Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Asks, “What Difference at this Point, Does it Make?”

My Answer to Her Ridiculous Question

By The Colonel

The real difference it makes is that we trusted American lives to several individuals in senior leadership roles; these individuals either made poor decisions or failed to make decisions at all. As a result, our U.S. Ambassador to Libya was murdered along with three other brave Americans. These senior individuals (President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and General David Petraeus) were embarrassed at their total failure and decided to fabricate a more politically excusable reason for the Benghazi disaster…they blamed a scarcely watched YouTube anti-Islam film?

The public has been lied to, deceived, had the truth hidden from them by journalist/executives in the mainstream news media and by the Federal Government. It will not work. Like all cover-ups there are too many lies to keep straight and too many people who know the truth…the truth will surface eventually. So let’s get back to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s angry response to the Congressional questioning, “What difference at this point does it make?” The difference it makes is we need effective senior leaders who make good decisions under pressure in key Federal Government jobs--and to know if that is true we have to evaluate their performance.

We have to know what they actually did and how they did it…a performance evaluation is not possible unless we know the complete truth. The most important questions have still not been answered.

• One, why was our Ambassador in Benghazi and with so little protection?
• Two, why did we not have contingency response forces readily available to respond to Benghazi…especially on an anniversary of 9/11?
• Three, when the attack was reported by phone to the Department of State and U.S. forces in Tripoli began to respond to Benghazi, who gave the order to “stand-down” and why did they give that order?
• Four, where was President Obama and what was he doing when Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods were engulfed in an eight-hour fight for their lives?

I have a theory… President Obama and Secretary Clinton were very busy working on the presidential election and not paying much attention to what was happening in Libya…after all, they have lots of “little people” who can handle the mundane tasks of actually governing the United States of America. By the time the President’s staff and Secretary Clinton’s staff realized that Benghazi was a really serious crisis, it was too late to successfully intervene. At that point all the well-honed machinery of campaign central kicked in to produce the “blame the video” strategy (the anti-Islam YouTube video) and they got all the help they needed from the mainstream media.

I am hopeful the truth will soon come out. Why am I hopeful? Well, if President Obama’s  extensive “Chicago” style political machine could not crush and intimidate the insiders who knew the truth at the State Department, the families of the brave Americans who were murdered at Benghazi, and a few inquisitive/daring within the news media beginning to ask the right questions (who have typically been strong allies)…then there is hope. The truth must be very bad indeed.

Rule of Law or Big Government Tyranny?

By The Colonel

There was a story in the New York Times this morning by Azam Ahmed and Habib Zahori  about a case of government “ruling class” abuse of power in Afghanistan but this story is little different in principle from another story taking place in the United States of America. That story involves the Attorney General of the United States seizing James Rosen and his parent’s phone records with no evidence to support a warrant. I argue the Afghan story illustrates an important principle in that one of the few core responsibilities of any government is to protect its people from external (National defense) and internal harm (law enforcement)…to protect the weak from the strong. Yes the government can be an equalizing force protecting the little guys from the big powerful guys…unfortunately the government can also be the big and powerful who tyrannizes we common citizens. I worry that we are seeing the symptoms of tyranny not just in Afghanistan, but here at home in the USA.

The Afghanistan story is about an army major (Pashto) who was stopped for a routine traffic check and vehicle search by an Afghan policeman (Dari), the army major was reportedly arrogant and angry that he had been stopped by a Dari policeman so he phoned his Army unit and asked that soldiers be sent to teach this lowly policeman a lesson. Two trucks, 17 soldiers, arrived and beat the policeman severely after which the army major left to go on his way. The other policemen on duty at the checkpoint took their colleague to the hospital. Even though the incident was reported up the police chain of command, the army major remains free and giving orders because his ethnic or political group (Pasto) is in “power” and the policeman’s ethnic group (Dari) is not.

While we might think this lack of justice is pretty common in a third world country, it seems to be happening more frequently now in the United States of America? For example, James Rosen, a reporter for Fox News, recently had his and his parent’s phone records collected by the U.S. Attorney General without charging or indicting him with any crime…and in spite of his First Amendment right to free speech and a free press. Even though the Justice Department got a judge to issue a warrant, it was not easy to do…they (Justice Department) had to “Judge-Shop” … to fool a judge into signing the warrant…the first two judges approached refused to issue the warrant because there was no evidence to support it and because the Justice Department had not notified James Rosen of their intention to go after his and his parent’s phone records nor had they taken the first steps required by law to simply ask James Rosen for the information they were seeking. In fact, on the warrant the Justice Department finally found a judge to sign the AG lawyers had stated that James Rosen was “potentially criminally libel” in a National security case…even though they knew well he was not. James Rosen vs. the power of the entire United States government…with very deep pockets full of taxpayer dollars and an armed FBI agent to do the enforcement does not seem fair? I think this is why we have the rule of law…at least for now?

James Rosen and his parents were powerless and worse yet unaware they were being investigated by the all-powerful, resources-rich Federal government of the United States of America. James Rosen is a reporter for the Fox News network which is reportedly a conservative news organization and the U.S. Justice Department is under Attorney General Eric Holder, a member of the reportedly liberal administration. So the liberal party in power in America can abuse the rights of the conservative party members who are not in power? In Afghanistan, the ruling party-in-power abuses the rights of those who are not in power or are of another ethnic group (Dari). There may not be as much difference between us and the third world countries as there once was; do we really want to drift into the rule-of-man (even if he is historic and charismatic) or did our Founding Fathers have it right in the Constitution to guarantee rule-of-law, where we are all equal before the law? 

Remember the classic book Animal Farm where “all of the animals were equal but some were more equal than others” (Orwell, 1946). Orwell was humorously mocking socialism and communism in 1946 but I think he would be shocked today at how some of our citizens (e.g., ruling class elite) are, “more equal than other citizens.”

 Ahmed, A., & Zahori, H. (2013, May 28). Beaten On The Job, An Afghan Police Officer Goes On TV And Hits Back, New York Times.

Our Representatives or the New Royalty?

By The Colonel

I am motivated to write by a recent news story revealing Congressional representatives are leasing luxury cars for as much as $1900 month at our taxpayer expense.  On a Fox & Friends morning show there was a panel discussion on this Congressional luxury car-leasing story and a professor from Columbia suggested the extra expense was not even round-off error compared to the Iraq war expenses?  If you can’t really answer the question asked, then redirect with the answer to another question that you want?  This is a typical tactic of the political left and I doubt the professor even realized he changed the topic to answer a different question; it was simply reflex from long years of training and indoctrination in leftist ideology.

The real question is how can elected representatives take advantage of taxpayers who are financially distressed already by leasing a luxury car?  For example a recent news report found, “Congressman Gregory Meeks of Queens, New York makes the rounds in his home district in a Lexus 450 hybrid which costs a whopping $1,289 a month.  But that's no problem for Congressman Meeks because he's not paying for it,”[i] taxpayers are.  The answer is really simple, Congressional representatives “feel” entitled to such luxury.  The evidence to support this answer is abundant.  In 1971, Dr. Philip Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison Experiments[ii] that demonstrated what Lord Acton stated many years before, "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"[iii] The young college students in Zimbardo’s experiment were randomly assigned to be either prison guards or prisoners and then placed into a mock prison; they all knew they were role-playing but in only six days the experiment had to be stopped because it had spiraled out of control endangering the students. The results of this experiment showed that normal people could behave in extraordinarily evil ways if the situation or context were shaped to produce bad behavior (i.e., total power over others).[iv]

The Stanford experiment should lead us to wonder how seemingly normal people will behave when they are elected to Congressional office.  These are positions of power and authority where Senators and Representatives are often treated like royalty…young staffers waiting on them hand and foot, opening doors; reporters seeking their opinion on all matter of important subjects.  By virtue of their own vote, Congress awards themselves (and their union and political cronies) with luxury health care and retirement programs that few of their tax paying constituents can afford.  Members of Congress win these prize luxuries by convincing the public they will best represent their constituents’’ (i.e., voters) interests in Washington D.C.  I do not doubt that many “freshmen” in Congress truly believe what they tell their constituents and want to do the right thing.  However, I fear we have “set the stage” (i.e., created a situational context) for a much larger and real-life version of the Stanford Prison experiment of 1971.  And this experiment will have a similar outcome, but with real-life dire consequences for us all.  Professor Zimbardo was able to stop the Stanford experiment when it got out of control, but I am not sure how we can stop this real-life version before it too is completely out of control.

Our elected officials can only take so much public adoration, praise and special treatment before they too come to believe such great privileges are justified.  Surely the public is telling these Congressional representatives (e.g., the elite among us) that they are smarter, much more intelligent than the average voter and thus they are entitled.  A lifetime of political power is certainly a real world context similar to the infamous Stanford prison experiment in design and unfortunately in outcome.  We should heed Lord Action’s time-tested warning, "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”[v]

We should initiate strict term limits for elected officials to protect them from the usual human reaction to extended time in such powerful positions over others…and to protect us, and the nation, from the effects suffered at the hands of powerful government officials convinced of their entitlement to rule over us…instead of represent us.  Serving in high public office should be a citizen responsibility not a life-time career. 

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[i] Inside Edition, May1, 2012, Retrieved May 4, 2012 from: http://www.insideedition.com/news/8119/inside-edition-investigates-congressional-cars.aspx

[ii] Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect; Understanding how good people turn evil  (New York: Random House, 2008).

[iii] Lord Acton John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Historical Essays and Studies, ed. J.N. Figgins and R.V. Laurence, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887 (London: Macmillian, 1907).

[iv] Zimbardo, 2008.

[v] John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1st Baron Acton".  Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 04 May. 2012
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/4647/John-Emerich-Edward-Dalberg-Acton-1st-Baron-Acton/4647suppinfo/Supplemental-Information>.