STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Legacy in Libya—A Failed State and Thousands of Dead Refugees!

Recent articles in the media portraying the horrendous deaths of African refugees transiting through Libya have once again placed a black stigmata upon Hillary’s non-existent legacy at the State Department. It is important in the world of national security to understand consequences of action or non-action. No country has better defined the limits of Hillary’s skills and intelligence than Libya. I am not talking about the well-versed narratives of Benghazi. Rather I am talking about the recent human tragedies multiplied into the thousands of ignominious episodes arising in different parts of Africa and resulting in illegal Libyan trading of refugees throughout the continent.

Without a central government of any authority, Libya has transmuted from a well-organized, even somewhat prosperous country under Colonel Qaddafi to one that has deteriorated into tribal conflicts marked by ancient blood feuds and a currency of transaction that considers dead or living refugees fleeing oppression or poverty into a monetary gain.

Hillary, along with the disingenuous, incompetent “Genocide-spouting” Ambassador Samantha Power and National Security Advisor Susan Rice were the main proponent of dislodging a tenured leader for reasons that were at best naïve, if not completely distorted. However, ignoble Gadaffi may have been, he did provide for a unified society where tribal blood feuds were transformed into a patronage system which effectively allowed him to maintain control over a vast desert and keep some modicum of viability in Libya. Now, we and the world can witness, once again, what happens when an U.S invasion into a country has led to countless deaths of all types of Africans fleeing their respective dysfunctional countries from Somalia, Nigeria to Libya itself.  This also happened in Iraq, Afghanistan when again we were without legitimate interests other than the palaver of ‘we must get rid of despots.’

It is very easy to exert force and displace authoritarian leaders. It is much harder to think beforehand and exam the short and long term consequences of such an action. Hillary is known to be a certified ‘war hawk’ in the clearest sense of the word. Rather commit herself to the grueling intellectual /emotional examination of short and long term consequences of invading a country like Iraq and Libya, she reflexively kowtows to the neocon hysteria of war and more wars as evidence of American resolve and power. At the same time, many of the senior military officers who command our forces have always cautioned and tempered these civilian outcries for ‘action and more action’.

Over thirty years serving in national security, I have never met a competent senior military officer who urges war as a solution to economic/political conundrums. Usually, its those people who are ensconced in the national security apparatus that have urged military decapitation without really comprehending its direct and distant manifestations. However, inaction in the time of obvious mass slaughter is equally malfeasant.

Let me explain what I mean.

When the Hutus were about to slaughter the Tutsis with the help of the Chinese sending machetes and the French [Mitterand’s son] helping to gun down Tutsis, President Bill Clinton had sufficient warning to prevent this unconscionable slaughter of 800,000 innocent civilian victims. But he, under the direction of his wife, Hillary Clinton, refused to intercede in this eventual “African Genocide”. Either way, Hillary has shown herself to be inept in Foreign Policy by personal and professional disposition. 

She is bereft of intellectual gravitas. What she does well is to create the appearance of a dutiful Wesleyan College student who listens and absorbs the lessons of history. Yet she is completely incapable of formulating any type of coherent strategy or tactics. It may be inborn disorder of intellectual perspicacity. Whatever the reason, she speaks articulately about all matters that appear to be serious. Then when the time comes to act effectively and decisively, she fails time and time again; as if she were some form of an ‘idiot savant’ who knows the facts but misunderstands the reality of what she did or did not do.

That is her problem. Now it is our problem.

America has to really probe in depth into Hillary’s palaver not to embarrass her personally but to exam carefully why she has consistently appeared like Zelig in the span of historical change; but when called to action, she fails for want of trying or understanding the political dynamics of her action and inactions. She has refused to really understand her historical failures. Instead she has surrounded herself with high priced sycophants who will reassure her like Voltaire’s Candide—‘that what she has done is for the best’.

Noise and process are Hillary’s strong suites. The rest is vacuous shell of misunderstandings and failed actions upon the mantle of history. She has proven herself without any effective reality testing to be a person without gift or talents except the one: to self-aggrandize and tolerate ad hominum abuses.

I do not decry her for being a woman, a politician or any other persona she might want to assume. What I am simply saying is that Hillary has played out her part in history and has like many who have never been held accountable, she has failed by all accounts.... and will continue to do so, if elected to anything more than Jeb Bush’s having awarded her some nonsensical recognition as “A Great American”.

BTW, Jeb can also fit comfortably within the skeleton of the politically spoiled idiot savant, [as do his other three brothers].

 America, it’s time to demand new candidates and a new way of our maintaining our role as a Super Power in the 21st Century….other than brute force and military decapitations.

Our Republic deserves better and should strive to achieve it at all costs!