Are We Safer Now Than Five Years Ago?

I think what I learned from the Benghazi hearings is that our foreign policy goes stupid around election time. The Administration admits that mistakes were made and they are working at fixing the “problems” but I am still struck with the sentiment that the Administration’s concern for how things would look to voters in the upcoming US election killed Ambassador Stevens and three other people. Maybe the State Department should take the month of September off every year as a holiday commemorating the victims. It sure seems they won’t be missed.  As Forrest Gump might say, “Stupid is stupid does”.

I understand that the American people and this Administration wanted to scale back our involvements in foreign countries. The question is whether the rest of the world will allow America to shirk their foreign policy responsibilities. We are looking for an adult in the room and the UN has proven they are not up to the task. It is inevitable that this Administration will be compared to both the Bush and Carter administrations as it tries to find the happy middle ground between interventionism and isolationism. An Administration that is perceived as weak as the Carter administration has a different set of problems than the administration during the Bush years. Our foreign policy may have changed but I am not convinced we are safer. We replaced one set of problems with a different set of problems and called it progress.