The Day Obama’s Presidency Died

From Richard Fernandez at PJ Media:

The curious thing about September 11, 2012 — the day of the Benghazhi attack — is that for some reason it marks the decline of the Obama presidency as clearly as a milepost. We are told by the papers that nothing much happened on that day. A riot in a far-away country. A few people killed. And yet … it may be coincidental, but from that day the administration’s foreign policy seemed inexplicably hexed. The Arab Spring ground to a halt. The secretary of State “resigned.” The CIA director was cast out in disgrace. Not long after, Obama had to withdraw his red line in Syria. Al-Qaeda, whose eulogy he had pronounced, appeared with disturbing force throughout Africa, South Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. Almost as if on cue, Russia made an unexpected return to the world stage, first in Syria, then in the Iranian nuclear negotiations.

Worse was to follow. America’s premier intelligence organization, the National Security Agency, was taken apart in public and the man who took its secrets, Edward Snowden, decamped to Moscow with a laptop full of secrets. But it was all just a curtain raiser to the dismemberment of Ukraine and the disaster in Eastern Europe:

Ninety percent of voters in a key industrial region in eastern Ukraine came out in favor of sovereignty Sunday, pro-Russian insurgents said in announcing preliminary results of a twin referendum that is certain to deepen the turmoil in the country.
Roman Lyagin, election chief of the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic, said around 75 percent of the Donetsk region’s 3 million or so eligible voters cast ballots, and the vast majority backed self-rule.

The Ukraine has now been effectively partitioned. The Obama administration talk about inflicting “consequences” and “costs” on Russia turned out to be empty. Almost as if to add insult to injury, Iran has declared victory in Syria over Obama. “‘We have won in Syria,’ said Alaeddin Borujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee and an influential government insider. ‘The regime will stay. The Americans have lost it.’”

And still there’s no acknowledgement of anything being fundamentally wrong.

Well, they say those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it.

All of this is conjecture, but conjecture in the same way that the New York Times argues there is nothing to Benghazi. Absent testimony and the disclosure of records, Benghazi remains a null value, something unmeasured. We don’t know what it is, any more than a blank address field in a database; we only know we don’t know what it is.

So let me insert a guess into the field. Suppose Benghazi was the night when the administration’s secret policy fell apart. In one devastating attack Obama — and Hillary — realized they had been double-crossed and their whole theory had been a dream. In an instant it was plain they could not control the jihad from the inside.

That setback, by itself, was not necessarily a bad thing. Commanders in chief can make mistakes so why couldn’t Hillary and Obama just admit they had this theory but it didn’t work in practice and just learn from it?

Because they had pursued the policy secretly and possibly illegally. Because of 2012. Because like Hirohito, Obama could do no wrong, so there was nothing but to protect the Throne of Heaven from the accusation of fallibility and the guilt of cover-up. So they lied.

Yep, and they have been lying ever since.

He concludes:

The lie is much more dangerous than the truth. America can live with an Obama mistake. But it can’t live with an Obama who cannot acknowledge his mistakes.