Hopefully, more and more people will begin to feel their story is somehow part of this larger story of how we’re going to reshape America in a way that is less mean-spirited and more generous. — 1990

My Take – In this day and age, if you’re saying that someone is systematically trying to take the American Dream away from you and you don’t do something about it, then you have no-one to blame but yourself.  It’s been a generation since systematic racial discrimination became actionable in court.  If someone keeps you from getting a job, buying a house, or getting an education because of the color of your skin, your religion, or whatever, then you drag their butts into court and get satisfaction.  Maybe you won’t be CEO, or live in the mansion, or get that advanced degree in particle physics that you crave, but if you’re willing to work hard and not take crap from anyone, you will advance in life.

If, on the other hand, you choose to whine that someone else is keeping you down, you will go nowhere.  And if you come to me looking for sympathy that you don’t feel that your story is somehow part of this larger story, all I’m going to do is offer you some sand to go pound.  Quit looking for the rest of us to boost you up and start climbing on your own.

When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world. — 2004

My Take – To be honest, I don’t care about the respect of the world.   OK, I hope that countries with which  we share common values, such as Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany, and some of the new democracies in Eastern Europe, respect us, but I think that’s an easy one.  It’s easy to respect someone when you have a lot in common with them.

As for the rest of the world, I couldn’t care less about whether they respect us, much less love us.  Our foreign policy for a long time has been “Hey, we’re nice guys!  Look at all the shiny hardware and food we brought.  Now please like us.  Pretty please!”.  I guess that’s partly because we’re still doing the things we did to compete for hearts and minds during the Cold War, and some of it is because Americans, at least a lot of the time, see their role as the world’s last best hope and want to prove that to everyone.

Me?  I’m tired of pouring money into kleptocratic sinkholes.  I’m tired of watching flag draped coffins get unloaded off of airplanes.  And I’m tired of watching the American flag get burnt by people who wouldn’t be able to feed their children if not for the largess of the American people.  If I were President, my foreign aid policy would pretty much be “For our true friends, we will give the shirts off our backs.  Everyone else pays cash.”.    As for our foreign policy toward those who don’t respect us and we hold a reciprocal feeling, I say it’s better to be feared than respected.   I guess my idea boils down to “No better friend; no worse enemy”, or for those of you who watch MSNBC, “Leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone.  Raise a hand to us, and we will cut off your arm.”.  Americans truly are a peace loving people, but killing people and breaking stuff is something at which we’re very adept, and if someone can’t respect us for the good we do, then they should tremble at our ability to turn their place into a parking lot.

I do take offense with some suggestion that in any way, we haven’t tried to make sure that the American people knew as the information was coming in what we believed. — 2012

My Take – Take offense all you want, but I’m not believing that you did what you could to safeguard American lives in Benghazi, that you have been forthright about what you know and when you knew it, and that you believe that you owe us an explanation about what went wrong and what you’re going to do to prevent it from happening again.

The reason I’m so quick to believe stories about your incompetence and politicization of this incident is that you have been incompetent when it comes to just about anything that doesn’t go your way for three and a half years.  In that time, you have made political points instead of finding solutions in every instance I can think of.

• The ambassador and other officials at our embassy in Libya requested more security.  You denied it.
• When the attack began, you not only had a drone in position to see exactly what was happening, you had someone in the compound giving you ground truth.  You did next to nothing.
• You saw what was really happening on the ground.  You still spent days talking about ‘demonstrations’ and blaming an American citizen for the actions of terrorists on another continent.
• The military had assets available to assist, or at least to shorten the attack.  They were not utilized.
• You called these attacks and the deaths of our diplomats and citizens as “bumps in the road” and “suboptimal”.  Shame on you.

Were some of these actions or lacks of action committed by your subordinates?  Possibly.  But here’s a leadership principle you seem to have missed along the way “You can delegate authority, but not responsibility”.  The buck stops with you, Mr. President.  The things that led to our embassy staff not being able to withstand the attacks in Benghazi are all yours to explain.

In short, Mr. President, I don’t give a tinker’s damn that you’re offended that the truth is getting out and we’re asking you the hard questions.  Put on your big boy pants, assuming you own a pair and can find them after such a long period of disuse, and start telling the truth to us.

• When were you informed of the attack?
• What options for assistance were you given by your military and diplomatic advisors?
• Why did you not pursue any of those options?
• When were you, not your staff, told that this was probably a terrorist attack?
• Why did you attack an American citizen for exercising his First Amendment rights and use him as a scapegoat for the deaths of our Ambassador and three others?
• Why did you leave Washington for a Las Vegas fundraiser while the ashes of our consulate were still smoldering?
• Why wasn’t there a better response to the Ambassador’s request for more security, and why didn’t you personally respond to his communications?  He was your personal representative to Libya, not Hillary Clinton’s.

Until we get honest, thorough, and forthright answers to these questions, you’re going to get hammered by anyone who cares that Americans were left twisting in the wind.  Grow up and start doing the hard parts of your bloody job or step aside and let an adult take over.