By Jeffrey Lord on 9.18.12 @ 6:10AM
Naïveté, weakness, and incompetence lead to death, disaster: Did the Three Stooges cause World War II?
"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"
-- Member of Parliament Leo Amery quoting Cromwell on the Long Parliament to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain -- May 7, 1940. Three days later the Chamberlain government fell, Winston Churchill replaced Chamberlain -- and Hitler invaded France.
It was a good week for Islamic fascists.
Hillary Clinton has become Barack Obama's Donald Rumsfeld.
The murders of Benghazi have become Clinton's Abu Ghraib.
And by the way, did you know the Three Stooges caused World War II?
In the event, this Secretary of State has irrefutably proven herself to be naïve, weak, and grossly incompetent. And no, it doesn't matter that the Secretary has said she wishes to leave the Obama administration if the President is re-elected.
Hillary Clinton has to go. Now.
Like Rumsfeld, Clinton is the Cabinet officer whose tenure began as a political rock star -- and ended amid a chorus of controversy. In Rumsfeld's case, by November of 2006 the besieged Secretary of Defense did in fact get the request for his resignation from President George W. Bush. And he left.
After repeated calls for that resignation from -- Senator Hillary Clinton. Not to mention Senator Joe Biden.
Calls like this one, demanded directly of Rumsfeld by then-Senator Clinton at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in August of 2006:
"Under your leadership there have been numerous errors in judgment that have led us to where we are.… We hear a lot of happy talk and rosy scenarios, but because of the administration's strategic blunders -- and frankly the record of incompetence in executing -- you are presiding over a failed policy."
Errors in judgment, she said. Happy talk, she said. Strategic blunders, she said. Incompetence in executing policy, she said. Presiding over a failed policy, she said.
What happened in Benghazi meets every one of the Clinton standards for Rumsfeld's resignation. What has been happening with assaults on American embassies around the world meets every one of the Clinton standards for Rumsfeld's resignation. Now, those same standards should demand her own leave-taking. Not in January. Now.
Biden didn't even wait until 2006. In 2004, as the revelations of abuse of Iraqi detainees at the American-run Abu Ghraib prison exploded in the media, Biden went on CBS's Face the Nation to demand Rumsfeld's resignation, saying that Rumsfeld needed to resign because Abu Ghraib, an operation that was the responsibility of the Pentagon, "….has jeopardized our troops. It's jeopardized our mission." Biden added:
"Imagine what Ronald Reagan would be saying today."
Indeed.
Imagine what Ronald Reagan would say if he knew an American Ambassador and three State Department employees were dead because of a feckless global strategy conceived by the President and all too willingly executed by this Secretary of State.
As a direct result of the policies devised and executed by Secretary Clinton, as seen here in this Google mapping of anti-American explosions taking place in the last few days, U.S. embassies, State Department personnel, local authorities or some combination thereof are under assault in the following countries:
Israel (Jerusalem, Tel Aviv)
Bangladesh
Yemen
Egypt
Libya (Tripoli and Benghazi, the latter where Ambassador Stevens and the three State Department personnel were murdered.)
The Gaza Strip
Indonesia (where President Obama famously grew up.)
Sudan
Kashmir
Iran
Iraq (in Baghdad, Basrah, Kut)
Lebanon (Tripoli and Sidon, mere miles from the visiting Pope Benedict)
Pakistan (Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore)
Afghanistan (Jalalabad, Nangarhar Province and Helmand Province, the latter where two Marines were killed in a Friday attack)
Somalia
Tunisia
Algeria
Great Britain
Kuwait
India (Chennai, Hyderabad and Srinagar)
Holland
Maldives
Sri Lanka
Qatar
Sinai
Nigeria
Morocco (Sale, Casablanca)
Syria
Jordan
Mauritania
Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, Batu Caves and Ipoh)
Bahrain
Turkey
The West Bank
Australia
Kenya (the home of the President's father, Barack Obama Sr.)
And the Secretary of State's explanation for this carnage?
"We've seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with."
This would be a joke if the thinking behind this statement -- the thinking behind the Obama-Clinton policies -- were not so deadly serious. Worse, the utterly laughable lapdog media rushes to defend this utter nonsense.
Was this Internet video responsible when American embassy personnel were taken hostage in Iran in 1979?
Was this Internet video responsible for killing six and wounding over a thousand when the World Trade Center was bombed in the second month of Bill Clinton's presidency in 1993?
Was this Internet video responsible for killing almost 3,000 when the World Trade Center, the pentagon and United Flight 93 were attacked on 9/11?
Was this Internet video responsible for the 2002 Bali, Indonesia bombings that killed over 200 people?
Was this Internet video responsible for the bombing of the London subway and bus system that killed 52 and injured over 700 in 2005?
Was this Internet video responsible for the September, 2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan that killed over 50 people and injured over 250 more?
Was this Internet video responsible for the multiple attacks in Mumbai, India that killed 164 people and wounded over 300 in a single day in November of 2008?
Was this Internet video responsible for Nidal Malik Hasan killing 13 and wounding 29 others at Ft. Hood, Texas in 2009?
Was this Internet video responsible for Iran being, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a mere six to seven months from being able to build a nuclear bomb?
A wretchedly lousy video created by some loon in California has done all this? Not to mention caused the legion of global attacks by this or that Islamic group or individual that date back decades?
The Secretary could not possibly be serious. Not to mention the White House. Did I forget the Ambassador to the United Nations? Alas, the party line of "willful blindness" (as Andrew McCarthy calls it) has been set. Nothing to see here. Blame the film maker and move on.
Worse still, violate the film maker's fundamental First Amendment rights. How? By having local authorities drag him out of his home after midnight for a meeting with federal officers and the purpose of filming a much televised "perp" walk designed to appease Islamic fanatics. A spectacularly thuggish attempt designed to intimidate this man into silence. This policy is not simply feckless, it's grossly irresponsible. And combined with the inattention to the security of State Department personnel in Benghazi the results have been literally murderous.
LET'S BEGIN in the beginning.
As in the beginning when the new President-elect appointed Senator Clinton as Secretary of State because, in the new President's words:
"To succeed, we must pursue a new strategy that skillfully uses, balances, and integrates all elements of American power: our military and diplomacy; our intelligence and law enforcement; our economy and the power of our moral example,"
Ahhhhhhhhhh the new strategy. But of course! And why was that new strategy needed?
Why, it was explained in the very first week of the Obama presidency. The need for the new strategy came clear when Secretary Clinton's friends at the New York Times glowingly reported:
Less than a week into her job, Mrs. Clinton seemed energized. She traveled to the White House on Monday to help send off the administration's special envoy to the Middle East, George J. Mitchell, and she has racked up a list of calls to nearly 40 foreign leaders or foreign ministers.
The world, Mrs. Clinton asserted, was yearning for a new American foreign policy.
"There is a great exhalation of breath going on around the world," she said. "We've got a lot of damage to repair."
Ahhhhh yes. All that damage to repair from George W. Bush and his unblinking insistence that Islamic fascism was at the root of the problem. That "great exhalation of breath going on around the world" at this marvelous new Obama- Clinton strategy.
And why was everyone so giddy?
Because of President Obama, but of course.
There he was in his inaugural address saying:
"To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect."
There he was on Al Arabiya giving the symbolic very first interview of his presidency. Which was reported this way:
In his first interview since taking office, President Barack Obama told Arab satellite station Al Arabiya that Americans are not the enemy of the Muslim world and said Israel and the Palestinians should resume peace negotiations.
"My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy," Obama told Al Arabiya's Hisham Melhem in an interview broadcast Tuesday morning.
This Obama-Clinton strategy was different. Unique. Brilliant. A sure-fire repairer of the damage done by the damnable Bush. This was so, Al Arabiya rhapsodized, because:
During the presidential election campaign last year, Obama vowed to improve U.S. ties with the Muslim world and after he won promised to give a speech in a Muslim capital in his first 100 days in office. The President repeated this pledge in the interview but did not give a time or specify the venue.
Obama pointed out that he had lived in the world's largest Muslim nation, Indonesia for several years while growing up, and said his travels through Muslim countries had convinced him that regardless of faith, people had certain common hopes and dreams.
And so the much ballyhooed speech in a Muslim capital came to pass.
The speech was delivered in Cairo. It was an appalling pottage of moral equivalency, historical revision and outright apologetics. Or, as Senator Clinton once said of Rumsfeld, the speech was "happy talk"… sending the inevitable signal of weakness.
Weakness. The underlying message sent over and over again by the foreign policy of the United States government that was under her direction.
Weakness exemplified when going along with a White House decision to ban words like "jihad" and "Islamic extremism" from all national security documents.
Weakness exemplified by the disreputable treatment accorded the Prime Minister of Israel, a longtime American ally.
Weakness exemplified by the decision -- cited by the Hoover Institution's Paul Sperry here in the New York Post -- to order American troops into "Muslim sensitivity training."
Weakness exemplified in Obama defense budget cuts.
One could go on and on here to illustrate the point. The use of moral equivalence, bows to foreign heads of state etc., etc., etc.
All of this, of course, was a distinct and quite deliberate change from the Bush era, in which the National Security Document specifically said: "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."
Not to mention this changed attitude by the Obama administration looked at the Fort Hood shootings as an incident of "work place violence." And replaced the term "global war on terror" with "overseas contingency operation."
Can you imagine if the Roosevelt administration sent the Secretary of State in front of newsreel cameras to insist that in fact there was no need for war on December 8, 1941, because there was no connection between the previous day's Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the aggressive desire of the Japanese for military expansion? That the whole problem revolved around the film portrayal of an Asian (Chinese) detective named Charlie Chan? Then banned the U.S. government from using words or phrases that might offend the Shinto religion which proclaimed the Japanese Emperor was a god?
What if the Secretary of State of the day insisted there was no connection between Nazism's anti-Semitic ideology and the ongoing Holocaust? That all those death camps for Jews were really the fault not of Nazi ideology but a mocking, tasteless anti-Nazi film (excerpt here) made in America called I'll Never Heil Again. A film made by three Hollywood Jews named Louis Feinberg, Moses and Jerome Horwitz? Known professionally by the names of Larry, Moe and Curly -- The Three Stooges?
Any Secretary of State who insisted on this reaction to Pearl Harbor or Hitler would have been laughed out of Washington. Replaced on the spot.
Yet that is precisely the stance being taken by Secretary Clinton. She has willfully signed on to a doctrine that insists an anti-Islamic YouTube video is somehow responsible for the death of State Department personnel not to mention all the destruction of the last few days.
She has made the deliberate decision to conduct American foreign policy based on the idea of "soft power." The silliness that soft power combined with the President's personal biography would somehow change the world view and the actions of those who believe Jihad is their duty and Sharia not simply their law but a global goal. To see how foolish this was, take a look here at this 2008 Huffington Post article by -- you can't make it up -- a Harvard professor. The opening of this foolish, foolish business is, no kidding -- this:
I have spent the past month lecturing in Oxford and traveling in Europe where Barack Obama could be elected in a landslide. I suspect that this fascination with Obama is true in many parts of the world. In fact, as I have said before, it is difficult to think of any single act that would do more to restore America's soft power than the election of Obama to the presidency.
Soft power is the ability to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than using the carrots and sticks of payment or coercion.
How's this idea working for the Obama-Clinton team now, Professor Nye?
Let's be clear.
The reason four American diplomats were brutally murdered, the reason for all these eruptions of violence has a cause. And it isn't a video.
The cause for this is Islamic fascism. And the idea that appeasing this Islamic fascism will do anything other than encourage it is appallingly bad history not mention disastrous policy. What it will do -- indeed has already begun to do -- is open a vacuum in the world for a whole series of bad actors to fill the void.
We began with a reference to a Member of Parliament, finally fed up with the failed appeasement policies of then-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1940. But there was another, earlier, clash in Parliament that occurred after the 1938 Munich Agreement negotiated between the appeasement-minded Chamberlain and Hitler.
That clash came when Chamberlain's own First Lord of the Admiralty, Duff Cooper, took such exception to Chamberlain's policies that he delivered his opposition speech in the House of Commons -- and resigned.
Said Cooper:
"That is the deep difference between the Prime Minister and myself throughout these days. The Prime Minister has believed in addressing Herr Hitler through the language of sweet reasonableness. I have believed that he was more open to the language of the mailed fist."
In other words, Cooper was accusing Chamberlain of what Hillary Clinton once called "happy talk."
Islamic fascism isn't going to disappear. No matter what Hillary Clinton says, or how many videos she blames or how many Americans are dragged from their home to appease the unappeasable.
There is a war going on here. A war declared on freedom -- on Western Civilization -- by fanatic adherents of one of the world's oldest religions.
And the Secretary of State has dealt with this threat by responding with what she once called "happy talk."
This is no happy matter. There is no room for more happy talk.
The Secretary of State should take responsibility for the utter failure of the policies she has been conducting -- and the incompetence that accompanied the execution of those policies.
Hillary Clinton should take her own advice to Donald Rumsfeld:
"Under your leadership there have been numerous errors in judgment that have led us to where we are…We hear a lot of happy talk and rosy scenarios, but because of the administration's strategic blunders -- and frankly the record of incompetence in executing -- you are presiding over a failed policy."
Exactly.
It's time for the Secretary of State to resign.
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To read another article by Jeffrey Lord, click here.
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