Hillary Clinton has 20 direct questions for Trump on her webpage and Twitter. I would like to address number 4 here briefly.

Here is #4: Hillary Clinton ✔@HillaryClinton 4. If you were willing to work with Qaddafi — a known terrorist and dictator — is there anyone you aren’t willing to make a deal with? Who? 12:32 PM — 14 Sep 2016

At this very moment the Obama administration has a de facto truce with Al Queda in Syria.

Is Hillary saying that Qaddafi is worse than the guys who did 9/11? Her team has a hands off policy to Al Queda in Syria right now.

Avoiding conflict with Al Queda in Syria may be the right policy. Syria is a fat mess, to put it mildly. But if you are letting Al Queda slide, you can’t really ramp up criticism of Trump for suggesting he would have tried to work out a deal with Qaddafi in 2010.

Qaddafi was guilty of terrorism against Americans. Al Queda is more guilty of terrorism against America. Whether or not you agree with Clinton on Qaddafi in 2011 or with Kerry on Al Queda in Syria now, Clinton’s question for Donald Trump is clearly utter hypocrisy.

Qaddafi made overatures to Clinton under Obama before his overthrow. Here is an article about how Qaddafi tried to make contact through Dennis Kucinich. It’s hard to image that Libya, Africa more generally, the fight against terrorism, and the European migrant crisis would be in worse shape with Qaddafi or his chosen heir in power than is the case now. Clinton should have taken a step back, not done another regime change so soon after getting rid of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. A compromise with Qaddafi would have been better than the same mistake again (Iraq 2.0, no fixes to any bugs, just more bombs and chaos).

Since Clinton killed Qaddafi and obscenely laughed about it like a sadist with blood lust in a horrifying and disgusting video, terrorist have moved into Libya in force. Terrorist from camps in Libya attacked Europeans in Tunisia, killing 38 people from five countries. The damage to the Tunisian economy, never mind the horrific loss of life, is nothing compared to what terrorists from the post-Qaddafi Libya have done in other countries in Africa.

Conclusion: Clinton screwed up by murdering Qaddafi without congressional approval in order to advance the commerical interest of certain companies, likely including some that also donated to the Clinton Foundation.

Now, she criticizes Trump for pointing out that this was her screw up. Isn’t that what elections are about? Pointing out policy flaws and calling for change? Shouldn’t Trump do that?

Meanwhile, let’s consider Syria right now. One of the main opposition groups to the Syrian regime of Assad is the Al-Nusra Front. In most times and places, most important representatives of this group have usually said they are Al Queda’s arm in Syria. Because the Al-Nusra Front is so close to so many US, Saudi and Turkish allies, there is no way to separate the “good” opposition from the “Osama” faction of the opposition. In other words, Al Queda and the US are on the same side.

At the very least, US forces are not bombing Al-Nusra areas. In the recent cease fire agreement, Russia and Assad left Al-Nursa on the “terrorist” side to drive a wedge between the US (or US allied) back groups and Al-Nusra. Expect to hear a lot about this in the next few weeks.

If the US under Obama is practically working with Al Queda in Syria, where does Clinton get off criticizing Trump for being open to working with a secular dictator like Qadaffi, if there are any such dictators left?

The policy of not attacking or working with terrorists may actually be reasonable or not given the situation. No matter what you think about Libya in 2011 or what you think about Syria now in 2016, there is no way not to work with unseemly and terrible people in the Middle East. Getting out entirely is not what Hillary wants. So, yes, you have to deal with people like Qaddafi, unless you want to deal with ISIS.