happened in Benghazi is an example of the triumph of leftist ideology over common sense. The idea is that, in order to project the appearance of friendliness and trust, we must forgo actually protecting ourselves. The fact that terrorists would see that as a golden opportunity for attack, and regard us as both weak and fools — and rightly so — does not compute. The idea is that people are more convinced by facades and poses than by reality, and that the proper ideology is more important than expertise.
But that’s not surprising; both Obama and Hillary Clinton (and the left as a whole) operate that way themselves to a great extent, and have based their own political careers on bravado and appearance rather than substance. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton represent, among other things, their own conviction that smart people (those who’ve done well in school, that is) can do anything they set their minds to, and that all it takes is a little posturing — which replaces actual knowledge and experience — to succeed. Bu they may have come up against reality in Benghazi.
Obama had to have many auxiliaries at high levels in State, Defense and CIA. Mister Lead From Behind didn’t do it all by his lonesome. Think of that Jerry Sandusky child molester and remember, he could not have done it unless those at Penn State who knew what he was doing helped him, in one way or another, get away with doing it. There is a name for them and that name also fits Secretary of State Clinton, Defense Secretary Panetta, the Joint Chiefs and CIA Director Petraeus. Nothing stinks as bad as this does unless the whole barrel of fish is rotten.
To get to the truth about this administration, all that you need do is go back to Chicago. It is all there for everyone to see. Plain as the nose on your face. Chicago is the key to stopping these criminals.
House investigation of Jesse Jackson Jr. may widen
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/11/02/house-iinvestigation-of-jesse-jackson-jr-may-widen/
“But Bush knew enough to know what he didn’t know, and appointed actual experts to man (and woman) the job, such as Condoleezza Rice.”
Condi Rice was a mentally twisted disaster.
Condi Rice’s “foreign policy philosophy” was to see the whole world through the prism of her childhood through her adolescence in Jim Crow Birmingham. That’s about it. She is a classic case of arrested development. She sees muslims as the blacks of the world and hence is totally deaf, dumb and blind to islam.
Condi Rice: “I believe that there could be no greater legacy for America than to help to bring into being a Palestinian (terror) state for a people who have suffered too long, who have been humiliated (by the nasty Jews and for no reason at all) too long, who have not reached their potential for too long, and who have so much to give to the international community and to all of us (Give what? More suicide bomber kids? The extermination of Israel?).”
And no greater legacy for America? This woman, who pressured Israel into holding elections in Gaza that gave Hamas power, is either very stupid or a very dangerous psycho.
Condi Rice”: “I know what it is like to hear to that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian. I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness.”
She acts like she doesn’t even know why the checkpoints are there … … or doesn’t care. This woman is a disaster.
Condi Rice: “We should note that unlike in our Constitutional Convention, the Iraqis have not made a compromise as bad as the one that made my ancestors three-fifths of a man”
She is either too ignorant to know that the pro-slavery states wanted to count slaves fully (to raise their number of seats in the house), which would have likely prolonged slavery, and the anti-slavery states wanted slaves to count zero, to help oppose slavery, or she lies to make some kind of false case.
Condi Rice: “Only cynics [meaning like the white racists in Birmingham] argue that the people of the Middle East, perhaps because of their color or their creed or their culture or even perhaps because of their religion, are somehow incapable of democracy.”
Thousands of American Soldiers and Marines have died in Iraq (with 2/3 of the Christians there being ethically cleansed under Iraq’s democracy) and Afghanistan for this twisted fool’s idiocy. I’m sure she was a big cheerleader of the “Arab Spring” too, but I hope she doesn’t expect the Copts to send her a nice thank-you card, any more than the Iraqi Christians.
Well said. Thankfully W had Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bolt.
Thirty seconds of research into Condi’s resume reveals her as a doctrinaire liberal. I swear when you look at the Bush 43 appointees it’s pretty apparent that his wife and his father were his main source for naming potential candidates.
Thank you for the commentary, I was unaware of most of that, but to take any secretary of state’s public speeches at face value is a little bit of naivete on your part, no?
Well, it would be, if it were not that her behavior consistently supported her stated positions. Bush II was a vastly better President than Obama but he got somethings wrong too and one of his mistakes was Condi Rice as Sec State.
Rice’s area of knowledge is Russia. The problem is, that the focus of the time was Islam. She was unqualified in this area. She is not a doctrinaire Liberal, either, just a doctrinaire American Black, like Powell before her. Thus, foreign policy disaster, then as now. It’s seeing the world through a racial prism. It’s bound to fail.
No, the reality is that, again, other people paid the price for the President’s actions. The 4 deaths resulting from the decision to throw 30+ people to the Al Queda wolves were a tiny price to pay. Within a year, it’ll be Romney’s fault, if it isn’t Bush’s already. We’re lucky that the CIA guys decided to disobey orders. Otherwise, we’d be watching decapitation videos for the rest of 2013.
Since Obama is fine, nobody of importance was hurt. Life goes on, and it’ll blow over, just like everything else.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner kills more than 4 with most drone strikes. I’m sure the ambassador, SEALs and staff think/thought of themselves as being exceptional… Just like the people of the UK, Sweden, Greece, Stanton Island, or the victims of the Shinola Cartel. But they aren’t.
The worst Obama faces is retiring to an island paradise. He knows that nobody dares prosecute him after he leaves office. If the good guys can prosecute the last bad guy, then the incoming bad guys can trump up charges to prosecute the retiring good guy. Not gonna happen. The precedent would be set to do anything, including using the military, to keep the office of the POTUS forever. That would destroy the US.
If Obama wins re-election, there are plenty of ways that he can stop any impeachment proceeding. Just ignoring it would be a start. Then, after a trial in absentia, claim it’s all a Republican/Tea Party plot, and go golfing again. Impeaching Nixon and Clinton required their cooperation. Obama would just laugh. Federal law enforcement are all Obama’s direct employees.
You know how the news would handle it.
The real problem is obama’s basic incompetence at everything. The huge laugh here is how the msm painted Sarah Palen as incompetent when Obama barely even knows how to tie his shoes!
Frankly, journalism is dead except for Fox and the Washington Times. I will never buy another newspaper & haven’t in 5 yrs. Frankly, there is no free press in the US.
The entire O regime is one of lies, corruption & incompetence.Foreign policy, or their lack thereof is a perfect example of this idiot’s mind.
No one of O’s boyz ever admits they are wrong, just like the Communists. I pray we have a new prez in a few days before our country is lost forever.
“Frankly, journalism is dead except for Fox and the Washington Times. I will never buy another newspaper & haven’t in 5 yrs. Frankly, there is no free press in the US.”
That is sad, my friend, and you should reconsider for your own sake. When you close your mind so completely you don’t become more free, you become more easily led. When you wall off any that might disagree with what you wish to be true you don’t become more correct, you become more deluded.
Freedom isn’t free, and it isn’t the lack of disagreement either. For that, find yourself a nice one-party throwback state, although that will be difficult given how alarmingly rare they have become over the past couple decades.
Unlike you lefty tools and useful idiots we don’t close our minds; we simply close our ears to the dispensers of propaganda and lefty idiocy. Hopefully, you’re being paid for your lefty trolling or are excusably under, say, thirty and recently college educated; if there is any other explanation, you, too, are an idiot.
Oh Art, you’ve already proven how open your mind is with your desire to “have an interesting moral discussion about slavery…”.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/questions-for-white-house-over-benghazi-just-beginning/#comment-3635820
What an open mind! What a critical thinker! You aren’t falling for the “lamestream” line that holding other human beings in chattel bondage is morally indefensible. No, you see all sides of that issue!
Art, we should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brain falls out.
You are incredibly stupid, especially for such an arrogant sonovabitch. Slavery is a moral question; it’s legality is a legal question. Whether or not slavery is morally acceptible is a totally different question from whether or not it was legally acceptible. But, then, I wouldn’t really expect some lefty idiot to understand the difference. You guys have three more days to glorify stupidity; then we start hunting you down.
General Ass-Tso-le is simply furious that the conservatives have a place to publish articles and discuss in their own way things that run counter to the bullsh*t that is spewed by KOS and the legacy media, which is losing viewers/subscribers in droves.
Thus, he comes here to try to stir up angst, using the old method of redirecting and intentionally misunderstanding cogency and logic.
Shilling for the left must be a full-time job which in and of itself is anathema to being a devout socialist, but I’ll bet he’s a basement-dweller with a limited capacity for hygiene and little else to do.
I’ll cease tormenting you at this point, with one final observation: It took only two comments of mine – two! – two reduce my PJM interlocutors to nothing more than vulgarity, ad hominems, incredibly bad puns, and a moral defense of slavery. Two comments (two!) and the depths of your reasoning was already more than plumbed.
Voltaire said it best: “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”
That’s because you met your goal of “what pisses off a conservative”. You are a button-pusher and it gives you pleasure to no end.
You’re not looking to present counter ideas to spur debate, you’re looking to irritate, annoy, aggravate and condescend. You have spoken loudly through your intellectually and morally superior attitude to point out how “wrong” we are.
I refer you to Monty Python’s “Argument” which really is just contradiction. “”No it isn’t” which drives the customer into a froth.
When a poster here posits a position, you simply say, “No, it isn’t” and look for reaction. Oh how fun! Then you go to your loopy left-winger moonbat asshole friends and, again with extreme intellectual superiority begin to extrapolate how you simply “tried to engage us in discussion and by TWO (count ‘em, TWO) postings, it resorted to ad-hominem attacks.”
Well, poor baby. We are disgusted by people like you who sit there with a smug look like Obama’s and who figure out ways to push people’s buttons while playing the innocent. “Wait…all I did was ask a question.”, has been your defense in probably everything you’ve ever done. But in other posts you claim to understand human behavior so well, yet you seem surprised that your motivations ultimately resulted in the satisfaction of meeting your goals of pissing people off.
I assume you actually process in that thing you call a brain something that goes like this, “I think I’ll go to the conservative blogs today and troll for reaction. Heh, heh.” and then you smile as you formulate how you’ll go about doing it. You probably enjoy doing the same thing to church-goers when the subject of religion comes up.
I think you’re an ass. Ad-hominem or not. But it’s based on the very genuine observation of your haughtiness, condescension and even the phrase, “I’ll torment you no more” which implies you have taken a position of superiority because it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. Had you said, “I am truly sorry if I offended” which is what you left-turds demand from us all the time, then maybe, maybe>/i> you might find some redemption with one or two of us. But as far as I’m concerned, you suck. I don’t owe you a goddam thing. I am venting my spleen here AT you and ON you, not to appease your desire to see how pissed off I got.
No, you didn’t get the results you desired by some incredible talent of backing anyone into a corner with your stunning logic and clever word-play. You got the results you wanted because we are sick of people like you who think they have all the answers and think that socialism is the answer and anyone who can’t see that must be damaged somehow.
Go back to your teacher’s lounge and play in the classroom with the teens or pre-teens that you so enjoy besting. We don’t put up with it here.
What Jean Kaufman writes is interesting, but, to me, is like being a dentist and drilling on a tooth near the one that’s causing all the pain.
The American people need an investigation on Benghazi, not an article relating mainly to the qualifications of people with key jobs in the Obama administration.
The American people deserve a comprehensive independent investigation that answers the key questions about the murders in Libya of the four Americans.
We need the President and his staff investigated to ascertain what they knew about everything from previous attacks on the consulate, to what each knew about security threats, all the way to specific actions each took with respect to the attacks at Benghazi, including the President’s thinking process as he decided who was to do the investigation into what happened. What went so horribly wrong. The aftermath.
In particular, the President’s decision, on the theory that the governmental bodies with skin in the game can’t be trusted to investigate themselves, not to name a special prosecutor.
The FBI, the State Dept., the CIA and all other government agencies involved have too much to lose to investigate themselves.
We all smell cover-up, lies and misdirection.
For example, when the President was caught flat footed by a Denver reporter on Oct. 27, the President told the Denver reporter, “we’re going to launch an investigation”. Was Obama including himself and his staff as those to be investigated? No.
Does this come as a shock? Even a mild surprise?
Obama’s investigation assumes correct actions of government agencies; that they’re telling the truth.
95% of Obama’s investigation concentrates on the attackers. Who were they? How did they get their weapons, etc. What happened in Libya is pretty much all Obama wants to investigate. Actions taken with regard to the Libyan embassy in the United States Obama doesn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole.
Obama’s investigation will conveniently overlook those areas of possible lies and misdirection and mistakes by members of his own administration and the agencies responsible for the safe running of the foreign embassy in Libya.
The investigation will end with a lot of jaws dropped; jaws hanging from faces that realize they should have insisted months before in knowing who and what was being investigated relative to the murders at Benghazi.
I, personally, don’t know why mainstream reporters and internet reporters assume when Obama says the word, “investigation”, that everybody’s on the same page; that it means the same thing to all. It doesn’t.
When Obama was telling the Denver reporter, Kyle Clark on Oct.27, 2012, about Obama’s three directives as a result of the Benghazi attack, the first directive used the following verbiage.
(Obama’s speaking) ” I can tell you, as I’ve said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.”
Fans, the words, “securing our personnel” in military land means you’re telling them to stand down. It has nothing to do with rescuing people in danger.
I’ve read report after report, article after article where the writer totally missed this distinction; this Obama misdirection. You can’t call yourself a reporter and be this gullible. That phrase should have sounded Kyle Clark’s BS alarm. And deserved a followup question relative to what the words in question meant to the President. Clark failed to do this.
I call people like Hannity, Malkin, Hewitt, O’reilly, etc, useful idiots of much the same breed as Clark because they give the impression of knowing how to pin down government people and insure the truth comes out, but most of the time they haven’t the foggiest idea what to ask; where the real issues are.
I’m sorry to say it, but those in charge here at Pajamas Media pretty much fall into the same category.
I know because….let’s just say I know.
I have to agree … nobody dares to ask direct, fearless questions that cannot be spun by Obama’s scripted narrative, ” I can tell you, as I’ve said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.” THAT is a conman speaking.
As this story slowly drips out via CIA and State Department leaks, we are seeing signs of the complete depravity of the Administration’s management of the diplomatic mission in the Arab spring states. All warning signs were ignored. 3 hours before the attack a cable was sent that militia forces were massing. Nothing was done. No F-18′s or 16′s were deployed to make thunder runs or straf. No Delta element was sent. A squad of Delta’s or Seals would have dispatched the Al Queda forces. It would have quickly turned into an unfair fight, especially with an air cap or Spooky above to rain down hell.
These people died exclusively because there was a narative to protect. The blood is all over the President and Sec Def Panetta. Hillary is responsible as well; she saw all the cable regarding the security situation and at best didn’t prevail in addressing them.
When the truth outs it will be Obama’s legacy.
Isn’t it interesting that there are continuing State Department and CIA leaks? Isn’t the CIA supposed to keep secrets? Is it incompetent altogether or are people there violating standard procedure ’cause things are bad?
Very Bad
I think they are leaking because they are aghast at what this administration did. It was their guys sacrificed, and it could be them next. They know that the WH will throw them under the bus, and they aren’t going to stand for it. The WH went too far this time, and even these administration enablers have had enough. The CIA, Pentagon and State were part of the in-crowd with Obama, and have now realized that he has no loyalty to them at all and doesn’t have their backs, even though he expects them to have his. He’ll let them slowly “twist in the wind” to deflect blame from himself, but they have the goods on him and will not let that happen. Their bosses (Hilary, Panetta and Petraeus) may be willing to fall on their swords for The Won, but the lower echelons won’t. And this malfeasance could only have happened at the highest level; no lower-grade flunky made the decision to not send in the troops; that came from the top.
Obumbles threw the CIA under the truck. Big mistake. They are leaking back at him and Hil. They are pissed, not in disarray.
Romney should have laid this out in debate two and expanded on it in debate 3. That would have forced the lamestream’s to cover it.
“…Obama’s predecessor Bush II lacked such experience as well — although, like Hillary, he was a close family member of someone who did have it. …”
You might want to fix this or elaborate on the point so that it makes sense — Isn’t Bill Clinton a “close family member” of Hillary’s? Presumably he also has foreign policy experience.
Reading comprehension is a skill you really ought to try to cultivate.
To be called an “amateur,” you at least have to have some passing interest in what you do. These people are worse: they’re dilettantes, lackadaisical meddlers in things they don’t quite grasp, but consider themselves to be expert in all things.
Or, as Ambassador Llondo Molari once observed, “ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in one neat package. How efficient of you.”
And Obama seems to be getting away with it. Like Fast and Furious and the Black Panthers civil rights suit. Despite the rise of the altermedia, such as PJMedia, the MSM is still the kingmaker. Like it or not, the Progressive meme remains the dominant one. How else to explain how an obscure guy from Chicago with no accomplishments to his name but very radical and hate-filled associations can become President, preside over a disastrous, thuggish economic and social policy, and yet remain extremely competitive in his re-election against a milquetoast like Romney?
I share your exact thoughts.
“Like it or not, the Progressive meme remains the dominant one. How else to explain…”
I don’t know that dominant is the right word, but certainly the large percentage of the American population that is lazy, ignorant and ideologically bent never passes much beyond the versions of events relentlessly spouted by network news.
There appears to be some dissension in the ranks, with this as an interpretation from an adversary..your thoughts?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/161626#.UJU43Wd0lc9
Forgot the corollary
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/navy-replaces-admiral-leading-mideast-strike-group-because-of-ongoing-investigation/
What bothers me is the Solzhenitsyn principle that every lie is followed inevitably by violence (paraphrased. In the Soviet Union any deviation of the official narrative constructed by the media bureaucrats was punished severely. The lies of the powerful must be sustained by the brutal force of the state.
I am afraid of the putsch, or at least of an intent to coerce our already debilitated institutions into some kind of an “state of siege” that will justify the suppression of political opponents (in particular their discourse) and the perpetuation and deepening of the “model” of governance we have been experiencing lately.
If such a thing happens then *We the People* will be left to defend our *Constitution* all by ourselves. Then we will not become Greece but Syria.
US is able to borrow so much money on such favorable terms is because — to the rest of the world — serious armed rebellion is unthinkable here. So the minute even a small part of the US starts looking like Syria (or even those boondock areas of Mexico that are in armed rebellion) our government’s “credit card” will vanish, turning us immediately into Greece!
It is worse than your worst case example; As soon as the US, or any of its
solvent States starts to peacefully, legally resist the collection of taxes
the game is over. Even the minimal austerity measures Romney will impose
might be enough, if they include reductions in taxes, and particularly if
they do _not_ include measures which give the rest of the world at least
a little glimmer of hope that the US economy will resume its growth.
There are two separate and distinct views on how foreign policy should be set. The first, the one embraced by the Establishment, is that foreign policy should be based on the values and cultural traditions of the foreigners. The second, the one that rarely sees the light of day, is that our foreign policy should be based on American ideals, values and traditions.
The first gives rise to Obama saying “we dictate to other countries”; the second is reflected by Romney saying “we free other countries from dictators”. In 2008, both Clinton and Obama were well versed in foreign affairs because they both would set our foreign policy to advance the goals of other nations. Our foreign policy should be always be governed by what’s in our best interests, not what’s in the best interest of the various nations. Sadly, the State Department, the Establishment, the UN and everybody else who hates freedom and liberty disagree.
On the Gripping Hand, one could simply admit a truth long known
and usually concealed; Nations conduct foreign policy in their
own best interests, and any collateral damage is just too bad.
F’yunch *Click*
Assuming Colonel Hunt’s reported is accurate, and I do, the only reason Billary isn’t bus-bait is they know who did, or did not do what and when. I can’t understand why the Clintons didn’t take the opportunity to cop a plea as soon as the Benghazi experiment went sour, or shortly there after. Her signature on the ambassador’s death sentence could have been attributed to erroneously implementing Obama’s policies. After all, mistakes, even fatal mistakes, have been forgiven. That said, saving herself meant spiking Obama’s canon. Liberals never forgive the truth.
Like two criminals who won’t confess to the police, Hitlery won’t rat on Brack because she’s afraid of what will actually be discovered in the investigation. Things that people prefer remain hidden causes them to act irrationally as seen by others.
It’s not what she said, it’s what she didn’t say and isn’t saying that has my curiosity piqued.
Immediately following the incident at Ft. Hood, a US president uses the occasion to address the public for a photo op., giving a shout out to a guy in the audience he was kissing up to.
A behavior entirely consistent with heading out to a Las Vegas fundraiser immediately on the heels of terrorist assassins killing 4 Americans and trashing the consulate in Benghazi.
The Chicoms and the Russians have offered their enthusiastic endorsement of Obama for another 4 years. The Chicoms love our extreme indebtedness to them, strangling America as they surge.
Putin is looking forward to the “more flexibility” that Obama promised Medvedev awhile back.
Many “progressive” Europeans are also comfortable with America as a joke.
Obama’s and Clinton’s idealogy of be nice and they will be nice is a complete failure. To not protect our own is a tragedy.
Some interesting comments here. I’d like to mix it up a bit by stating that the primary problem in Benghazi is the President’s world view, which Jean Kaufman alluded to a couple of times in this article. It is a world view that repeats the famous error in the Old Testament where “every man did what was right in his own eyes”. It is a secular, man-driven, egocentric view of the world that says “we” can do whatever we want and it’ll all work out simply because we want it to.
Needless to say there are a few “bumps in the road” with this world view. For one thing its unrealistic and ignores the fact that other people, using their own world view will ignore your wants and wishes. Muslims continually ignore Obama’s wants and wishes. Appeasing them doesn’t work, even though he wants it to. Instead it emboldens them to press even harder.
For another it is divisive. Instead of uniting people behind a common vision as President Reagan did, it divides them into different groups based on what each group wants. When you have division you wind up with people being ‘thrown under the bus’ like Obama’s old preacher, Rev. Wright or being hung out to dry when they’re under attack.
It may not be popular to say it but unless this country gets back to basics, and by that I mean Christianity, it won’t get better. None of the economic problems will be fixed over the long run, none of the foreign policy issues will be solved, none of it will be any better. You have to fix the inside before you can fix the outside. I speak from personal experience on this one.
The Progressive Democrats and the sycophantic media have their allegiance glued to Obama. They continue to slander conservatives and belittle Romney, while they bury their heads in the sand and refuse to examine the ugly truths of Fast and Furious, Solyndragate, Obama’s hatred of fossil fuels and most recent and shameful of all: Benghazigate. I don’t know how you can ignore any of the above and sleep at night, but they do.
“What happened in Benghazi is an example of the triumph of leftist ideology over common sense. The idea is that, in order to project the appearance of friendliness and trust, we must forgo actually protecting ourselves. The fact that terrorists would see that as a golden opportunity for attack, and regard us as both weak and fools — and rightly so — does not compute. The idea is that people are more convinced by facades and poses than by reality, and that the proper ideology is more important than expertise.”
That is one of the most intelligent paragraphs I’ve ever read! We are seeing the dress-up generation at work. Pathetic!
You can get more of Jean Kaufman at Neo Neocon, that’s her nom de plume.
Agree. The leftist worldview is that the United States is the cause of all the world’s problems, especially of Islamist terrorism. More than anything else, leftists want to end America’s “imperialism.” The solution, of course, is to “keep a low profile,” to avoid the appearance of bullying or interfering, to appear meek and mild instead. The theory is that this approach will make the world love us again.
I think that there are ways to *seem* unthreatening without actually *being* weak and defenseless. Unfortunately, leftists are so naive and so sincere that they can’t imagine employing that kind of deception in foreign policy. For them, nothing less than *real* harmlessness will do. I think they’re now learning why this approach hasn’t been employed by previous administrations.
On a somewhat related note: in the 2-d term of this admin. the 2-d amendment will be decimated first… Than, with disarmed populace all other parts of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution will be eliminated.
Won’t happen. Too many shootouts will result and the police will begin to complain that too many (faithful union members)officers are getting killed in the process. So instead, the administration would figure out ways to close down shooting ranges, close gun-shops, etc. The black market on guns will explode (sorry) with activity.
The Constitution is clear. Those Americans who own guns know what it says and what it means and what it was meant for all along. And they won’t give up their arms willingly.
here is that gun owners are holding the US government’s credit rating hostage — because one of the reasons the US can borrow so much money at such low rates is that, to the rest of the world, armed rebellion in the US is unthinkable. The minute it becomes a serious possibility, the US will have its “credit card” revoked and has to live within its means.
In other words, as soon as any part of the US starts to resemble Syria, the country as a whole will start to resemble Greece.
(same point was made in reply to comment #10)
NEVER forget that the ruthless Obama-Clinton administration provided approximately 2,000 firearms to the barbaric Mexican drug cartel who work VERY closely with the Muslim terrorist organization. Hezbollah, known as the A team of Muslim terrorists is throughout Latin America. Hezbollah has set up operations close to our border.
The U.S. government-provided firearms have been used to kill hundreds of Mexican innocents.
Bible, Genesis 4:10 And God said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.”
No “amateur” there.
He wants to destroy America’s might and he is doing it.
No one who has been in combat will presume malfeasance in a confused combat situation which results in US deaths. Many bad things happen in combat. A-10 pilots target the wrong vehicles, a Captain can position his soldiers improperly and in both cases, Americans die. I see no uproar or demand for prosecution for those soldiers whose actions have resulted in the deaths of more Americans than were lost Benghazi. The bloodlust for the President in many commentaries is more a reflection of the authors’ preconceptions than any objective evaluation of the facts.
Inventing a pseudo-technical answer to cover the political crimes of this administration will not work.
Nearly two months of lies have been now topped with the answer that the CIA has engaged a field battle in Benghazi. I never knew that such was the purpose of the CIA. Especially when in the same theater of operations we have a whole fleet, and great resources in Sigonella.
More tan evidently, wrong prejudices have dictated the answer (or the not answer) to the attack, and our great resources have not been used.
And the buck stops at the CiC.
Period.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
For starters, read this:
http://www.canadaka.net/article/88-pilots-in-friendly-fire-incident-charged
The CIA does it’s own thing in all of our areas of operations. I worked with them in Iraq and other operations. It is also characteristic of their operations that they can be stuck out on a limb outside of timely military support. With the rapid development of this situation, that is what happened here. If you want to fault the CIA for having poor security planning, that is fair game. However, those details are not what the President delves in. His job is to pick his subordinates and to trust in their skills and judgement. Even in the incredibly choreographed operation where Osama bin Laden was killed, the President didn’t make operational decisions. He left that to the Officers in Seal Team 6.
That makes no sense. Embassy and CIA are two different entities. An embassy is not supposed to be “stuck out on a limb outside timely military support.” Evidently, the ambassador and the RSO both knew the post was in danger weeks ago and informed their superiors – who did nothing. This goes at least as high as Hillary. Hillary only carries out Obama’s policies He may not have written an order saying “don’t defend the embassy,” but his emphasis on pacifying Muslims certainly played into what happened.
As for the CIA, it sounds like their people on the ground were the only ones who stood up and did what was necessary. Everybody else was wondering what was going on, wondering what to do, and ended up doing nothing.
I didn’t say that friendly fire was right or that the events shouldn’t be investigated or individuals charged if appropriate. I just don’t see that as a major thread among these posts. If the concern was about the US deaths, it should have been a major topic here. The fact that posters are concentrating on the Benghazi event to the extent that they are without concerning themselves with other US losses is because of their preconceived
notions, not due to an objective evaluation of the fact (those that are out there so far).
What you are ignoring is the outright lying by Obama and the administration about the attack in Benghazi. They kept repeating the “video” story for nearly two weeks when they *knew* from the beginning that it was false. That is what brings into question their entire behavior before, during and after the attack.
In many areas, embassies and the CIA are intimately connected. Security arrangements at that embassy were classified and probably did include the CIA. Obviously, they were inadequate. The speculation only goes back to my first post.
Calling Hussein O and his ilks amateurs is an insult to all the amateurs who do what they do for the love of what they do. Those in WH are anything but amateurs they are tyrannical ideologues who do not care for their own country or countryman.
Obama has done a SUPERB JOB as a RADICAL MUSLIM MOLE.Please connect the dots and thanks to BHO you have a nuclear armed iran, a muslim brothehood governement in Egypt controlling the Suez Canal, a radical islamist Lybia where Obama deliberately choose to see his amabassador murdered by Al Quaeda terrorists instead of acting to save him, a intact dictatorship in Syria, a renewed control of Lebanon by Iranian proxy hizbollah who has just murdered the intelligence chief, an evermore pro-iranian government in Iraq, and a weakened Israel.Well for an ” amateur ” that’s really impressive.Actually Mr Kaufman, your appreciation of Obama is the mere expression of how much in the fog you are about Obama.OBAMA IS A RADICAL MUSLIM MOLE:an infiltrated muslim masquerading a a pseudo-christian.An expert in double speech and ” taqqyia ” .( read again his UN speech on sept 25th and the finely crafted sentence ” those who insult the Prophet have no future ” meaning in plain english ” those who are blaspehemous against Muhamad are going to die at the hands of righteous muslims “.