Bigger than Benghazi

Does anybody think that the errors of Benghazi are all Hillary's fault? Oh I'm sure she's responsible for a good part of it. After all, it was her job. Maybe we have to ask ourselves what our diplomats were doing in Benghazi in the first place? Maybe we were pretending that Libya was a functioning country instead of a war zone between competing factions? Right now the country is pretty much split between two major groups, but that gets little press.

The US and other Western nations are responsible for that mess. We are very good at destabilizing countries but pretty terrible at putting them back together. In fact, we are so bad at it that I suspect that's never been our intent in the first place.

Just about every country that had an “Arab Spring” is in disarray. Egypt is mostly stable again, but at the cost of a government no more democratic than the one overthrown. By the way, the underlying problems that got people out in the street in the first place have yet to be addressed.

Look at our “success” in Afghanistan and Iraq. Don't worry, we are in Syria now and this time we are going to get it right.

Don't expect any hearings about how our foreign policy is making the world worse instead of better. Both Democrats and Republicans are responsible. It's fine to do a little finger pointing concerning Benghazi -as long as no one digs down to first causes. Don't expect much more than political theater from that sort of hearing . . . ever.

Yes, the world is run by a lot of psychopaths. The strong men in all these countries were definitely bad people. Unfortunately, the ones who replaced them weren't much better. Of course, the whole point isn't to eliminate psychopaths. The idea is to replace independent psychopaths with our own psychopaths.

-Sixbears