We’re at war, but let’s talk about sex instead

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and sex. Meanwhile, over at The Week, Damon Linker asks plaintively, “Why won’t anyone admit that America is fighting five wars?” The short answer is that although the next president will inherit an ugly and dangerous world situation, it doesn’t serve the interests of any players to talk about it before the election.

Trump has focused on immigration, political correctness and other domestic issues. His foreign policy, to the extent that he has one, seems to boil down to leaving other countries alone unless they cause trouble, and bombing them into oblivion if they do. That doesn’t leave him much to talk about. Hillary Clinton doesn’t want to talk about our military/ diplomatic messes because she had a hand in them. She likes to talk about her experience as secretary of State but not so much about her accomplishments, because those aren’t anything to write home about.

In Syria, where we mentioned a “red line,” things have gotten much worse. Hundreds of thousands have died, an exodus of refugees has destabilized politics in Europe, and Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be well on the way to dismantling America’s post- Cold War dominance in the region.

Iran openly mocks the U. S. as it harasses our vessels and even seizes our boats and sailors. Saudi Arabia is embroiled in a ( U. S.-supported) war in Yemen that isn’t going well. The Islamic State terrorist group remains a threat in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.

In once- peaceful Libya, where the Bush administration had brokered a deal in which dictator Moammar Gadhafi gave up his weapons of mass destruction, things have also gone to hell. Then- Secretary of State Clinton and the Europeans led an effort to remove Gadhafi. But instead of a peaceful, pro- Western state, we got more problems with terrorist networks and another wave of refugees flooding Europe.

In Asia, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has pronounced the United States a “loser” and decided to side with China — a move Foreign Policy calls “a disaster for the United States.”

A different Democratic presidential nominee — former senator James Webb, say, or even Sen. Bernie Sanders — could separate himself from Obama’s policies and their results. But Clinton can’t. Obama’s policies, and their results, are Clinton’s as well.

In a healthier society, a free press would be talking about these issues whether the candidates wanted to or not. But in today’s society, the press doesn’t want to make things tougher for Clinton. The next president will likely confront a much uglier and more dangerous world than existed in 2008. And the 2016 campaign will have done nothing to prepare the nation for the decisions that must be made. Thanks, candidates. Thanks, press.