If Presidential Candidates' Records Mattered, This Would Destroy Hillary Clinton's Chances.

Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State when the United States considered what, if any, role to play in the 2011 Libyan civil war. Clinton cast in with other Obama administration officials who wanted the US to intervene, but not very strongly. They wanted the US to help the rebellion oust dictator Gadhafi. But they did not want the US to help so much that it would have much influence over what happened after the rebels won. US forces ended up “leading from behind,” conducting an air war against the Libyan government.

The rebels included a large number of violent jihadists who were connected to al Qaeda. This was widely known at the time of Libya’s civil war. Helping them get rid of Gadhafi, a bad but secular dictator, paved the way for more war and terrorism. The jihadists aligned with Ansar al-Sharia launched the attack on the US facility at Benghazi, in which four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens died. Clinton blamed that on a movie.

Now, Libya is only getting worse — so bad that the US is considering leaving it altogether.

The U.S. military has doubled the number of aircraft standing by in Italy if needed to evacuate Americans from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, CNN has learned.

A decision to evacuate as violence in the Libyan capital grows is “minute by minute, hour by hour,” a defense official told CNN on Monday.

Fierce fighting swept across the city Sunday after armed men stormed the country’s interim Parliament. Sporadic bursts of gunfire and blasts could still be heard on the outskirts of the capital Monday evening.

The violence appeared to be some of the worst since the 2011 revolution that ousted longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Libya ought to be the end of Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions. Either she or her top lieutenants in the State Department left the Benghazi facility exposed. They hired jihadists to provide security. Then after their decisions resulted in four Americans dead, Clinton directly lied to the American people about what caused the attack. She directly attacked our freedom of speech, rather than go and attack the terrorists.

Now the decision to leave Libya in the hands of jihadists is paying off — for the jihadists. They’re taking control. All signs point to the US having to swoop into Tripoli and take our people out of Libya, while the jihadists celebrate a victory over us. The US will be back to the “paper tiger” image that encouraged the likes of Obama bin Laden to believe that he could launch attacks on us, on our own soil, and we would not respond forcefully. Bin Laden got that encouragement from Bill Clinton’s mishandling of Somalia, which also ended in a humiliating US retreat.

Unfortunately, as we all saw last week, candidates’ records matter a whole lot less to some voters than a candidate’s skin color or chromosomes.