I was going to write a major blog this morning about Libya – how the incompetence, ineptitude and arrogance of the Obama administration caused a terrible country being run by a murderous dictator to become a far worse country run by nothing and no one.
But I don\’t have to, because Investors Business Daily has done it for me. Its editorial this morning is a virtual carbon copy of what I was going to say – the only difference being that, while we both blame President Obama and then-Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton, I blame Obama more and IBD blames Clinton more (which amounts to fine-tuning, but, pro forma, I thought I\’d mention it).
Do yourself a major favor and click here to read the entire editorial. Meanwhile, here are a few of its salient points:
As refugees flood the Mediterranean, Europe is in a crisis. But the issue is not about how many lifeboats to send; it\’s the failed state of Libya. Why isn\’t Hillary Clinton, the architect of U.S. Libya policy, answering questions?
The Mediterranean, now known as “a cemetery without graves,” will be crossed by some 500,000 refugees this year, up from about 220,000 last year.
At the same time, a second round of beheadings of Christians by Islamic State terrorists on Libya\’s beaches over the weekend drives the point home: Terrorists are on the rise, and a strong base of their operations is in Libya, a failed state that was taken over by a vile menagerie of pirates, slavers and smugglers in the rubble of the toppled Gadhafi regime.
Who\’s responsible here? None other than Hillary Clinton, who served as President Obama\’s secretary of state during the overthrow of the longtime dictatorship of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
And that raises again the valid questions on what really happened in Libya.
At that time, the U.S. was partnering with Europe, chiefly France, in a supposedly easy operation to get rid of the annoying dictator and then watch what the alliance thought would be the flourishing of democracy. It was called “leading from behind.”
Instead of democracy, what flourished was barbarism with absolutely no state emerging from what had been a largely tribal society.
The brazen murder of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11, 2012, showed what was ahead for the country instead.
Who let that happen? And who was it who allowed their killers to get away with it with no fear of being hunted down and brought to justice? One suspect sipped on a strawberry frappe in a fancy hotel while being interviewed by the New York Times. He was at ease because he knew nobody was looking for him.
A disaster this complete is the result of foreign policy incompetence on an untold scale, and demands answers from the policymakers behind it.
But instead of calling on Clinton to answer questions, the press gives her a pass, and the Obama administration watched approvingly as she destroyed a gigantic cache of emails that might have shed light on what kind of trouble she was opening the country to during her service as secretary of state.
It\’s an outrage, and the press and public have every right to expect answers from her.
Thank you, Investors Business Daily for saying it so plainly.
President Obama, who has over 6 years of nothing but foreign policy disasters to show for it, is not running for anything in 2016. As of noon on January 20, 2017, we will be left with the huge mess he left, but – mercifully – not with him personally.
Hillary Clinton, by contrast, proposes to be our next President. We stand the possibility of four more years, maybe eight more years, of exactly this kind of incompetence, ineptitude, arrogance…and disastrous foreign policy decisions. God help the USA if it comes to pass.
IBD ends by chastising mainstream media for giving her a pass – so far- on Libya.
Now that we see hundreds of desperate human beings dying in an effort to escape what she and Mr. Obama left them, maybe those media will figure out that it is time to ask the hard questions….and not settle for boilerplate platitudes about “well, this is a political season and I expect to be subjected to this kind of distraction (which she said just yesterday) – as if asking for an explanation of how she performed as Secretary Of State was nothing more than some political inconvenience.
It is about time – more than past time, actually – for a great many in media to start treating Hillary Clinton not as a protected species, but as someone who owes the country answers for her record.
