If Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, her Republican opponent had better show part of this clip.
I’m surprised it isn’t being talked about more, because it is positively Obaman in its offensiveness and duplicity, and its contempt for the listener. It also comes across as insincere and unconvincing, but that never stopped Obama either:
Let’s contemplate that in print:
These five guys are not a threat to the United States. They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s up to those two countries to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them. So I think we may be kind of missing the bigger picture here. We want to get an American home, whether they fell off the ship because they were drunk or they were pushed or they jumped, we try to rescue everybody.
Hillary must think the American people have forgotten why we went into Afghanistan in the first place. Maybe they have; after all, what difference does it make? It happened so long ago—twelve and a half years, and even longer ago by the time the 2016 election rolls around—that a great many of the voters to whom Hillary expects to appeal would have been little children back then.
But just as a refresher, the now-ironically-named “Operation Enduring Freedom” was launched in Afghanistan after 9/11 because the Taliban who controlled the country had provided a safe haven for al Qaeda, from which the terrorist group trained and equipped jihadis to wreak havoc around the world, including the US—and including the 9/11 attacks. The masterminds resided in Afghanistan with the Taliban’s cooperation, approval, and protection, and the Afghan war with the US would not have occurred had the Taliban agreed to turn the culprits over and close down al Qaeda operations in their country.
The war was very widely supported because that rationale was well understood at the time. The Taliban Five were imprisoned twelve years ago in relation to that war, because they were among the Afghan Taliban leaders.
Hillary Clinton was in the US Senate when this all occurred, and she voted for the war:
Clinton strongly supported the 2001 U.S. military action in Afghanistan, saying it was a chance to combat terrorism while improving the lives of Afghan women who suffered under the Taliban government.
I’m sure the release of the Taliban Five won’t hurt those women, right? And the Five won’t host and support al Qaeda any more? And their release wasn’t a PR coup for both the Taliban and al Qaeda? And none of this could possibly end up affecting the US—any more than it did on 9/11/2001?
Compared to that utterance, it almost seems minor that Clinton uses a ridiculous analogy for Bergdahl’s act of desertion: a sailor falling off a ship. Lame, duplicitous, absurd—and yet Hillary must think Americans will buy that.
I suppose what she really thinks is that it doesn’t matter, because she’s famous and beloved and a woman and a liberal, and the Democrats really don’t have many better alternatives. So what difference does it make what claptrap she spouts?
[Featured image: NBC TODAY show video, via Washington Free Beacon]
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]
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