Tea at Trianon: Warmongering

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Warmongering

From Chronicles:

Hillary’s overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi (conspicuously absent from her San Diego speech) has turned that country into an ISIS stronghold. Her cackle over his murder, echoing, tellingly, Julius Caesar—“we came, we saw, he died”—speaks volumes about her weird vainglory and bloody-mindedness.

Hillary pushed for a Security Council resolution to allow U.N. forces to relieve the beleaguered city of Benghazi during Gaddafi’s last days—then promptly sandbagged the other members of the Security Council by superseding the resolution’s mandate, using it as carte blanche to hunt down Gaddafi and bring about regime change. Russia and China, which could have vetoed the resolution, but did not believing (naively) in Washington’s good will, felt deeply betrayed. Indeed, her perfidy and aggression may well have convinced Vladimir Putin that he needed to replace then-president Dmitri Medvedev—with himself.

As for Benghazi, the original casus belli, it is well-known how little Hillary cared about the security of the U.S. diplomatic mission there, let alone the city as a whole. A Fox News report released May 12th sheds light on Hillary’s negligence and incompetence: a member of the U.S. Air Force squadron at Aviano airbase in Italy said he and his fellow airmen were waiting for the order to conduct a rescue effort, but it never came. The report also quotes a certain “Mike,” a member of an anti-terror quick reaction force: “We had hours and hours and hours to do something . . . and we did nothing.” (Read more.)