by William Skink
While most Democrats were busy mocking the Republican obsession with Benghazi, b, the German blogger who runs Moon of Alabama, highlighted an interesting, unintentional confession from Hillary Clinton.
If Democrats could get their collective heads out of their collective asses they might realize that Hillary just admitted the Obama administration lied about the no fly zone in Libya. For those with short term memory problems, this is what Obama said in March of 2011:
“The task that I assigned our forces [is] to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger, and to establish a no-fly zone,” adding explicitly, “Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.”
Now here’s Hillary from the Benghazi inquisition:
When asked by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) about a video clip that read, “We came, we saw, he died [meaning former Libyan President Muammar al-Gaddafi]. Is that the Clinton doctrine?” Clinton replied, “No, that was an expression of relief that the military mission undertaken by NATO and our other partners had achieved its end.”
If elected, Hillary Clinton will be an absolute disaster. To show how far down the foreign policy rabbit hole America has fallen, it pains me to say that the only candidate making any sense is Donald Trump:
Asked by an NBC news presenter if Iraq and Libya had been better off when Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were in power, a question most politicians would have dodged, Trump said: “Iraq is a disaster … Libya is not even a country. You can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there – it’s a mess. If you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there – it’s a mess.”
This should not be controversial stuff. Many Iraqis and Libyans are glad to have got rid of the old dictators, but they have no doubt about the calamities that have befallen their countries since the change of regime. But how often in the British general election was David Cameron challenged for his part in reducing Libya to primal anarchy?
Speaking about the White House’s policy of supporting the Syrian armed opposition, Trump truthfully said the administration “doesn’t know who they are. They could be Isis. Assad is bad. Maybe these other people are worse.” He said he was bothered by “the concept of backing people they have absolutely no idea who they are”. Again, US officials admit that they have armed opposition fighters who, on entering Syria promptly handed their weapons over to Jabhat al-Nusra, the local representatives of al-Qaeda. Trump added: “I was talking to a general two days ago. He said: ‘We have no idea who these people are.’”
I don’t think Donald Trump is a serious candidate. I think, more likely, Trump is a brilliant Trojan horse of destruction for the GOP, possibly nudged to run by Bill Clinton. And in that role Trump can say some accurate, sensible things about America’s foreign policy, and because he’s the one saying it, anyone who agrees will be agreeing with Trump, and therefore discredited. This is very similar to how the label “conspiracy theorist” functions.
While Trump says things that aren’t insane about foreign policy, a recent guest post at MT Cowgirl by “Secret Squirrel” does say some very crazy shit about Hillary Clinton. The post is titled Please, Don’t Get Bern(T). There are some parts to this post that really don’t make any sense. That said, there are a few quotes worth highlighting, like this:
Watch the Benghazi hearings or just the highlights. Tell me that is not a president who would stand up against the far right. Imagine Sanders in the same chair, what would he be doing and saying? Maybe he would not have taken action in Libya. Maybe Qadaffi would have wiped out the eastern half of Libya’s population. Imagine that hearing.
And this:
Clinton has made so many promises short of what Sanders has said, and in some cases to his left, that she would have a hard time turning back on them, I trust her, I trust the team around her. As president, I cannot think of anyone more qualified to take on the risks of running an imperial presidency against Congress to do the right things despite the risks. I think she, more than anyone else, would love the challenge and risks associated with doing whatever is good and necessary to spite the right.
And finally, the conclusion:
In a short time, many of you will have to choose between your passions and the future of this country to be able to sustain itself. In 2000, many of us, myself included, made the wrong decision. Please learn from our mistake. Support Sanders, but when he removes himself do not take it personally. Just ensure it gets translated over in some way. I think we will all be fine if we can do that.
I love the plea to learn from mistakes. Yeah, right. Because we learned not to repeat NAFTA, right? And we learned our lessons from letting Bill’s economic team deregulate Wall Street, right? And we learned to be skeptical of the reasons to bomb other countries, right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Democrats don’t seem to be very good about learning from past mistakes. Why should they, it’s not like their candidates are ever held accountable for the misery and destruction they enable.
It’s too bad the only presidential candidate making any sense on foreign policy is Trump. Because it’s coming from Trump, his statements will be subjected to a form of political alchemy in which sensible will be transformed into crazy, while the crazy coming from Hillary and Bernie will, by contrast, appear sensible.
Up is down, hot is cold, and war is peace. 50 years since America got their asses handed to them in Vietnam, we are still destroying villages to save them.
It’s fucking madness.