Page 6 — THE LACONIA DAILY SUN, Thursday, October 4, 2012
Pat Buchanan
Obama’s foreign policy unraveling Three days after Ambassador Chris Stevens was assassinated, Jay Carney told the White House press corps it had been the work of a flash mob inflamed by an insulting video about the Prophet Muhammad. As the killers had arrived with rocketpropelled grenades and automatic weapons, this story seemed noncredible on its face. Yet two days later, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice doubled down. Appearing on five Sunday talk shows, she called the massacre the result of a “spontaneous” riot that was neither “preplanned” nor “premeditated.” Carney and Rice deceived us. But were they deceived? It is impossible to believe that Carney would characterize the Benghazi, Libya, massacre as the result of a protest that careened out of control unless he had been told to do so by the national security adviser, the White House chief of staff or President Barack Obama himself. Who told Carney to say what he did? Who arranged for Rice to appear on five shows to push this line? Throwing a rope to Rice and Carney, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said last week that only recently had his team concluded that Benghazi was the work of terrorists. Yet intelligence insiders were leaking to the press the day after Stevens was murdered that it was terrorism. Now that the cover story — that the murder of Stevens and the other Americans was the result of a spontaneous outburst the Obama administration could not have foreseen or prevented — has collapsed, the truth is tumbling out. And the truth is more alarming. For it calls into question the credibility and competence of Obama’s security team and the judgment of the president himself. What do we now know? Stevens believed he was on an al-Qaida hit list and so wrote in his diary. He was concerned about a rise in Islamic extremism in the city. “Days before the ambassador arrived from the embassy in Tripoli,” The Washington Post reported Sunday, “Westerners had fled the city, and the British had closed their consulate.” Rice insisted that the act of barbarism arose out of a protest, but there may not even have been a protest, just a military assault with RPGs, machine guns and mortars that hit a safe house a mile from the consulate, killing two former Navy SEALs, while other U.S. agents fled to the airport. So dangerous is Benghazi, The New York Times reported Friday, FBI agents investigating the ambassador’s assassination have yet to venture into the city.
Was U.S. intelligence oblivious to how dangerous Benghazi was when Stevens went in? Was not Benghazi’s reputation as a haven for Islamic jihadi known to us all before we “liberated” Libya? This is the city U.S. air power saved when Moammar Gadhafi’s forces were closing in. It now appears to be an al-Qaidaville where U.S. diplomats and agents dare not tread. Late last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conceded that the Benghazi murders were acts of terror perpetrated by extremists associated with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. She alluded to Mali, where an al-Qaida affiliate, the Ansar Dine, has taken over half the country. How grave is that threat?On Thursday, The Associated Press reported that Gen. Carter Ham, head of the U.S. Africa command, met with Mauretania’s president to discuss “a possible military intervention ... in north Mali against al-Qaida-linked group members and their allies.” Yet Vice President Joe Biden still campaigns through the Rust Belt bellowing, “General Motors is alive, and Osama bin Laden is dead,” and Obama still recites his mantra, “al-Qaida is on the path to defeat.” The reality. Al-Qaida affiliates have taken over a region of Mali the size of France. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb may have been in on the Benghazi massacre. Al-Qaida is in Syria fighting for a cause, the overthrow of Bashar Assad, Obama supports. Al-Qaida has helped reignite sectarian war in Iraq. Al-Qaida remains in Pakistan. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is in Yemen. We failed to cut out or kill the cancer at Tora Bora in 2001, and it has since metastasized and spread across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. As for the Arab Spring Obama embraced, that has given us the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo and jihadi in Sinai. Our departure from Iraq paved the way to a new sectarian war. The surge troops are out of Afghanistan, and the remaining U.S. troops no longer partner with the Afghan soldiers who are to take over the war. Any doubt about the outcome there when we’re gone? Within the past month, antiAmerican riots, flag burnings and the raising of Islamist banners atop U.S. embassy facilities have occurred in too many countries and capitals to recite. If this is the fruit of a successful engagement with the Islamic world, what would a debacle look like? Rep. Paul Ryan said Sunday, “The Obama foreign policy is unraveling literally before our eyes on our TV screens.” Is he wrong?
LETTERS I guess we can attend Tea Party meeting to hear Sen. Forrester To the editor, Senator Jeanne Forrester seeks reelection to the N.H. Senate representing the 27 towns of District 2. I have met her opponent, Robert Lamb of Plymouth. I am very impressed with his positions. Still, I would like to know how Jeanne Forrester stands on the issues and how she will vote if she is returned to the Legislature. I would appreciate hearing the two candidates speak on the issues in a debate or a forum, traditional formats to assist voters in deciding who best represents their views. How can she refuse while asking the voters to return her to Concord. However, I have read and heard that Senator Forrester will not appear on the same stage with an opponent and so do us the courtesy of providing basic answers on the issues of the day. Forums are being held all over the region including in Sanbornton on October 18th. She has been asked. She will not attend. So, what is a voter to do in light of such audacious refusals? Senator Forrester’s voting record from the past session can be read by going online at the state government website: NH.gov, then legislature, and then senate where one can look for her name and record. Interpreting that record can be time consuming and confusing. At NH.gov, a constituent in search of answers can see that Senator Forrester has voted last term for carrying a gun, open or concealed, without
a license; against adequate funding of UNH; against Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, access to family planning; for removing from the chief justice of the state courts, rule-making power over the courts, and against continuing the regional greenhouse gas initiative, for instance. It is difficult to interpret these votes but it is possible if one has the hours to note the bill number, look up the wording of the bill, read about the proposed legislation in the Senate calendar and the action taken by the legislative body in the record. How much easier it would be to hear from this incumbent in planned public forums. One must wonder, does she wish us, the public, not to know her opinions and her votes. But our senator is speaking to at least one group. And so, I suppose we have the option of attending the Tea Party meeting on October 17 at which she is the featured speaker. According to an announcement posted by the Lakes Region Tea Party, our senator is scheduled to speak before the Tea Party at the Moultonborough Library and will address the group on her first two years in Concord. Perhaps the sanest way to deal with this lack of response is to read up on and vote for Robert Lamb for District 2 tate senator. I think you’ll like what he has to say on the issues. Gail C. Morrison Sanbornton
This is turning out to be year where seniors have nowhere to go To the editor, This election cycle, seniors have no friends and nowhere to go. The presidents $780-billion raiding of Medicare to fund ObamaCare is very real. He is taking money paid by seniors for seniors and giving it away to nonseniors. Governor Romney’s pledge to repeal ObamaCare on day one is at best well intentioned, but any repeal of ObamaCare assumes Republican control of the House and Senate. This is something no one is talking about as having a real chance of happening with the exception of Dick Morris. Both Republicans and Democrats voted for the payroll tax holiday that
Fund of $120-billion a year and of course it wasn’t funded so it is being added to the deficit. Congressman Guinta voted to extend the payroll tax holiday and is running around the state telling us Social Security and Medicare are going broke but that the Ryan Plan will fix it. How about funding it.? Carol Shea-Porter was fired two years ago because of her love of spending and ObamaCare and her famous hiding from constituents until Fox News put her face on a milk carton. This is a tough year for seniors. With their numbers decreasing so is their political value. James Edgar