By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
It is amazing how a simple question can cause a complex
lie to collapse like a house of cards. The simple question was asked by Bill
O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel, and it was addressed to two Democrats. He
asked what has Hillary Clinton ever accomplished.
The two Democrats immediately sidestepped the question
and started reciting their talking points in favor of Hillary. But O’Reilly
kept coming back to the fact that nothing they were talking about was an
accomplishment.
For someone who has spent her entire adult life in
politics, including being a senator and then a secretary of state, Hillary
Clinton has nothing to show for all those years — no significant legislation of
hers that she got passed in the Senate, and only an unbroken series of
international setbacks for the United States during her time as secretary of
state.
Before Barack Obama entered the White House and appointed
Mrs. Clinton secretary of state, al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq had notified their
higher-ups, stationed in Pakistan, that their cause was lost in Iraq and that
there was no point sending more men there.
Hosni Mubarak was in charge in Egypt. He posed no threat
to American or Western interests in the Middle East or to Christians within
Egypt or to Israel. But the Obama administration threw its weight behind the
Muslim Brotherhood, which took over and began terrorizing Christians in Egypt and
promoting hostility to Israel.
In Libya next door, the Qaddafi regime had already given
up its weapons of mass destruction, after they saw what happened to Saddam
Hussein in Iraq. But President Obama’s foreign policy, carried out by Secretary
of State Clinton, got Qaddafi removed, after which Libya became a terrorist
haven where an American ambassador was killed, for the first time in decades.
The rationale for getting rid of Middle East leaders who
posed no threat to American interests was that they were undemocratic and their
people were restless. But there are no democracies in the Middle East, except
for Israel. Moreover, the people were restless in Iran and Syria, and the
Obama-Clinton foreign policy did nothing to support those who were trying to overthrow
these regimes.
It would be only fair to balance this picture with
foreign-policy triumphs of the Obama-Clinton team. But there are none. Not in
the Middle East, not in Europe, where the Russians have invaded the Crimea, and
not in Asia, where both China and North Korea are building up threatening
military forces, while the Obama administration has been cutting back on
American military forces.
Hillary Clinton became an iconic figure by feeding the
media and the Left the kind of rhetoric they love. Barack Obama did the same
and became president. Neither had any concrete accomplishments beforehand
besides rhetoric, and both have had the opposite of accomplishments after
taking office.
They have something else in common. They attract the
votes of those people who vote for demographic symbolism — “the first black
president” to be followed by “the first woman president” — and neither is to be
criticized, lest you be denounced for racism or sexism.
It is staggering that there are sane adults who can vote
for someone to be president of the United States as if they are in school, just
voting for “most popular boy” or “most popular girl” — or, worse yet, voting
for someone who will give them free stuff.
Whoever holds that office makes decisions involving the
life and death of Americans and — especially if Iran gets a nuclear arsenal —
the life and death of this nation. It took just two nuclear bombs — neither of
them as powerful as those available today — to get a very tough nation like
Japan to surrender.
Anyone familiar with World War II battles in the Pacific
knows that it was not unusual for 90 percent of the Japanese troops defending
Iwo Jima or other islands to fight to the death, even after it was clear that
American troops had them beaten.
When people like that surrender after two nuclear bombs,
do not imagine that today’s soft Americans — led by the likes of Barack Obama
or Hillary Clinton — will fight on after New York and Chicago have been reduced
to radioactive ashes.
Meanwhile, ISIS and other terrorists are giving us a free
demonstration of what surrender would mean. But perhaps we can kick the can
down the road, and leave that as a legacy to our children and grandchildren,
along with the national debt.
No comments:
Post a Comment