DANIEL GREENFIELD: THINGS ONLY A DEMOCRAT COULD GET AWAY WITH
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/things-only-a-democrat-could-get-away-with/print/
On Friday, Hillary Rodham Clinton left the Harry S. Truman Building of the State Department after doing a grand media tour of every media outlet with a camera and a microphone. Meanwhile in Benghazi, where it was twenty degrees warmer, foreign organizations were fleeing the city while the killers who stayed behind still walked the streets.
In her joint appearance with Obama on 60 Minutes, Clinton claimed that her critics were not living in an “evidence-based world”. This is the same world of which she wrote in her goodbye letter to her State Department colleagues; “I am proud of what we have accomplished together.” Those accomplishments are hard to find among the debris of three failed wars, two failed containment policies in Iran and North Korea, and more attacks on American diplomatic facilities than ever before.
Hillary Clinton presided over the first murder of an American ambassador in thirty years. It was the closest thing to a notable moment in her time as Secretary of State, which concluded, in true Clinton style, with a cover-up, Senate hearings and more finger-wagging.
And yet, despite all that, the media threw her a farewell party in preparation for the 2016 election. Four Americans died in Benghazi and in four years, Hillary Rodham Clinton expects to take the White House.
There is a certain symmetry to that. A year of political exile for every man she left unguarded and unsupported while lavishing millions on mosque renovations, embassy paintings and assorted trinkets. A year for every man whose blood was spilled on the warm streets of Benghazi. Four dead men and four years in which to prepare to do the same thing all over again as President of the United States.
It’s a big job and HRC finally has the experience for it.
The Benghazi attackers came out of Al Qaeda in Iraq; an organization that is showing more staying power than General Motors, and like the maker of the Aztek, it’s spending a lot of time and energy expanding internationally.
When Obama turned his back on Iraq, discarding the sacrifices of the Surge, like he did the lives of the four men murdered in Benghazi, the terror didn’t stop. Al Qaeda bombs have kept going off as Iraq melted down into a conflict between its Iranian-backed Shiite government, the Kurds and Sunni Islamists. And Al Qaeda found new wars. Like a persistent suitor, it followed BHO and HRC to Benghazi.
Obama’s surrender in Iraq paved the way for the regional resurgence of Al Qaeda. It put a spring in the step of every enemy from Iran to the Muslim Brotherhood to the grimmer sort of Salafis. It convinced them that they could take on the United States and win.
Like Hillary, Obama has never been held accountable for any of it. And Hillary’s very lack of accountability, her immunity from accountability makes her eminently qualified for the top spot in a Democratic Party where it’s more important to know how to shrug off accountability than it is to get things right.
Bill Clinton ushered in the post-accountability era, where evidence no longer mattered and the law was something that you could ignore if you felt like it. It is the thing that Obama, Clinton 2 and Biden all have in common. They are the poster-children of the post-accountability era where the synergy of media and party is so complete that it no longer matters what you do; only which side you’re on.
Jimmy Carter, the man under whose administration the last American ambassador was murdered, was also the last Democratic president to be held accountable for anything. His successors just smirk, wipe the blood off and do the rounds of fawning media interviewers.
Looking back on the last two decades, it almost seems as if the Clinton era never ended. Not only are both Clintons on television all the time, but so is Al Gore, still playing the guru in a suit, the deep thinker with a hand out to foreign governments. In the Clinton era, it was Communist China. Today it’s Islamist Qatar. At the time Gore said that he had done nothing wrong because there was no controlling legal authority. There still isn’t. Not where Democrats are concerned.
Al Gore, whose palm always itches for money from the enemies of the United States, nearly made it to the White House, where his influence peddling would have taken place on a whole other scale. Clinton, who did make it, deported a little boy to a Communist country at gunpoint and murdered more children at Waco, in the world’s bloodiest training exercise.
But again no one was held responsible. It’s a long way from Benghazi to Waco, but the Clintons retain their talent for walking over corpses to reach their ambition. And their critics, who notice the bodies, are accused of harboring personal vendettas and of not living in an “evidence-based world.”
The Democratic Party in the last two decades has absorbed Bill Clinton’s ability to avoid accountability. The ranks of its congressmen are full of liars, felons and lunatics. It is a party so devoid of accountability that the likes of Sheila Jackson Lee can sit on the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics without being able to tell apart the Moon and Mars, while Hank Johnson can warn that Guam may tip over if too many Marines land on it.
The Party of Jefferson has made the long sad trip to a party that views Massachusetts scandal machines like Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank as elder statesmen, instead of criminals who were never locked up, on account of their political influence. And it is full of these elder statesmen, men like Joe Biden, whose only gift is an inability to shut up and a media unwilling to condemn even the worst of their shenanigans.
The only remaining virtue in the Democratic Party is shamelessness. Those Democrats who have no shame prosper, those who do turn themselves in and serve their time.
After having trashed the housing market, the likes of Barack Obama and Andrew Cuomo step forward as reformers. After having murdered a woman, Ted Kennedy retired as a champion of women’s rights. After murdering children, Bill Clinton is touring in support of gun control to save the lives of children. And four years from now, Hillary Clinton will be touting her experience in Benghazi as a reason that she should be elected to the White House where she will be able to do it all over again.
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