OPINION:
The Benghazi massacre most certainly deserves to be a subject Hillary Rodham Clinton should be held accountable for and never allowed to forget. Yet there is another, even more recklessly dangerous thing that will affect Mrs. Clinton’s designs on the White House: her attitude in general toward America’s enemies.
This past week was a horrible one for decent human beings everywhere and humanity in general, all engineered by America’s main enemies — Islamist terrorists, their foot soldiers and supporters. The Australian cafe hostage-taking and murders; the massacre of children by the Taliban at a school in Pakistan; al Qaeda’s attack on a school bus in Yemen, killing at least 15 schoolgirls. These and other attacks on civilization engineered by our enemies continue to appall the world.
As usual, our enemies target the innocent. As has been the case historically, enemies of America are, without exception, tyrants, focused on world domination, mass murder, genocide and the final snuffing out of freedom around the globe.
Whether it be European fascists, communists and Marxists of the 20th century or dictators, oligarchs and Islamists of the 21st century, the enemies of the United States all have something in common — the singular desire to smash everything of import to the civilized world and the destruction of the individual.
Yet despite the historical record and our modern-day existential fight against Islamist savages, Mrs. Clinton, a woman who deems herself worthy of being president of the United States, has declared that we must “respect” and “empathize” with our nation’s enemies.
On Dec. 3, Mrs. Clinton gave a speech at Georgetown University, within which she lectured: “This is what we call smart power. Using every possible tool and partner to advance peace and security. Leaving no one on the sidelines. Showing respect even for one’s enemies. Trying to understand, in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view. Helping to define the problems, determine the solutions. That is what we believe in the 21st century will change — change the prospects for peace.”
AUDIO: Tammy Bruce with Andy Parks
As we have seen this past week, our enemies are savages or lunatics, and usually a combination of the two. The Islamic State, which we have allowed to continue to function, inspired an Iranian Islamist-supporting refugee in Australia to take hostages at a Sydney cafe ending in the murder of two innocent people and the terrorizing of that entire nation in a 16-hour seize.
Someone should ask Mrs. Clinton, what part of that hostage-taking Islamist man’s thinking should we “respect”?
In Pakistan, the Islamist Taliban attacked a school with the intention of murdering as many children as possible, and they did, killing 145 people, most of them children.
CNN reported this from one of the teenaged survivors: “They shot me as soon as they came in,” says 17-year-old survivor Sadeel Ahmed, speaking from his hospital bed. “We tried to run. I was shot in my shoulder. The people they came, they had no sense of humanity in them. They killed little children. Muslims would not do this.”
Indeed. This young Muslim man grasps the lack of humanity in these savages. These same people are the enemies of the United States and civilization everywhere. I’m trying to ascertain exactly what part of the desire to murder children Mrs. Clinton, a former secretary of state and would-be president, thinks we should “empathize” with.
Mrs. Clinton’s repugnant embracement of moral relativism, her seeming acceptance of the death of right and wrong, also does not help the schoolgirls murdered in Yemen this week when two car bombs destroyed their school bus. Our enemy al Qaeda is blamed for that massacre.
Sorry, Hillary, I do not wish upon myself or anyone else the degrading and inhuman experience of respecting the people who did that to children.
I’m sure supporters of Mrs. Clinton might try to argue that she wasn’t speaking of terrorists. Or of Vladimir Putin, responsible for so much terror in Ukraine and the shooting down of a commercial passenger jet. Or of Bashar Assad, who purportedly is still gassing his own citizens. Or of China, engaging in wholesale cyberwarfare against the United States. Or of North Korea, which continues to enslave a million of its own people in work camps. Or of Iran, the largest exporter of terrorism in the world.
So, of which “enemies” was she speaking? Which enemy of the United States deserves to be respected and empathized with?
Normal human beings should be extremely concerned if they find any capability of feeling respect for or empathy with the enemies we face today. I am proud that I find repulsive the notion that we should even try to relate to genocidal, child-killing fiends. But Mrs. Clinton not only believes in this loathsome notion, she spoke of it publicly, and clearly believes it should be our national policy.
I do want to thank Mrs. Clinton for one thing: being so self-obsessed she unwittingly revealed the dead heart of the left, and how their role in the death of right and wrong has obliterated for them any sense of decency and justice.
Yes, Benghazi was and is a horror. It was the result of a mentality that insists we embrace the world’s evildoers by appealing to the worst in ourselves. Mrs. Clinton may have crossed that bridge, but the rest of us still have a chance to kick it to the curb.
• Tammy Bruce is a radio talk-show host, author and Fox News contributor.
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