Skip to main content

The Invincible Hillary Clinton

By



Hillary is leaving as many Republicans in her wake as is Donald Trump.  The latest victim is Trey Gowdy, who spent the last two years trying to dig up some dirt that would link Hillary to Benghazi and prove the ever-multiplying conspiracy theories surrounding her role in this nefarious attack on an American CIA base masquerading as a US special mission in Libya.

The aim of this mission was to offer logistical support and supply small arms to the Libyan insurgency in the last days of the Gaddafi regime.  It was now trying to form a new government sympathetic to US interests in the wake of the "Arab Spring."

These weren't heroes, as the media presented Stevens and his Navy Seal guard, but rather arms smugglers. Former Ambassador Stevens and the small staff worked closely with CIA contractors. This base was a target as there were competing factions trying to form a new government, some openly hostile to the US interests.   Everyone involved knew this and were prepared for immediate evacuation.  Calling in the military at the 11th hour wouldn't have saved Stevens or his guards  They had been outwitted by a gang of Islamic militants who effectively used the cover of riots to infiltrate the base and eventually track down a fleeing Stevens and his armed guard.

One can argue the efficacy of such operations, but Republicans were clamoring for action in Libya and the US has long used covert CIA operations to undermine regimes they don't like.  Nothing unusual about this so-called special mission, but the Republicans thought they could turn this tragic event against Obama in 2012 and against Hillary in 2016.  The only thing they succeeded in doing was stirring up the base of their own party, which Donald Trump ultimately used against the GOP establishment.

Of course, Donald would have liked to use it against Hillary as well but this latest report all but buries the case against Hillary Clinton.  Attention will now turn to the faux e-mail scandal, or any one of a sundry of past crimes and misdemeanors conservatives insist makes her unfit to hold public office.

The whole thing would be laughable if it wasn't for the outsized attention it has received over the years and the transfiguration of Christopher Stevens into some kind of White Knight.  This guy had made Central Asia and North Africa his specialty for years, operating at various levels throughout the region.  The Navy Seals turned CIA contractors have similarly been transfigured into heroes to protect the former ambassador against a horde of infidels.   As such, it has read like a B-movie script.

The Benghazi hearings have served mostly as a distraction.  Rather than look into the motives for our involvement in North Africa and whether it had any long term benefits, the media was fixated on Benghazi.  That was all we heard for months afterward.  Congressional investigations were carried out with reports that exonerated Clinton, yet these weren't good enough and the House set up a Select Committee under the leadership of 'Trey Gowdy to keep this inquiry going through the 2016 election cycle.

Gowdy was supposed to deliver the dagger but instead offer a limp-wristed speech saying sorry folks, I have nothing.  Instead of damaging Hillary, the Republicans have only made her look invincible, making themselves look weak by comparison.   For Hillary the timing of this report couldn't have been better, as she heads into the Democratic convention with a ton of momentum.  It's Gowdy who may now find himself in the hot seat this election cycle, along with other Republicans who failed to deliver.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

By
A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...
170 comments
Read more