I just can’t figure out how anybody can make sense of the Democrat Party messaging this campaign season. Hillary extols Obama’s rescuing of the economy; that he brought us back from the brink of catastrophe and created millions of jobs. And in the next breath, she laments how unfair the economic recovery has been for so many. Too many out of work, too many underpaid; too many worried about their future and the financial future of their kids. Now shouldn’t somebody say “which is it?” How can you credit the President for an economic recovery that has seen wages fall, manufacturing jobs wither, and the exponential growth of people living below the poverty line, subsisting on food stamps? And then she says she wants to continue this economic policy and record for a third term. My goodness, what is anyone to make of such contradiction. Yet it seems to only garner polite applause.

On Health Care, she again lauds the President for his heroic accomplishment in getting the Affordable Care Act passed, and chides Bernie Sanders for his plan to broaden the mandate too quickly with his Medicare-for-All pitch. That, she says, would be a step backward. Then she posits, as she did in their second debate, that there is so much more to do, citing 20 million Americans still without coverage. Didn’t the President enact Obamacare because we had 30 million Americans without coverage? Wasn’t that the figure he used? Shouldn’t somebody say, “Hey wait a minute. How could we have spent $834 million (HHS numbers, not mine) on a website to facilitate the enrollment (mind you, we’re talking the enrollment, not the medical treatment) of only 10 million people?” Or is it that the uninsured grew by 20 million post-legislation? If we still have 20 million without healthcare, as Hillary contends, then the legacy of the ACA will be its unaffordable, unsustainable bureaucracy and its open-ended financial liability that knows no ceiling. Yet the party’s pundits and its media operatives seem fine with the numbers.

Then she’ll pivot back to jobs, espousing the need for investment in infrastructure, education, roads and bridges, and so forth. All of which will naturally create good-paying jobs that will elevate single moms out of poverty and into prosperity, or some such thing. It all sounds very “shovel-ready” to me; wasn’t it only six years ago that the President passed his $900 billion stimulus bill to do just these things? The federal government has collected 18 cents on every gallon of gasoline sold in this country since 1993. Its purported purpose: why, bridges and roads of course. So with all these sources of revenue, how in the world can we still have a crumbling infrastructure in this country? Why doesn’t anyone point this out to her?

Maybe because it is said her true calling lies in foreign policy. President Obama will point to the winding down of two wars, (including the demise of Osama bin Laden), the nuclear arms deal with Iran, and his noble pursuit of climate change initiatives as his greatest diplomatic achievements over the course of his two terms. Hillary contends she has been every bit the active partner of the President in these successes.

Now, taking the wind-downs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as “wins” at this stage is like the New England Patriots claiming they were “winding down” two football seasons with the New York Giants. If the jury is still out on anything, it is out on how these two theaters of war will ultimately play out. Hillary is quick to point out that the President demurred of her wise counsel concerning intervention in Syria; believing that the President should have acted sooner, armed rebel groups faster, and taken a tougher stance against Bashar “the true statesman” al Assar (her 2009 quote, not mine). And although she might have known better, she pursued the President’s policies as best she could.

Her real pickle is her stalwart support for the Iran Nuclear Deal which seems to be unraveling before our eyes. She actually points to her backing of this not-really-a-treaty Treaty as a testament of her acumen in foreign affairs. This, as the State Department is now reeling from the conspiratorial editing of the video record from a press conference in which the Iran Deal was revealed to have been well underway before a purported “diplomatic breakthrough” borne of “new leadership in Tehran” supposedly “opened the door”. Guffaws all around.

And this comes in the wake of top White House advisor Ben Rhodes unmasking the media “echo chamber” that was concocted to sell the deal to the public. Hillary still tells us in her straight-faced way that this is a good deal for America, to be heralded as a diplomatic accomplishment. And George Stephanopoulos bobs his head, Mika Brzezinski nods that she gets it, and Rachel Maddow, for once, has no rebuttal. With the way Democrats readily smear Republicans as intolerant mongers of fear and hate, how in the world can they abide the anti-woman, anti-Semite, anti-gay Iranians?

Can’t dwell too long on the matter of where she stands on climate change. I think she’ll pander to it, give Obama an “atta boy” on that one, though I doubt she’ll pick up the mantle and run with it. And so do you.

How is it that so many can dismiss her egregious conduct while in office? Her email scandal is a big deal, not because whether she did or didn’t compromise classified information, but because it was inspired by her obsession with secrecy and her overblown sense of entitlement that she be the sole arbiter of what comes to light and what doesn’t during her tenure. And she talks about Trump’s temperament; this is a serious and chronic character flaw dating back decades. Her utter failure when “the 3 AM call came” from Benghazi is further demonstration of her penchant to dismiss critics, blame others, dissemble on the facts and dodge responsibility.

I don’t see how the party can sit by as she attacks Trump University knowing the Clinton Foundation to be the largest glass house from which to throw stones. She is under investigation, dogged by scandal; a flawed candidate with high negatives who could not convincingly put away a rather lightweight primary opponent.

Recent developments suggest ISIS is under siege on three fronts from three different opponents, all receiving US military support and none reliant upon US ground forces.

The Iraqi military, supported by US airstrikes (and so far without assistance from the Shia-militias), have entered southern Fallujah and appear to be pushing forward despite ISIS counter-attacks that previously resulted in full-out retreat.  The Kurdish Peshmerga, in concert with US Special Forces, has overtaken strategic positions in the north and appears poised to move on Mosul.  It even appears that the US has been able to muster and lead a disparate group of Syrian rebels to battle ISIS in and around their de facto capital Raqqa.  Sensing an opening, and playing the percentages, Turkey has posited the notion of a joint military campaign with the US to finally seize this ISIS stronghold, at long last.

Adding to the Islamic State’s woes, what serves as a semblance of government in Libya has made military gains against the nascent ISIS forces in that country.  As the US-led coalition begins to imperil ISIS territorial occupation in Iraq, Syria and Libya, what had emerged as the Islamic State now more closely resembles heavily-armed, homicidal looters on the run.   They remain a lethal threat to the civilian population in all these places.  Worldwide, their global jihad against the West appears no less potent as a result of these setbacks.  But, what fed their mystique, what gave them legitimacy, and what propelled them to the global threat they still are, was the taking, holding, and governance of territory.   That chapter is apparently on the wane.

Flashback to September 2014 when President Obama was promising action in a White House address to degrade and destroy ISIL.  Fast forward to December 2015 when the President sought to reassure the country post- San Bernandino that there was a strategy in place that would ultimately prevail.  Prior to, and In between those speeches, the administration floated a slew of faltering, contradictory, half-measures that inflamed critics and sowed doubt among the hopeful.  This conflict looked unwinnable, largely due to Obama’s unwillingness to call the enemy what it was, militarily interdict the ISIS’ flow of oil and revenue, loosen its restrictive rules of engagement for airstrikes, and commit the needed troop levels to dislodge ISIS from its occupied territories.  He espoused what detractors called an imaginary coalition of Arab and western partners.

Well now.  Look what we have here.  Could it be that the President stoically weathered the piled-on denunciation of his “inaction”, worked tirelessly behind the scenes with disciplined discretion to forge workable alliances, and has prevailed in his ambition to at least degrade, and is perhaps on his way to destroying, this regional blight, all without the deployment of the 35,000 US troops some political opponents insisted had to happen?

Or did he just get lucky that ISIS wore out its welcome, was never built for the long-term, that other countries came around to seeing their national interest served in the destruction of this regional cancer, and decided to up their game while the US could still be counted on for support?

It’s probably somewhere in the middle.  But what is fortunate is that the tide is turning with minimal US casualties.  Granted, the civilian death toll and atrocities are reprehensible, but sadly, that is commonplace in regions where Sharia Law is implemented by religious fanatics.

That more Americans are not among the lives lost is a blessing.  And the credit for that may indeed belong at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Back in the early, heady days of the 2000 Republican primary, John McCain was the media darling, cruising aboard the “Straight Talk Express”, jockeying for front runner status, buoyed largely by party moderates after the New Hampshire primary. True, GWB held some swagger after the Iowa Caucus, with a critical test looming among party conservatives in South Carolina. But the Palmetto State contest was also touted as an opportunity for McCain to cut into Bush’s core support; a strong second place showing would be adequate, but a win among conservative bible belt Christians could have derailed the Texas Governor’s run.

Along the way, Bush picked up an easy primary victory in often-overlooked Delaware, but the momentum-maker was to be South Carolina. What ensued instead was an exchange of sordid charges and below-the-belt innuendo that sullied both candidates leading up to each campaign’s Evangelist summit at Bob Jones University. When GWB emerged beatified by the Christian right, and with doubt cast on McCain’s conservative bona fides and religious fervor, McCain’s candidacy slipped. He rallied briefly in Arizona and Michigan, but the road ahead beckoned favorably for the conservative standard bearer, and McCain was buried by late March. In a post-Bill Clinton era, the moderate McCain was overwhelmed by the party’s right, amped up in no small part by the coming-into-its-own of conservative talk radio.

Now Hillary Clinton’s 2008 primary contest with Barack Obama is no parallel to McCain’s defeat in 2000; it was by far a closer, more protracted race than the Bush-McCain affair. But the dissipation of her overstated support of party moderates by a more organized, more energized, more smitten, blended constituency of youth, ethnicity and the disenfranchised-turned-hopeful voter was a methodical dismembering of a front runner from which a successful return, even eight years later, raises legitimate doubt.

By the time John McCain muscled his way through a mostly weak field to the party’s nomination in 2008, saddled as he was with the baggage of a failed Bush administration for the general election, he appeared a tired and used-up candidate, not one able to compete intellectually or telegenically with the effervescent junior Senator from Illinois. And it showed. It appeared to many that John’s best chance came and went in 2000, some would say now to the country’s detriment. Perhaps a different candidate from that ’08 field, a fresh Mitt Romney for instance, may have been able to foretell the looming financial crisis and navigate it to better advantage by demonstrating a facile set of economic and business solutions that candidate Obama could not counter. Mr. McCain certainly did not.

In a similar circumstance, Ms. Clinton now seeks her day in the sun, her just desserts as the one who bowed out gracefully, waited her turn, and is deservedly due. But as with McCain in ’08, there is a specter of weakness about her. Almost as though her time has come and gone. She, too, is saddled, and in a far more proactive fashion, with the stigma of a failed administration; or at best, tangentially linked with the record of a President with low approval ratings. Her accomplishments, in and out of office, are far more difficult to define now than her resume’ was in 2008, when it was then only compared to the paucity of the front runner’s pedigree.

It is eight years later. She looks every bit of it. And to be blunt, even if she does have the stamina for a run, appearances matter. There is an unhealthy pall about her, maybe it’s the weariness, the obesity, the onset of arthritis, the lingering effects of a mysterious concussing event, but she does not appear sharp, she does not appear sturdy on her legs, she does not appear passionate, she does not appear on her game.

Most of all, she does not appear presidential. And like John before her, she can be had.

One hundred seventy-six years ago, a hostile military force using heavy weapons laid siege to a foreign outpost populated by a small garrison of American soldier-citizens and indigenous civilians. In the months preceding the battle, the garrison’s acting commander, Colonel James Neill made repeated pleas of his government for additional men and supplies, insisting attack was imminent and he could not defend his position against so great an opposing force. His requests were denied. Instead, a token force eventually arrived to evacuate the garrison and destroy cannon and materiele deemed useful to the enemy. While so engaged, the relief force came under attack, an epic and heroic battle ensued; to the last man as legend has it.

Strategically, the battle carried little import to the outcome of the Texas Revolution, or the Mexican-American War that followed a decade later. But as a lightening rod to galvanize a nation, the Alamo knew no peer.

The parallel to events leading to the Consulate attack in Benghazi are noteworthy. Our government was forewarned of looming danger, the likelihood of attack, and yet withheld measures to secure the compound and protect its occupants – before, during, and even after the attack. The State Department’s Regional Security Officer, Eric Nordstrom, in the months preceding the assault, did his job in sounding the alarm that circumstances on the ground, post-Qaddafi, had become unstable; that local militia had become influenced by hostile, anti-American militants. He believed the compound a target. Ambassador Christopher Stevens concurred.

None of this sat well with the State Department and the administration it served. After all, Libya was a foreign policy success story: the US military (led? joined? followed?) a coalition of uncertain, benevolent, western allies; and with the approval of regional, moderate, despotic regimes, forcibly removed a dictator who had threatened reprisals against poorly-armed rebels seeking his ouster. That such a good cause could somehow deteriorate into a lawless environment lacking central governance, and instead empower a militia-state armed beyond reason, was an unsettling election-year narrative. Compounding the intervention’s outcome was the disconcerting realization that America’s sworn enemy, al-Qaeda linked terrorists, had now gained foothold within Libya (something Qaddafi’s regime actively prevented), infiltrated some militia, and/or established a fighting force of their own.

But the administration had assured the American electorate for more than a year that al-Qaeda was on the run; no longer capable of waging war on the US and its allies. They pointed to increased cross-border drone attacks that expanded America’s reach into several sovereign nations where al-Qaeda operatives sought refuge, effectively killing our enemies without extending ground troops into new theaters. Bin-Laden had been killed. America had been kept safe on Obama’s watch; the President deserved both credit and a second term for that. There were no terrorist attacks on America. That was the re-election narrative.

Except there were attacks on America. But Fort Hood was labeled workplace violence, and the Christmas bomber in Detroit and the Times Square bomber in New York were characterized as thwarted. But not really. The underwear bomb on the plane malfunctioned and the car bomb in New York was spotted by a passerby. Either case could have easily gone the other way. Neither Fort Hood, Detroit, nor New York were initially identified by the administration as a terror attack on our soil; the Fort Hood gunman was a “deeply disturbed individual”, and the underwear bomber was a “lone wolf” with no links to terrorist organizations, and the Times Square bomber was an “amateur acting alone”. When you consider that this administration is loathe to label attacks upon America by radical Muslim extremists for what they are, then one can see a history and better understand how a coordinated military assault by enemies believed vanquished, could be classified as a riot. That smugness, that dissembling of information, the ambiguity and the prevarication about all things terror group-related is deeply worrisome. Doubly so since the national media, despite a record of deceit from this administration, challenges so little that emanates from it, and either castigates or ridicules those who dare.

In the months leading up to the September 11th attack, the Consulate withstood two separate bombing attacks, and relayed through channels specific threats and plots directed against Western targets. Nordstrom’s requests for increasing security forces was denied. As was Nordstrom’s request to forestall a planned decrease in US security personnel. Some five weeks before the attack, Lt. Colonel Andrew Wood was ordered (over his objection) to withdraw his site security team leaving five Diplomatic Security agents and the Libyan 17th February Brigade, which at the time of the attack comprised three troops, to defend the compound. In fairness, permission was granted to augment the Libyan forces, although the means to do so remains unclear.

Back in 1836, and without on-the-ground Intel from sit-reps, emails, land-line communications, and video feeds, Sam Houston did at least send Colonel Travis and 30 men to the Alamo to do something constructive. The Obama administration would no doubt point to the demise of Travis’ expedition as demonstrative of exactly why it chose to stand down. But in the aftermath, this administration has yet to give a complete and rational accounting of the attack. The President, speaking from the Rose Garden on September 12th before heading to Las Vegas for a fund raiser, tells us he did indeed reference the attack on the Benghazi Consulate as a terrorist act. The context and ambiguity of his statement that day can be parsed by partisans to support or discredit his claim, but his spokesperson Jay Carney did not convey this message at any time in the days that followed. Carney’s best assessment, based on “what he knew”, was that the attack was a spontaneous mob action in response to a US-made anti-Islamist internet video. The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, seemingly went out of her way on a grand scale to publicly endorse the video-caused-it scenario, based on “everything we now know”, five days after we surely knew differently. The President made no further mention of a terrorist act following the Rose Garden allusion. He did reference the video, still being cited by Carney, six times during his UN speech two weeks after they knew better, but did not label it a terrorist attack against America in front of the world body. A month later, on the Letterman Show, he did acknowledge terrorists leveraged the tumult over the video to stage their attack.

It took more than a month for us to learn that they knew plenty more; and knew at the time they said they didn’t know. We now know there was live-time video feeds of the attack streaming into the White House Situation Room, the State Department, CIA headquarters, and the Pentagon. We now know situation reports were conveyed via email to over 400 recipients throughout the tentacles of government that night detailing a coordinated assault by an organized military force. Yet absent vocal demonstrators and anti-American banners, slogans and flag-burning, this administration chose to label the event a likely mob action that got out of control, perhaps hijacked by armed militants. Based on what, exactly?

In an ill-timed, and at best under-informed statement, Presidential candidate Mitt Romney took umbrage at what he characterized as an apologetic tone by the administration, but presciently cast doubt that a spontaneous mob could pack such firepower. The President’s surrogates immediately assailed Romney’s statement as political opportunism, shamelessly exploiting a national tragedy, and Romney’s camp (sadly) stepped back. Such is the power and predilection of the national media to chase the wrong story.

Eventually, in a magnanimous gesture reminiscent of Janet Reno’s taking responsibility for Waco, Hillary Clinton, on the eve of a hastily-called House Congressional Investigation, stepped forward to take responsibility for the Consulate’s vulnerability and the loss of life. Not, however, for the wrong-headed foreign policy that saw this administration funnel arms to suspect end-users, or the folly to militarily depose a regime that practiced a non-hostile disposition toward US interests in the past decade. All done in the hopes of currying favor in the Mideast and North Africa, and in no small part, to protect Western Europe’s vital oil interests. No, the Secretary of State stated she now knew this to be a terrorist act and had concluded such for some time, even as the administration clung to an alternate reality. When and how and through whom this realization crystallized for her, she did not say.

Once Ms. Clinton laid that marker down, the administration stumbled into line, discounting the internet video and blaming terrorist organizations within the al-Qaeda umbrella. When questions persisted on how they could get it so wrong, reach such unfounded and unsupported conclusions, senior officials pointed to the “fog of war” and the uncertainties of a situation in flux. Vice President Joe Biden told the American people during the vice presidential debate that the administration had simply gotten bad intelligence. No they didn’t. The intelligence they had was gleaned from live video in real time in constant communication with those dying on the ground. His opponent, Paul Ryan, might have pointed out as much. No knock on Ryan; Romney inexplicably failed to take the President to task over Benghazi a week later. To this day Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says that the military lacked sufficient information, and that putting forces at risk was too dangerous. Criticism of that assessment he labels as Monday-morning quarterbacking. CIA Director David Petraeus’s low profile remains a curiosity, weeks after the Vice President laid blame at his Langley doorstep.

Where this “bump in the road” shall lead is difficult to tell. That as new reports emerge that clarify presidential and cabinet-level complicity in a cover-up, or illustrate massive chain-of-command ineptitude, or simply point to more failures of intelligence, will the electorate hold the administration accountable? Will the families of the dead press, and press loud enough, for answers? Will the survivors (surely there had to be some, but who they are and where they are remains unasked) speak out and tell their side? The administration promises those responsible will be held accountable; a sentiment perhaps expressed absent self-reflection. But to date, only the “filmmaker” has been jailed.

And what of the heroes? Of Stevens and Smith, dead at their posts. Of Doherty and Woods, defiant of orders and yet morally compelled to rescue comrades under fire. Dauntlessly they, and their tiny contingent of outgunned (and unknown) American warriors of the highest caliber, repelled the assault – some reports saying in excess of four hours – on the Annex compound. Their living legacy is manifested in the thirty lives they saved that night. Will school children a generation from now know their names, read of their bravery, the way we learned of Crockett and Bowie and Travis?

Is there anyone in this administration that will draw strength from their courage and their sacrifice to stand up and set the record straight, for the good of the nation?
What of the President’s legacy in this? Does he get another “bye” this time?

Where in God’s name is the outrage?

Published November 10, 2012 . The Free-Lance Star, Fredericksburg, VA