SoS Hillary Goes Into Dry Dock

The battleship SoS (Secretary of State) Hillary moved out of active service and into dry dock this week.  Will she get the barnacles scrapped off her hull and a new coat of paint to be followed by a re-launching in the next few years? Time will tell as only the Admiralty and her hairdresser know for sure.

But one thing about her retiring from her post caught my attention. It wasn’t so much the fact that most of the news media lauded her accomplishments as the SoS, all that went according to the script, it was how the media used her previous week’s feisty outbursts at the Senate hearings on last September 11^th attacks on the U.S. embassy in Bengahazi, Libya. Ms. Clinton’s outbursts and push-backs were used as evidence of her determined character, her resolve, her iron will. Especially her retort to Senator Ron Johnson:

“With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans,” she said, raising her voice. “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?”

Hmm, what difference does the root cause of an action or event matter? I think in the real world of action-reaction, cause-and-effect, it matters quite a bit. Sticking with the marine theme:

When that puny tugboat called the Titanic struck a North Atlantic iceberg and sank in 1912, did the world shrug its collective shoulders and sigh,”Oh bother -  iceberg, German submarine, faulty cardboard hull material - what difference does it make? It’s on the bottom of the ocean now. Let’s just move on.”

And remember that pesky Gulf of Mexico oil spill of a few years back?  "Who really cares if it was BP’s fault or that of Transocean, Haliburton or the U.S. Minerals Management Service? The root cause makes no difference in how we go forward and try to prevent future disasters, does it?"

Fagetaboutit seems a strange philosophy for running the country’s international affairs. But not to 60 Minutes and the others, apparently.