Chris Stevens remains unavailable for comment on Sen. John McCain’s assessment of Hillary’s tenure at State. He gave his thoughts to the neo-lib New Republic. “IC” here is the interviewer, Isaac Chotiner.
IC: How do you think your old friends Chuck Hagel and John Kerry are doing?
JM: I hear good reports from friends in the military that Hagel is respectful. I think he is doing OK. And John Kerry I think is working extremely hard, frenetic. I met with him yesterday morning. But I am a little worried about whether John is trying to take on too many issues at once, and I think that is a shared concern amongst many of his friends. And I have expressed that to him. But I don’t think there is any doubt that, if you look at the world five years ago and today, we live in a far, far more dangerous world. There is a lack of American leadership. I hear that every place I go in the Middle East. This massacre in Syria is one of the most shameful chapters in American history. I have not been more worried about the world as we see it—ever. This is the greatest seismic event in the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. And we are bystanders.
IC: Given that you think things are out of control, what do you make of Hillary Clinton’s term as secretary of state?
JM: I think she did a fine job. She’s a rock star. She has, maybe not glamour, but certainly the aura of someone widely regarded throughout the world. I do think it is interesting that the issues where John Kerry is engaging is where Hillary Clinton did not engage in, that those decisions were left to the White House and the National Security Council.
Do you follow all that? According to McCain, there’s a lack of American leadership and the world is now far more dangerous than it was five years ago. But Hagel and Kerry are currently doing good jobs at Defense and State, and Hillary Clinton did a “fine job” and is a “rock star.”
These things do not compute. Clinton’s tenure at State coincides directly with the decline in American leadership that McCain cites. Her “fine job” includes the disaster in Benghazi and her attempt to blame a movie and assault the First Amendment to cover up the fact that it was a terrorist attack. Her “fine job” included leaving American David Ubben stranded without help in Benghazi for 20 hours — with a leg shattered in the terrorist attack that killed four Americans.
A veteran, and especially a POW like McCain, should be outraged that Obama-Clinton left a wounded American stranded, and left four Americans to die, and then imprisoned a man to cover their tracks.
Did the Republicans run a genuine campaign against Obama in 2008?
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