Eight years after we elected the president who was going to “heal the nation” and bring us “Hope and Change,” little has changed that isn’t for the worse. The most recent attack – nearly weekly at this point – is especially poignant since it occurred to our oldest ally, France, who has suffered three massive massacres in the past year.

I hope you’ll remember that we could not have won our American Revolution without the help of France, who, like ourselves, is a Republic that rejected their monarchy a few years after we did. In fact, France is the only major European nation we have not been at war with. That this Radical Islamic Terrorist attack happened on Bastille Day – their 4th of July – is grotesque.

I’ve actually strolled down that very same crowded street in Nice for Bastille Day. That memory is now very bittersweet for me as I somehow remember the faces of the delighted children eating ice cream and watching fireworks. There is very little I can add to my outrage of yet another violent tragedy, other than to say that we, the sons and daughters of Liberty, are undeniably engaged in a World War … and yet we have no plans – no strategic objectives – to ever win it.
A classic example of this complete lack of seriousness is the crassness of the lawless stance of the current administration towards the architect of our failed diplomacy. The most basic, fundamental foundation of a nation of laws is the idea that everyone is subject to the same rules. There are no monarchs in America, no aristocracies who can flaunt justice because of their social rank. It’s one of the main reasons we – and the French – fought our Revolutions. Yet this old fashioned belief has – once again – been placed on its head by the actions of Hillary with her email server.

I was once the Command Security Manager of my Navy squadron during the very same time I visited Nice. It was a job no one wanted because if you messed up – even by accident – you would be court martialed. I was only dealing with confidential and secret documents – not top secret – and I can tell you that if I had left my documents in any unauthorized place, I could have gone to jail. The FBI Director confirmed this in his briefing, pointing out that if anyone in the government ever did this in the future, he would be vigorously prosecuted.

Not Hillary.

Let us be clear, the reason Hillary put her emails on this illegal server was to avoid the very scrutiny that every official is obliged to when he or she works for the federal government. She felt entitled to maintain a degree of control that was outside, and above, the law. She showed clear intent to subvert justice in the act of setting up the server which was in violation of the rules. She also showed intent when she destroyed over 30,000 emails in such a way that even the FBI couldn’t recover them.

Hillary’s emails contained information that was even higher than top secret, reportedly of the sort that deals with the identity of our secret agents. Can you imagine being a spy working deep undercover against the Russians, ISIS or the Chinese, only to discover that your identity was revealed by the secretary of state to the world at large? The FBI confirmed Hillary’s server wasn’t even as secure as Gmail. They also confirmed she sent these documents to scores of people who didn’t have the appropriate clearances. In my entire 23 military career, I never ever saw information that was anywhere near as sensitive as her emails, yet she hid them in an unsecured basement and disseminated them to a bunch of political hacks. The FBI admitted it is likely that many of our adversaries have that data now. How many of our undercover agents have lost their lives because of Hillary’s arrogance? We will never know.

Though not as bad as the lives she wantonly endangered, certainly more apparent are the whoppers she’s told to the American people. The FBI proved she lied when she said she only used one device, lied when she said she’d never sent or received classified material, lied when she said none of her emails were marked classified at the time, lied when she said she turned over all her work related emails … and lied about Benghazi. The FBI director concluded she was incompetent and careless … otherwise he would have had to indict her.

The FBI proved that Hillary gravely jeopardized our national security. Now she wants to be commander-in-chief. No wonder we’re losing the World War against Radical Islamic Terrorism.

Belton is a Republican from District 112, serving in the Georgia House of Representatives.