A lot has been made of The New York Times’s recent article, by David Kirkpatrick, about the sacking of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi on September 11th of 2012, in which four men, including our ambassador, were killed. The Obama administration’s partisans have given the article a triumphal reception, and have announced repeatedly that it ‘debunks’ the Right’s criticism of the administration’s handling of the affair. I was happy to let this one pass by in silence — there has been ample commentary from all sides, and most people’s minds are already made up when it comes to this shameful affair — but having had some requests from readers and commenters, I thought I should put together a post. I’m sorry that it’s a little “after the fact”.
What, then, does the article say? I’ve read it several times now, and as far as I can see, it makes only two claims that might be understood as ‘debunking’ anything. These claims are:
1) That the attack was not an al-Qaeda operation, and
2) That the attack was in fact a reaction to a provocative video, as the Obama administration claimed in the days and weeks after the attack.
The first point was made clearly and explicitly by Mr. Kirkpatrick:
Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault.
This assertion was taken up immediately and effectively by a great many sources. The Washington Post, for example, gave us the following:
Militiamen under the command of Abu Sufian bin Qumu, the leader of Ansar al-Sharia in the Libyan city of Darnah, participated in the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, U.S. officials said…
Qumu, 54, a Libyan from Darnah, is well known to U.S. intelligence officials. A former tank driver in the Libyan army, he served 10 years in prison in the country before fleeing to Egypt and then to Afghanistan.
According to U.S. military files disclosed by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, Qumu trained in 1993 at one of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist camps in Afghanistan and later worked for a bin Laden company in Sudan, where the al-Qaeda leader lived for three years.
Qumu fought alongside the Taliban against the United States in Afghanistan; he then fled to Pakistan and was later arrested in Peshawar. He was turned over to the United States and held at Guantanamo Bay.
He has a “long-term association with Islamic extremist jihad and members of al-Qaida and other extremist groups,’ according to the military files. “Detainee’s alias is found on a list of probable al-Qaida personnel receiving monthly stipends.’
Qumu also had links to Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, known by his alias Abu Zubaida, a key al-Qaeda facilitator who is being held indefinitely at Guantanamo.
Even the New York Times itself had previously acknowledged Mr Qumu’s a-Qaeda connections.
After all this came out, the Times tried to backpedal. In particular it denied that Qumu was involved. The Weekly Standard stops this cold. (Why were Ansar al-Sharia Derna’s men in town that day?)
The Times also reported, on October 29th of 2012, that one Muhammad Jamal was involved in the attack. Mr. Jamal, who trained with al-Qaeda, is a long-standing acolyte of Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s global leader. Here are some of Mr. Jamal’s letters to Zawahiri. Both the State DepartmentFoggy Bottom and the UN have certified Jamal’s link to al-Qaeda.
Regarding Mr. Jamal, the Weekly Standard reports:
Jamal was arrested in November 2012 by Egyptian authorities and identified as a leader of the so-called Nasr City cell, which has multiple ties to al Qaeda.
Jamal is not the only key suspect omitted by Kirkpatrick. Another suspect is Faraj al-Shibli, a Libyan who, according to U.S. intelligence officials contacted by THE WEEKLY STANDARD, served as Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard during the 1990s. According to these same officials, al-Shibli is suspected of bringing materials from the Benghazi compound to senior al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan. Al-Shibli was detained in Pakistan and then Libya. Al Shibli did not immediately admit his involvement in the Benghazi attacks and was subsequently released. But U.S. officials continue to believe he played a role.
Far from being ‘on the run’, as the Obama administration would have us believe, al-Qaeda is doing very well, and its web of influence appears to be expanding throughout the Mideast and the Maghreb. In August, Reuters reported on connections between the Benghazi attackers and the jihadis who made a deadly January 2013 assault on a gas plant in Algeria, in which 39 foreigners were killed. Reuters added:
At the center of the web is Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which has expanded far from its Algerian birthplace and now has links to other jihadi groups in Maghreb countries, including Tunisia and Libya. Their shared ideology combines with other, often financial, interests.
Just a week or so ago, CNN reported that al-Qaeda now controls more territory than ever in the Middle East.
Besides its claim that there was no al-Qaeda involvement in the attack at Benghazi, the Times‘s article tried to shore up the Obama administration’s early insistence that the massive assault was simply a spontaneous demonstration about a blasphemous movie, Innocence of Muslms. To support this assertion, the article featured a photo taken on September 11th at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, which showed angry protestors (waving al-Qaeda flags, by the way), and bore the following caption:
Egyptian protesters tearing down the United States flag at the American Embassy in Cairo on Sept.11, 2012, during a demonstration against “Innocence of Muslims,’ a video offensive to Islam.
As multiple sources have reported, though, the Cairo demonstration wasn’t about a movie, but was about the continued imprisonment of the “blind sheik” Omar Rahman, who remains incarcerated for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Aaron Klein reminds us that CNN covered the story that day:
On the day of the Sept. 11, 2012, protests in Cairo, CNN’s Nic Robertson interviewed the son of Rahman, who described the protest as being about freeing his father. No Muhammad film was mentioned.
In the wake of the Obama administration’s media blitz about the movie, Fox News commissioned Agincourt Solutions (now Babel Street), a global social-media analysis firm, to look for signs of a groundswell of resentment about the film. They found none:
As the State Department began Tuesday to circulate a highly anticipated report into what happened in the Sept. 11 Libya consulate attack, a separate analysis found that the first reference to the anti-Islam film that was initially blamed for sparking the attack was not detected on social media until a day later.
The independent review of more than 4,000 postings was conducted by a leading social media monitoring firm.
“From the data we have, it’s hard for us to reach the conclusion that the consulate attack was motivated by the movie. Nothing in the immediate picture ”“ surrounding the attack in Libya — suggests that,’ Jeff Chapman, chief executive with Agincourt Solutions told Fox News.
This attack employed arson, small arms, vehicle-mounted machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars. (Much of this weaponry, by the way, was under the control of our former ally Muammar Qaddafi — until we threw him to the dogs. Our military intervention, made entirely without Congressional approval, allowed his arsenals to fall into the hands of jihadist militias.) There is also evidence that the attackers knew the layout of the compound in advance, including the location of the “safe room” in which Ambassador Stevens was asphyxiated. There is simply no compelling reason for any thinking person to doubt that it was a premeditated assault. The Times invests a lot of ink in parsing the distinction between the al-Qaeda core, its major affiliates, and the many sympathetic warlords and militias who carry out jihadist warfare throughout the bloody Muslim world, but at bottom, to quote the woman for whose sake the article was obviously written: “what difference does it make?” Our people were put in harm’s way, with grotesquely insufficient security, in a failed state that had become a viper’s nest of violent and heavily armed jihadists. How could something awful not have happened?
Leaving aside its claims about al-Qaeda and the video, there is much in the Times’s article that is damning indeed, and indicates serious incompetence, and astonishing unwisdom, at the State Department. Again and again Mr. Kirkpatrick exposes the naive optimism that led to this catastrophe. In the first section of the article, Mr. Kirkpatrick refers to State Department’s “months of American misunderstandings and misperceptions about Libya and especially Benghazi”:
The United States waded deeply into post-Qaddafi Libya, hoping to build a beachhead against extremists, especially Al Qaeda. It believed it could draw a bright line between friends and enemies in Libya. But it ultimately lost its ambassador in an attack that involved both avowed opponents of the West and fighters belonging to militias that the Americans had taken for allies.
Bloody fools.
A fuller accounting of the attacks suggests lessons for the United States that go well beyond Libya. It shows the risks of expecting American aid in a time of desperation to buy durable loyalty, and the difficulty of discerning friends from allies of convenience in a culture shaped by decades of anti-Western sentiment. Both are challenges now hanging over the American involvement in Syria’s civil conflict.
There simply are not words to express the historical, cultural, and strategic naiveté on display here. How could anyone not a child or an idiot be surprised by any of what happened? Yet this administration, and this reporter, having at last been “shown the risks” by the actual slaughter of our people, stand in dawning awareness only now.
As depressing as all of this is, far, far worse is the prospect that the architect of this folly — the heartless, ambitious woman who set the stage for this calamity, and who has declined, as both she and her husband always have throughout their disgraceful career in public life, to accept any responsibility for the wreckage she has left in her wake — may in a few short years ascend to the Presidency.
Note: so polarizing is this topic, and so unlikely to produce fruitful discussion, that it is with some reluctance that I leave the comment-box open. But comment away, if you like. I doubt I’ll join in.
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241 Marines died in Lebanon during the Reagan administration when their base was inadequately protected. The commanding officer repeatedly warned that the base was vulnerable and the Marines were sitting ducks, but those warnings were ignored. After the attack, Reagan decided to cut and run, leaving the attackers with a crucial victory, along with the lesson that American resolve will dissolve after a terrorist attack. The right wing yawned.
There were thirteen attacks on US embassies and consulates during the Bush administration, causing over 100 deaths, including 25 Americans. The right wing yawned.
By any metric, the attacks during the Reagan and Bush administration far overshadow the attack in Benghazi. However, the level of histrionics from the Right has been deafening. (It is also worth noting that Democrats did not make a political football of a national tragedy in either administration — defining the difference between partisanship and patriotism.) Is there something which is incalculably worse about Benghazi, or is the right wing obsession about Benghazi another in a series of desperate attempts to find scandal where none exists? (Spoiler alert: the latter.)
* * * *
A few days after the event, Susan Rice went on national television to repeat the CIA’s understanding of the event: the proximate cause was the anti-Muslim video. She repeatedly said that this was a preliminary evaluation, subject to change as more facts emerged. This did not stop the right wing from demonizing her and insisting that a cover-up was involved.
We know that reports of the video were widely available in Libya through Egyptian satellite television. Unless Kirkpatrick was fabricating interviews, we know through his reporting that the video was a contributory factor. The best explanation of the event is that a lot of Libyans were riled up, and local terrorist groups acted opportunistically. The video was the match and the terrorists provided the gasoline. After Rice’s appearance the week that the attack occurred, it subsequently became known that local terrorist groups played a greater role than was known in the fog of the event and its immediate aftermath. However, Rice’s statements reflected what was known at the time, and were explicitly characterized by her as provisional. The right wing accusation of a cover-up is false.
Much is made by the Right of purported ties between Libyan jihadists and Al Qaeda. These groups have similar aspirations and doubtless many of the Libyans knew people who were in Al Qaeda. Similarly, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club have similar aspirations, many people in one group will know people in the other, and presumably people from both groups have attended the same events. Doubtless there are those at Greenpeace who are “acolytes” of John Muir, and have also “trained with” the Sierra Club at their conferences. However, if Greenpeace engages in direct action, one would not blame (or credit) the Sierra Club.
However, none of this matters. Whether the attack was caused by a video or a premeditated attack, or whether the attackers had ties to Al Qaeda or not, are distinctions which the Right obsesses about and the reality-based community finds to be completely unimportant. The important thing is that four Americans died in an event which, in hindsight, may have been preventable. Who cares if the video was 10% responsible, 50% responsible, or 90% responsible for the event? Who cares if the attackers had connections with other terrorist groups? Clinton was absolutely correct in her response to Republican badgering: what difference does it make?
In its continuing effort to find malign motives where none exist, the Right posits that the Obama administration distorted the truth for political gain. However, this is absurd on its face, and not only because no truths were distorted. Had Obama or Clinton immediately declared that the attack was a long-planned event made by people with loose connections to Al Qaeda, this would not have changed any votes or minds. What is important to voters is that the Al Qaeda of bin Laden has been decimated, and there have been no Al Qaeda attacks on the homeland. Those who were predisposed to vote for Obama would vote for him, and those who were predisposed to vote for Romney would have done so. The provenance of the attack is of no consequence to anyone except right wing obsessives (pardon the redundancy).
* * * *
When Qaddafi voluntarily gave up his WMD, Bush re-established diplomatic relations with him — which was the right thing to do. When Qaddafi started massacring his citizens, Obama terminated those relations — which was the right thing to do. Asserting that he was “fed to the dogs,” and thus implying that this was done for expediency and without justifiable cause, is nonsense.
* * * *
Hillary Clinton is not mentioned anywhere in the article. To assert that “the article was obviously written” to benefit her is deplorable calumny. If you have any actual evidence to support your accusation, you are welcome to state it. The article was an exhaustively researched piece of reporting which did no favors to Hillary in its description of State Department mismanagement of the consulate’s security. The fact the article refutes right wing attack lines is not evidence that it was written or edited to bolster Clinton’s political fortunes. The facts are what they are, and whoever benefits or gets hurt by them is incidental. And if you think that the Times gives her a free pass: you might want to find out which newspaper obsessed daily over Whitewater in front page coverage for months on end, until it became apparent that there was nothing there.
* * * *
Placing diplomats overseas — not only in war zones, but in “safe” locations such as Athens, Istanbul, and Bali, all of which were attacked during the Bush years — always involves risk, as well as the allocation of finite resources to safeguard against those risks. (Some of the angriest denunciations came from Republican members of Congress who voted to cut $500 million from Obama’s budget request for embassy security. Pot, meet kettle.) What looks obvious in hindsight appears much less so in real time: we know that Ambassador Stevens twice declined offers of military assistance shortly before the attacks. If the Ambassador on the ground considers the consulate to be safe, one could forgive people in Washington for minimizing the risk. Watching conservatives get the vapors over Benghazi leads to wondering why the attack in Lebanon – which came with repeated and explicit warnings, as well as a death toll sixty times greater than Benghazi – was such a non-event to conservatives.
Could the Obama administration have done a better job protecting American lives? Of course. Given the context of history and the unending turmoil in the region, is Benghazi the monstrous dereliction of duty which the Right would have you believe? Is it somehow worse than similar (but far more deadly) attacks which occurred under Reagan and Bush? Not even close.
Yawn.
When reason fails the only thing left is derision.
Uh-uh. The risk was independently confirmed to be very high, and everybody knew it. The new Senate report makes this 100% clear. The State Department was responsible for these peoples safety, period. If Stevens declined additional security, he should have been overruled.
Hillary knew how dangerous Benghazi was. When she went there, she made sure that military support was just offshore.
Also:
Pentagon labeled Benghazi a terrorist attack as Obama administration wavered: newly declassified testimony
I think I’ll remain “mostly” out of this but I would offer;
http://www.fpri.org/articles/2013/12/three-versions-al-qaeda-primer
Loki: I do think that Hillary Clinton bears responsibility for the tragedy at Benhazi. So does she. That is what she has publicly stated, to the Senate committee and elsewhere. Aside from committing harakiri, I’m not sure what else she should do.
JK: your post is uncharacteristically coherent. The Republican Party is loosely affiliated with the Chamber of Commerce. The Democratic Party is loosely affiliated with the American Bar Association. Life is a Venn diagram, and people with similar aspirations will congregate together and compare notes. Whether the Libyan group was wholly local or loosely allied with Al Qaeda is a distinction without a difference. One reason that Benghazi never got traction as an issue outside the Foxiverse is that the putative relation between local Libyan terrorists and the amorphous, headless, stateless enterprise called Al Qaeda is inconsequential to anyone not a member of the delusional Right (pardon the pleonasm).
Thanks Peter, familiar with LIFG?
http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/lifg-revisions-posing-critical-challenge-to-al-qaida
Words are wind. Especially Clinton words.
Gee, what gesture could she make to show us a little real shame, a little genuine remorse … Hey, how about not becoming president? How about just going away?
That would do nicely, I think.
Reagan didn’t resign after the exponentially worse massacre in Lebanon, and Bush didn’t resign after the infinitely worse disaster of Iraq. (Nor did the conservatives who elected him call for his resignation: they stuck with him through thin and thin.) Surgeons don’t quit their jobs when they lose a patient. Bill Buckner didn’t resign. Why should Hillary?
If Benghazi was emblematic of her tenure at State, you might have an argument. However, Benghazi is sui generis. By your logic, Condoleeza Rice should have resigned long ago.
Hillary Clinton is not only widely admired, but she is the most popular politician in America. Unless Republicans are able to field a credible candidate — and based on who’s available, it’s hard to imagine who this might be — the Presidency is hers if she wants it. Might as well strap yourself in for another eight years with a President Clinton in the White House.
JK: thanks for the link. The only LIFG I am familiar with comes from my general worldview: Life Is Fucking Great!
The stark horror of it is, you may be right. Unless She is diverted to the Supreme Court, which might be even worse.
Mencken was right: democracy is the idea that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. And so they will.
I grieve for this nation and its people, nevertheless. That the dead soul of this ruthless and insatiable woman can have brought so many decent Americans — apparently including even yourself — under its thrall is to me an impenetrable mystery.
The multi-talented one-eye whistles past the graveyard while pissing into the wind that he breaks.
If LIFG was really his worldview, Malcolm, what would be his point in trying to convince you of it? He’s just yanking your chain.
I think the real reason why the O and Hillary laid the blame for the Benghazi attack on the Nakhoula video was that, deep down inside, the two of them passionately hate the Free Speech and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment.
Good to see you Kepha.
Unfortunately identity politics is alive and working hard.
Clinton will be nominated and she will get elected on some 70%+ of the female vote.
It might now be a long time before elections stop being identity-based. Pandora’s box is now open, so-to-speak.
It’s a real mess. Nobody on the right is even close in stature to the hard left candidates. We could probably list the top 5 or so highest profile politicians without mentioning a single GOPer. It’s, sadly, a party of obscurity now.
Indeed it is, as one would naturally expect in a senescent, multiculturalist democracy. If the GOP were to drop its ridiculous obsession with gaining ground among black and Hispanic voters (who are natural Democratic constituents, and always will be), and weren’t so terrified of getting out and capturing the white vote, they could win very handily.
Instead the GOP mainstream seems intent on committing demographic suicide with “immigration reform”, now that they’ve caved on spending. All they ever do is chase the Overton Window, two steps behind the Democrats. Of course they’re losing. If they had the balls to take actual conservative positions on controlling the size and scope of government, and on the “national question”, they might actually get somewhere.
Hillary Clinton is not the most popular politician in America because of “identity politics.” Her popularity derives from the widely held belief that she has performed admirably as First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State, as well as having centrist positions with wide appeal. Even Bob Gates — no friend to the Obama administration — gave her high marks as a mature and effective leader.
The notion that there are enough white voters for Republicans to win national elections, let alone “handily,” is simply false. The middle-aged and older whites who form the Republican base are being gradually supplanted by younger and non-white voters. There are enough whites who would not vote Republican for ideological reasons that Republicans need to find a way to attract those who are young and/or non-white, lest their party become like an ice cube on a hot sidewalk.
Republicans did not “cave on spending.”
You are also incorrect in your assertion that there is widespread support for conservative principles. There isn’t. Most people do not see keeping taxes low for high income households to be a primary goal of public policy. Most people do not favor limitless spending on the military, border security, and farm supports, while cutting spending on food stamps and unemployment insurance. Most Americans favor keeping Medicare and Social Security as they are. Most American support legalized abortion. Etc., etc. 72% of Americans believe that illegal aliens should be provided a path to citizenship. It is difficult to think of any conservative principles which have wide appeal ti those who are not self-described conservatives. People will support concepts like limited government and balanced budgets in the abstract, but not when the question involves the actual cuts to government services which would be required to achieve them.
The Republicans are likely to keep control of the House for a while, due to gerrymandering and the tendency of urban districts to be disproportionately Democratic. Because of the inherent tilt of the Senate towards rural states, they have a long shot of retaking the Senate. (If California were to use some legislative mitosis and split itself into ten different states — as it should — then the Senate will remain in Democratic hands until long after the cows come home.) However, Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the past six national elections, with crushing defeats in the last two. There are about 255 votes in the electoral college which are solidly blue, and about 210 which are solidly red. In order for Republicans to deny Democrats the additional 15 votes necessary to get them over the top, they have to run the table in every major swing state. If Hillary decides to run, this task will be all but impossible for the formerly Grand Old Party.
Peter, I know that what you say around here is increasingly just trolling, and you do it very well.
Obviously, should Hillary run, identity politics will play an enormous role. Barack Obama was elected on a resume that would hardly have got him a seat on the Belle Mead City Council if he’d been white — and now that we’ve had our first black president, plenty of women are going to turn out for Hillary just to give us the first female one. (Performed ‘admirably’ as Secretary of State? You’ve got to be joking. Oh, wait: trolling. Never mind.)
As for the GOP: whites still comprise, for now at least, almost two-thirds of the population of the United States, despite the best effort of the Democrats to elect a new people. Blacks and Hispanics are a natural Democratic constituency, as they are by far the most likely to be consumers of government services, as well as being more likely than whites to be employed in the public sector. The idea that a party ostensibly dedicated to shrinking the size and expense of government will ever attract this demographic in significant numbers is ridiculous.
Young, certainly. And the antics of the current administration have been highly instructive for a lot of open-eyed young folks. There’s definitely some fertile territory there for conservatism.
Non-white? All are welcome, of course. But it’s not the right demographic for the GOP to be focusing on. Who’s going to vote for Democrat Lite when they can vote for the real thing? Far better for the party to stake out its own territory, and really stand for something. (Like the all-but-abandoned principles this nation was founded upon, for example.)
More Americans identify themselves as conservative than liberal. If the GOP builds it, they will come. And they shouldn’t be shy about trying to attract white voters. There’s no reason people of pallor shouldn’t have a party that represents their interests; Lord knows the opposition makes no bones about appealing to non-whites on the basis of group identity. It’s perfectly natural human behavior, and nobody minds when everyone else does it.
It won’t happen, though. You’ll find more backbone in one of Wellfleet’s tide pools than in the Republican Party. If it had any self-respect left at all, the GOP would be sitting in a locked room by now with a bottle of whisky and a revolver.
This Republic is senescent, and dying. The Framers gave democracy about as good a shot as it was ever going to get, but even so, the latent diseases inherent to democracy were bound to catch up with it sooner or later.
It’s been a good run. Time to figure out what to do next. The Flood is coming, though it may not be upon us for a little while yet. Time to start thinking about an ark.
The assertion that President Obama was elected because he is black is preposterous. Some number of people who would normally vote Democratic did not vote for him because he is black, while others who would normally vote Republican voted for him because of his skin color. Not only is there no evidence to suggest that the second group is larger than the first group, but given the context of race relations in America, it is unimaginable that it ever would be.
Obama won by nine million votes in 2008 because he is an inspiring and eloquent leader whose agenda appealed to the majority of voters, and he was one of the few politicians to be right about Iraq from the start. He was re-elected by another thumping margin because the electorate approved of what he did in his first term. Ascribing his two landslide victories to the color of his skin is both absurd and offensive. Even if your highly dubious assertion that he was helped by his skin color in 2008 has even a grain of truth, it fails to explain why he was re-elected by five million votes in 2012.
Whether women show up to vote for Hillary because of her gender is similarly speculative. Being female sure didn’t help Geraldine Ferraro very much.
Most “consumers of government services” are, of course, white. Most people on Medicare, Social Security, veterans benefits, and food stamps are white. Why blacks who receive government aid would vote Democratic because it is purportedly in their interest to do so, while whites who receive government aid would not, is a head scratcher.
The reason blacks are “a natural Democratic constituency” has a lot more to do with Nixon’s Southern strategy, which is a divide-and-conquer strategy based on race which has been used by Republicans ever since. Reagan ran for office by making up a fable about a welfare queen who drove a Cadillac, and he launched his campaign with a speech about states’ rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in the 1960’s. Today’s Republicans are engaged in furious efforts to suppress the voting access of blacks. No wonder the attendees at RNC conventions and Republican campaign rallies are lily-white. Why should blacks vote Republican?
If there are young people who are “open-eyed” to conservative thinking, you sure can’t tell it from the way they vote. 60% of adults 18-29 voted for Obama in 2012.
The Republican Party does “really stand for something.” It stands for a lot of things: tax cuts for high income households, subsidies for farmers, science denial, the criminalization of abortion, hostility to immigrants, indifference towards the environment, bans on gay marriage, favored treatment towards their favored industries, and so forth. You could look at the concatenation of Ayn Rand / Rand Paul / Paul Ryan and see a miserly and contemptuous worldview which would make Ebenezar Scrooge blush. If the Republican Party wants to continue to run on a platform which is contrary to the views of most Americans, they have every right to do so. However, they have no right to expect to win a national election again, because what they are selling is not something that many people are buying.
Peter, come on. I know you are more intelligent than this.
If there were an ethnic group consisting of 1,000 people, 100% of which were completely dependent upon government support, there would obviously still be vastly more white people on the dole, even if only one in a hundred thousand of them were.
But which party would you expect the members of the first group to vote for? The party that is committed to expanding government services, and is obsessed with “inequality”, or the one that stands for small government and self-reliance?
The fact is that blacks and Hispanics are far more likely to be consumers of government services, and to work in the public sector, than whites. Therefore they are a natural Democratic constituency. Democratic strategists know this, of course, very well: that’s why they are so eager to import and naturalize as many more as they can, and to displace the traditional white demographic majority as soon as possible. It’s a risky game, though, because at some point even a population as ideologically cowed as bien-pensant white Westerners begins to notice what’s happening, and at that point tasing them back into line by calling them ‘racists’ suddenly won’t work any more.
95% of blacks voted for Obama in 2008. 93% did in 2014. If you can’t acknowledge that there was a (perfectly understandable) element of racial solidarity in that, you can hardly expect anyone to pay any attention to anything else you have to say.
As for the rest of your screed, I won’t bandy ideologies with you. We know how you feel about all of this.
I will say this though, in a spirit of generosity: leaving aside professional political operatives of both parties, whose only aim is to seize and retain power, I think that both conservatives and well-intentioned liberals such as yourself want the same thing, which is to create and sustain a prosperous and well-functioning American society that maximizes opportunity and happiness, in harmony with our nature. What we disagree about is how best to achieve it (and I think this is due in large part to disagreements about the realities of human nature). It’s wrong of you to impugn our motives so, and I wish you’d stop doing it.