Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, and declared veni, vidi, vici — I came, I saw, I conquered. The imperialist Hillary Clinton conquered Libya, Khadaffi was killed, and channeling her inner empress, she said, “We came, we saw, he died.” She was very proud of herself. Don’t mess with this woman, or you can get hurt.
Khadaffi deserved to die for his crimes, but it wasn’t our place to participate in his murder. Our job doesn’t include running around the world deposing strongmen. He saw what happened to Saddam Hussein, and he gave up any idea of acquiring or building weapons of mass destruction. But he was a dictator, and a brutal one, and there was great internal resistance to his rule. Ah, yes, the wonderful Arab Spring, which produced so many beautiful flowers. So Clinton pushed to oust him, without having any idea of what would happen when he was gone. The chaos of Libya today, the presence of ISIS, and the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi are direct results of Hillary Clinton’s idiocy as Secretary of State. The consulate in Benghazi which was overrun was there to begin with because we toppled Khaddafi, and unleashed chaos. The death of Khaddafi, the implosion of Libya, and the deaths of Benghazi are all part of the Clinton package.
Would Donald Trump do something that stupid? In Libya Clinton demonstrated that she’s an imperialist war monger, who prides herself on the deaths of her enemies. She would be a disgrace to the oval office, just as her husband was.
David Goldman has a good piece on the 50 national security Republicans who denounced Trump. These are the geniuses who’ve gotten us to where we are today. A lot of them were all in on the Iraq War, and won’t admit it was the greatest American foreign policy failure since Vietnam. At some point, Trump will need to tackle this issue head on. Sanders voters are anti-war. They need to be reminded, again and again, that Clinton voted for that war, and she did it for pure politics. She’s the one we need to worry about on issues of war and peace, based on her record in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. She’s a foolish Wilsonian, chasing dreams of making the world safe for democracy. Like Obama and her husband, she’s not so much interested in the American national interest as she is in human rights, or whatever is the crusade of the moment. And she’ll wind up getting American soldiers killed because of her stupidity, as she did as Secretary of State. She fights not for herself, but for God, and these are the most dangerous people once they take power.
Trump’s the opposite of Clinton. He’s not an idealist, he’s a deal maker. With him, it’s what’s in it for me? As President, it would be, what’s in it for the United States, and its people? He’s not a missionary, he’s a transactionalist. I think he’s smart enough, and will have smart enough people around him, to make good deals for his country. As long as he doesn’t get any casinos out of the deal.
It seems to me this election is boiling down to a very simple proposition. Is Donald Trump fit enough, does he have a temperament, where he can be trusted to be President? The American people will make that judgement for themselves, without any media filters, in the debates. They’ll decide the election, unless something else does.
One of the first foreign wars we avoided was in the Middle East. In the 1820’s the Greeks were rebelling against the Ottomans, and there was a great hue and cry to intervene on their behalf. In response, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams wrote, of his country, “She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” That, in a nutshell, is Jacksonianism, and was American foreign policy until Wilson, and what we need to get back to. It was Wilson, with his wild eyed idealism, that set the stage for World War II. Maybe Wislonialism should be rejected.
Wilson was the worst President in America history because he was one of the most consequential. His foreign policy legacy is an unmitigated disaster, and his domestic policy started the destruction of the Constitution which continues to this day. A man of unrivaled vanity and self-righteousness.
I’ve been reading Diplomacy, by Henry Kissinger. He’s a big fan of Bismarck, who was a truly remarkable man. He wrote, “The best a Statesman can do is listen to the footsteps of God, get hold the hem of His cloak, and walk with Him a few steps of the way.”
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