INNOCENTS ABROAD: WHO CARES ABOUT BENGHAZI, ANYWAY?

How embarrassed I was when I saw photographs of the president of my country bowing to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.  Having lived for six years in the Kingdom and having met and interacted with a couple of that land's some 5,000 princes of the royal blood, I had passed the muster of protocol by simply nodding and politely shaking hands while saying, "Sir, I am honored to meet you."

As citizens of a republic, we do not acknowledge any sort of fealty to royalty by deed or by word.  Indeed, it was a quandary in the early history of our republic as to how our presidents would be addressed.  Appropriately, the practice was sanctioned that we would refer to the holder of our highest office as "Mr. President."  This custom embodies the spirit of a republic in which, at least theoretically, no man is above the law.

Unfortunately, it is more and more common to find authorities at the highest levels of our government who seem totally unfamiliar with history and how their lack of knowledge, along with the  symbolism which they mangle or ignore, redounds to the disadvantage of their fellow citizens.  A case in point is that of Lieutenant  General (retired) James Clapper, who serves the present administration in Washington as Director of National Intelligence.

It was General Clapper who, during the ill-fated "Egyptian Spring" of early 2011, demonstrated the depth and breadth of his "intelligence" by defining the Muslim Brotherhood as an "umbrella term for a variety of movements...a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence...."  Oh, my goodness, where was the good general when the political science courses he received credit for at the University of Maryland and St. Mary's were covering  the Middle East?  Apparently, the general was never familiar with the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood: "The Koran is our law, and Jihad is our way."  Neither, it seems, was he familiar with numerous acts by the Brotherhood against secular Egyptian governments, including the assassination of Anwar Sadat.

With greenhorns like General Clapper riding herd on our Middle East intelligence, it is remarkable that there have not been even more blunders, as if Benghazi itself was not failure enough to deep-six most administrations. Would it not be feasible for our National Intelligence Director to have been considering what the role of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood might have been in next-door Libya? Was Clapper even aware that there was an American consulate located in Benghazi?  And, will our government ever come clean with its citizens as to what actually happened at Benghazi?

In 100 years hence, what will historians considering the American Republic have to say about its citizens and their government?  That they were derailed by contentious social issues and neglected basics such as foreign affairs, the economy and defense; and, along the way, allowed bumblers and stumblers to shape crucial policy?  That the great goal of "E Pluribus Unum" was shattered by greed and selfishness, so that the Republic, splintered into a melange of snarling interest groups, lapsed into a system of autocracy and discarded its constitution?  May God forbid!

Wisdom is before him that hath understanding; but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth,
Proverbs 17: 24