Of the many missed opportunities during the first Democratic Presidential debate, none were larger than the failure to challenge Hillary Clinton's description of her record regarding Libya.

"“We had a murderous dictator Qaddafi who had American blood on his hands, threatening to massacre large numbers of the Libyan people,” Clinton said."...I think President Obama made the right decision at the time. And the Libyan people had a free election the first time since 1951. You know what, they voted for moderates, they voted with the hope of democracy. Because of the Arab Spring, because of a lot of other things. There was turmoil to be followed."

What Hillary said is largely correct, but it is only a very small part of the story, and for some reason Bernie Sanders and the other candidates let it slide without comment.
To give you an idea of how deceptive Hillary's description of the Libya situation, consider how similar it was to President Bush's description of Iraq in 2005.

Just over two-and-a-half years ago, Iraq was in the grip of a cruel dictator who had invaded his neighbors, sponsored terrorists, pursued and used weapons of mass destruction, murdered his own people, and for more than a decade, defied the demands of the United Nations and the civilized world. Since then, the Iraqi people have assumed sovereignty over their country, held free elections, drafted a democratic constitution, and approved that constitution in a nationwide referendum.

Bush's description of Iraq was also mostly true, but just like Hillary's spin of Libya, it leaves off so much that it basically amounts to a lie.
"There was turmoil to be followed," is an understatement. Libya has become a failed state, where "Rule of the Gun" is the reality, and ISIS is on the rise. Before 2011, Libya was a stable nation with the highest standard of living in Africa.
Ignoring all those facts amounts to denial of reality and consequences to our actions.

And that is the problem with our political system today. Almost every single presidential candidate, as well as the vast majority of our news media, live in a fantasy land where there is no accountability for failure and results take a backseat to unrealistic dogma.

GWOT Insanity

Last week, in response to Obama's decision to delay withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan and indefinitely prolonging our 14-year long war, Veterans for Peace published an open letter.

President Obama’s decision to prolong the U.S. led war in Afghanistan only ensures U.S. responsibility for more death and destruction. Veterans For Peace condemns the decision and calls on the U.S. public to say no to more war. Today, President Obama commented, ‘I do not support the idea of endless war, and I have repeatedly argued against marching into open-ended military conflicts that do not serve our core security interests.’ But Veterans For Peace asks, what is this policy but endless war? The U.S. has been fighting in Afghanistan for over fourteen years. What can fewer than 10,000 service members do that more than 100,000 could not? Al-Qaeda is a non-factor in Afghanistan and the Taliban are Afghans. U.S. presence in Afghanistan ensures more Afghan deaths and delay in reduction of violence so that civil society can be rebuilt and peace and justice can begin to take hold. War, Mr. President, has not worked.

The truth of statement is beyond question. It is so obvious that only someone willfully blinded by politics could deny it.
What's more, war hasn't just failed the narco-state of Afghanistan, where the Taliban control or contest 70 districts today. War has also failed in Iraq, Libya, and now Syria. In fact, the entire 14 year long War on Terror has been a complete failure by every measure.

Despite all that failure, the politicians in the Democratic Party have failed to offer a more peaceful and realistic vision of how the world should be. For example, even Sanders came out in favor of our failed wars in Afghanistan and Syria.
In fact, Democrats failed to even acknowledge the failure.

Even today, however, few in Washington will own up to the magnitude and implications of those twin failures. The fact that senior officials from both parties, along with a succession of high-ranking military officers, share in responsibility for the various misjudgments and miscalculations made along the way helps to sustain an atmosphere of collective denial. Members of the national security establishment to which Carter belongs — he is the fifth Defense secretary to have presided over these ongoing conflicts — have a common interest in diverting attention from just how badly they have screwed up.

Make no mistake, this failure isn't on the soldiers risking their lives. This failure is a bipartisan political failure. A failure in which the Pentagon is also guilty of enabling and covering up.
The Democratic Party doesn't even have the words to question these monstrous failures. They've dumbed down the debate to the point that all the middle-east complexities have been stripped out. All failures come down to an issue of "being a strong leader" and "making the tough decision", as if the answer for every problem is the quantity of bombs you drop on a country.

GWOT Immorality

Behind the massive foreign policy failure, is the incomprehensible moral failure of it.
Consider this video example.

"Identifying" your enemy by his height is mind-bogglingly insane. Being unable to tell the difference between someone tall and someone being surrounded by children is proof that all of our claims of "surgical strikes" were always lies.
This inconvienent truth is now backed up by a brave whistleblower, who has leaked proof from inside the Pentagon that we always knew nearly 90% of the people we kill are collateral damage.
Despite these facts, morality never seems to enter into the discussion.

What’s given, in other words, is that air strikes are inevitable and without context: simply part of life. They happen all the time. What can you do? Remarkably, the mainstream discussion goes no deeper than this, leaving the world’s combat zones essentially unprotected by anything resembling an international conscience.

It's amazing how we can decide by choice to start a war, make a decision to bomb a target, and still not be "guilty" of doing anything wrong when innocent people are killed. You might be able to understand why the families of the victims might feel differently.
This amoral attitude that infects Washington, the news media, and much of the general public, is probably the fundamental reason for our massive foreign policy failure.

Despite this legacy of engaging in an amoral foriegn policy of death, the Republicans are still far worse than the Democrats.
While the Democrats have dumbed down the debate until it only revolves around the phrase "strong leader", foreign policy debate in Republican Party circles these days has roughly the same subtly and complexity of a group of 7th grade bullies that have been drinking too much Yoo-hoo.
There is no better example of this immorality and decadence than the fact that innocent people were tortured and murdered in our names, and neither political party will hold anyone accountable. The law is simply unenforced. Despite this inexcusable, criminal act, most Americans still support torture and multiple Republican candidates intend to torture again.

Consider this op-ed by John McCain regarding Russia military adventure in Syria.

“There is an opportunity here … to impose significant costs on an adversary that wants to undercut the United States everywhere. It is an opportunity to weaken an anti-American ruler who will always view us as an enemy. … We cannot shy away from confronting Russia in Syria, as Putin expects the administration will do...We should not rule out that U.S. forces could play a limited role in this ground contingent.

Why should we want to go to war with Russia because they are bombing al-Qaeda and its allies? When did al-Qaeda become a group we needed to defend?
Meanwhile, our knee-jerk response to the complete failure of building a "moderate" rebel army is to not bother vetting the rebels we give arms to. Obviously we no longer care if we arm jihadists or not, as long as Russia doesn't like it. This is madness.

And let's not limit our brinksmanship to Russia. We are also doing the same with China.

What on earth makes the United States think China should and will tolerate it when U.S. surface ships trespass on Chinese territory in the South China Sea?
China will never tolerate any military provocation or infringement on sovereignty from the United States or any other country, just as the United States refused to 53 years ago.

Why has Washington decided that a military response should be anything but the last resort? And why do so many regular Americans share this immoral insanity?
At the very least American voters should demand some accountability for these expensive failures. At the very least American voters should demand something other than versions of the same embarrassingly, immoral failure of a foriegn policy.
But until the American public demands more from our elected leaders, until voters stop compromising their values by simply making "pragmatic" choices between lesser evils, until we decide that the world can be something better than horrific, until we decide to stop acting out of fear and ignorance, nothing will change in Washington and the madness will continue.