Left And Right Bamboozling You On Benghazi

Democrats, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, History, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Terrorism

“Left And Right Bamboozling You On Benghazi” is the current column, now on WND. A excerpt:

“Us against al Qaeda”: This has been—still is—the narrowly conceived narrative among neoconservatives. As the politically provincial neoconservative foreign-policy paradigm has it, those were the forces that played out in the Benghazi affair, in which the American mission was left undefended, resulting in the slaughter of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans (who, given the pecking order in the Empire, generally go unnamed). …

… Uncovered by The Times’ investigation, however, was a very different reality in Benghazi—”murkier than either of those story lines suggests. Benghazi,” contends Kirkpatrick, “was not infiltrated by al Qaeda, but nonetheless contained grave local threats to American interests. The attack does not appear to have been meticulously planned, but neither was it spontaneous or without warning signs.”

In particular are neoconservatives fulminating over the findings that “turned up no evidence that al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault,” and that “the attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Col. Gadhafi.”

How can that be? Easily: The history of Libya is festooned with similar ransacking and burning of consulates by angry local mobs. Alas, in the ignorance it cultivates about the past, America is Cicero’s perpetual child. By the definition of the great Roman statesman, “Not to know what happened before one was born is to be always a child.” …

… The facts in the Benghazi affair have likewise been unwoven and retied into two contradictory narratives to suit the respective sides.

Think of lab rats racing through a maze, as you watch the sub-intelligent, dual-panel “dialogue” conducted on the teli. Hosts Stephanie Cutter (left-wing, social-democratic rat) and S. E. Cupp (right-wing, social-democratic rat): Each rat runs with a designated, neatly bifurcated (Republican or Democratic) political orthodoxy. Each is a “maze-bright” rat, and not the possessor and giver of any truth. …

Read the complete column. “Left And Right Bamboozling You On Benghazi” is on WND.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION:

• At the WND Comments Section. Scroll down and “Say it.”

• On my Facebook page.

• By clicking to “Like,” “Tweet” and “Share” this week’s “Return To Reason” column.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

‘Fat And Furious’ And Other ‘Complicated’ Folderol

Gender, Intelligence, Media, Politics, Republicans

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was christened “fat and furious” at GlenBeck.com, following what appears to be the governor’s feigned outrage over his administration’s intentional closing of the George Washington Bridge as political retribution.

I got a kick out of the reaction of those “great minds” of Crossfire.

“Great minds don’t always agree” goes the once-illustrious show’s new motto. Nothing they can say or write will even make Cupp, Cutter and the other two co-hosts worthy of the great-mind moniker. At best one can call Neut Gingrich a mercurial mind.

Rasped S.E. Cupp the cretin:

“[I]f you’re in not New Jersey or not D.C., you look at this story, which is actually pretty complicated, … and you think, he did what, to who, when, where, what?”

Replied co-host Stephanie Cutter, who is indisputably less of a fool than Cupp:

“I think it’s not hard to follow the story, regardless of where you live.”

… somebody is seeking political retribution and … somebody is bullying somebody on the other side of the aisle

Pretty much politics as usual.

Where Have All The Graveyards Gone? Down The Memory Hole Everyone…

Foreign Policy, Military, Propaganda, War

First they love them, then they loathe them. After a while, as memory fades, the love-loathe tug-of-war is repeated, for that is the relationship Americans have to the wars prosecuted perennially by their revered politicians, pundits and special interests.

Suckers are suckered into war, again and again, implies Lawrence Wittner, Professor of History emeritus, at SUNY Albany:

… it is also true that much of the American public is very gullible and, at least initially, quite ready to rally ’round the flag. Certainly, many Americans are very nationalistic and resonate to super-patriotic appeals. …

…The responses of Americans to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars provide telling examples. In 2003, according to opinion polls, 72 percent of Americans thought going to war in Iraq was the right decision. By early 2013, support for that decision had declined to 41 percent. Similarly, in October 2001, when U.S. military action began in Afghanistan, it was backed by 90 percent of the American public. By December 2013, public approval of the Afghanistan war had dropped to only 17 percent.

In fact, this collapse of public support for once-popular wars is a long-term phenomenon. Although World War I preceded public opinion polling, observers reported considerable enthusiasm for U.S. entry into that conflict in April 1917. But, after the war, the enthusiasm melted away. In 1937, when pollsters asked Americans whether the United States should participate in another war like the World War, 95 percent of the respondents said “No.”

And so it went. When President Truman dispatched U.S. troops to Korea in June 1950, 78 percent of Americans polled expressed their approval. By February 1952, according to polls, 50 percent of Americans believed that U.S. entry into the Korean War had been a mistake. The same phenomenon occurred in connection with the Vietnam War. In August 1965, when Americans were asked if the U.S. government had made “a mistake in sending troops to fight in Vietnam,” 61 percent of them said “No.” But by August 1968, support for the war had fallen to 35 percent, and by May 1971 it had dropped to 28 percent.

“When Will They Ever Learn?” implores Wittner.

Performed by Peter, Paul and Mary, here is the song from which that neat line comes:

The relevance of this to the news item du jour ? Whether he knows it or not, Robert M. Gates, the Former Defense Secretary, is all about increasing his sphere of interest: War.