I went to see 13 Hours on opening night in Dallas. It’s a visually beautiful and deeply moving film that tells the truth on a topic of urgent importance. It depicts the effects on the ground of America’s feckless foreign policy under Barack Obama, as Hillary Clinton implemented it — the same foreign policy which she will carry on if elected president. Liberal internationalism, as practiced by jaundiced, pro-Muslim elites, has only one likely outcome: Americans spending their courage, treasure, blood and tears in the bottomless sands of the desert.

It’s possible to find 13 Hours disappointing, if what you were hoping for was campaign agitprop that would fix the blame where it squarely belongs — on Obama and Clinton. I would have enjoyed seeing some solid finger-pointing at the deeply guilty parties, but as a lover of cinematic art, I am glad this film didn’t do that. Those Americans who died deserve a better epitaph, a film whose politics are decently draped, left for the intelligent viewer to work out on his own. Had Steven Spielberg made this movie, he would have done exactly what he did in Saving Private Ryan: spell out for the moviegoer exactly what he should think and feel at any given moment — doing all but flashing titles cards that read “OK, cry now,” “Please pound your armrests with frustration,” and “Now squeeze your spouse’s hand affectionately.”

I’m also glad as a citizen that Michael Bay chose to make subtler movie than Spielberg’s. The deadly farce of Benghazi, unlike the Normandy Invasion, is too little known by the public, and a film that connected all the dots that led to the Oval Office would have found a much smaller audience. Its release would have been restricted, and it would have played like one of Dinesh D’Souza’s worthy films to theaters full of activists. Benghazi is bigger than that, and the movie that tells its story of courage and sacrifice deserves a solid, commercial success — as 13 Hours is proving, I’m glad to say.

Scathing agitprop is much needed, and it will come later, once this film has reminded Americans exactly what happened and why it matters. I am confident that superpacs supporting the Republican nominee will purchase footage from 13 Hours, and use it with devastating effect against Hillary Clinton, one architect of this tragedy. I look forward to seeing those ads turn up on Youtube, and forwarding them widely. But first let us mourn the dead.

Make no mistake, if Benghazi had happened on George Bush’s watch, we would have seen a very different film. A careless intervention to promote “democracy” in a godforsaken Muslim hellhole that ended in bloody anarchy, and led to the murders of four Americans, including a serving U.S. ambassador. … Just imagine if Michael Moore had gotten his digits on something like that. He would have intercut footage of Bush playing golf or chuckling at a joke with stills of dead Americans and terrified Arab civilians. He’d have taken the persistent rumors that Stevens was raped by an Arab mob and run with them, leaping from high moral dudgeon to low, vulgar “prison film” humor as it suited him. Moore would have treated the movie’s viewers as like-minded sophomores gathered around the bong in an Oberlin dorm for two hours of tut-tutting, sneering, and slapping themselves on the back. By the end, no one would have learned a thing, but they would walk out feeling fantastic.

Instead, this movie sends you out with damp eyes and heavy heart, and the firm resolve as a citizen to think more deeply about what our country is called to do in this fallen world. No, you don’t get a chance to understand the enemy. The film makes no pretense of opening up for us a culture that praises child suicide bombers, and traffics in captured sex slaves. The Islamists in this film who wave ISIS flags and recklessly pour out their lives in the face of American firepower are not amenable to our empathy. Nor are their countries liberal democracies-in-waiting, which just need a strong push from U.S. soldiers to get back on track. They are on a dark, doomed track all their own, which began in the seventh century and cannot be changed by our efforts — except our prayers. (For more from the author of “13 Hours Could Be More Politically Significant Because It Doesn’t Politicize Benghazi” please click HERE)

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