Like I’ve said before, Hillary Clinton is a liar and a disaster as Secretary of State, and a ideologically bound, hack politician. Her main focus is her own political survival and legacy, not the men and women who serve in the armed forces. She’s a disgrace, and if not for her spinning (bald faced lying) and the media playing defense for her, she would have been forced out by popular demand.
What Difference Does It Make that Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Care Why Terrorists Killed Americans in Libya?
By Barry Rubin
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remark, “What difference does it make?”–regarding how the motive of the terrorists in the Benghazi, Libya, attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and two CIA men isn’t important–will always be associated with her. She added that the only important thing was to punish those responsible.
Other than a number of obvious points, here are two things that deserve more consideration.
First, the motive of an attack is always important. The Obama administration represented the attack as being in response to an anti-Islam video made by an Egyptian-American. If that were to have been true the implication is that the attack was the fault of American behavior.
Critics tend to see the motive as being due to sheer hatred of America or something along those lines. In fact, the motive is somewhat different and extraordinarily important:
–To promote Islamist revolution by hitting at the United States, thus showing America is weak and can be defeated as a way to inspire more to engage in violence and revolutionary activity. You can call this the strategic motive. As an example, at the time of Iran’s Islamist revolution many Iranians feared the United States, seeing in almost superhuman, superpower terms, as eager and able to overthrow any regime in Tehran that was too militant. Thus, the movement should be cautious.
Rejecting this idea, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wanted to prove that America was weak and could not stop his movement from doing anything it wanted and this is how he portrayed the hostage crisis in the U.S. embassy. A parallel case was that of Usama bin Ladin and the September 11th attack. The message is: Islamism is the movement to back, it is winning victories over the infidels, and can triumph totally.
–To show that terrorism works in injuring the enemy and thus is superior to what others do, including the political maneuvering and mass base building of the Muslim Brotherhood. This can be called the tactical motive. The message is: terrorism is superior to the methods used by other groups so let’s keep doing it and increasing the number of attacks. In this specific case, the United States easily helped overthrow Qadhafi but it is helpless against our willpower, willing to die, and methods.
–To put the focus on hatred of America as a way to gain more support for Islamism as—to use
contemporary rhetoric—hatred of the “other.” This can be called the ideological motive. The message is:
Those non-Muslim, non-Arab Americans are the true enemy and any government that is on good terms with them is a traitor.
These points have been repeatedly stressed by Islamist leaders—Ayman al-Zawahiri comes to mind—in his writings. He and others spoke of how killing fellow Muslims would make the revolutionaries unpopular but killing Israelis or Americans would win them popular backing.
More here.
