First, brava! This is a historic moment and you will be credited for realizing it.

When Qaddafi himself is finally removed, you should of course make a public statement before the cameras wherever you are, even in the driveway of your vacation house. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment.

The most important phrase is: “successful strategy.” …

This is a very big moment historically and for you. History will tell your part in it. You are vindicated.

That’s an email from Sidney Blumenthal to Hillary Clinton, dated Aug. 22, 2011 – the day the Qaddafi government in Libya fell to the U.S.-supported rebels.

We know now, of course, that the fall of Qaddafi was an unmitigated disaster for American interests, as it replaced an (admittedly awful) American-aligned regime with what turned out to be chaos and open control by the local Al Qaeda affiliate and ISIS of large swaths of that broken country.

And yes, the Qaddafi regime was aligned with the United States. For better or worse we had made our peace with the Libyan dictator after two decades of hostility – and doing so did bring us benefits. Qaddafi agreed to give up his WMD program and he cooperated with us against Al Qaeda, which was recruiting lots of Libyans to fight against us in Iraq. It may have been a distasteful bargain for the Bush administration to make, but it was made. And with no provocation other than Qaddafi appeared weak in the face of a jihadist revolt in the eastern half of the country, that bargain was abandoned by Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration in favor of what we ultimately got – a jihadist terror state and four dead Americans in Benghazi just more than a year after Blumenthal’s congratulatory email.

There is more. The irony runs so thick you might choke on it.

Do not skimp on the reasons in the US interest behind the successful strategy: We prevented a humanitarian tragedy on a vast scale. … The US has demonstrated its principled belief in the rule of law and acted on the basis of the United Nations resolution. We have supported the legitimate aspirations of the Libyan people for democracy and freedom. We have ousted a murderous dictator who has been terrorism, civil war throughout Africa and a prop for dictators elsewhere. By acting in Libya we have helped advance the cause of democracy and freedom throughout the Arab world. … We have put Assad on notice that the sands of time have run out for him as well. Our successful strategy in Libya stands as a warning that our strategy will work again.

You might remember the Left’s never-ending assault on George W. Bush for appearing under a “Mission Accomplished” banner on a warship after the principal combat phase of the Iraq War was over. If this email doesn’t stand as a counter to that ugly gloating, nothing does.

Hillary Clinton simply has no credible argument in her favor for the presidency of the United States.

Oh – and by the way, this message surfaced not from Clinton’s legally-required email disclosures, but Blumenthal’s. Were it up to Hillary, none of us would ever have seen it.