An old-time trial lawyer once said, “When your case is weak,
shout louder!”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shouted louder when asked
about the Obama administration’s story last fall that the September
11th attack on the U.S. ambassador’s quarters in Benghazi was due
to an anti-Islamic video that someone in the United States had put
on the Internet, and thereby provoked a protest that escalated into
violence.
She shouted: “We had four dead Americans. Was it because of a
protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who
decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this
point, does it make?”
Students of propaganda may admire the skill with which she
misdirected people’s attention. But those of us who are still
old-fashioned enough to think that the truth matters cannot applaud
her success.
Let’s go back to square one.
After the attack on the American ambassador’s quarters in
Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other
Americans, the Obama administration immediately blamed it on the
anti-Islamic video.
Moreover, this version of what happened was not just a passing
remark. It was a story that the administration kept repeating
insistently. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice repeated that story on five
different television talk shows on the same Sunday. President Obama
himself repeated the same story at the United Nations. The man who
put the anti-Islamic video on the Internet was arrested for a
parole violation, creating more media coverage to keep attention on
this theme.
“What difference, at this point, does it make?” Secretary
Clinton now asks. What difference did it make at the time?
Obviously the Obama administration thought it made a difference,
with an election coming up. Prior to the attack, the
administration’s political theme was that Barack Obama had killed
Osama bin Laden (with an assist from the Navy SEALs), vanquished Al
Qaeda and was now in the process of putting the terrorist threat
behind us.
To have the attack in Benghazi be seen as a terrorist attack —
and a devastating one — would have ruined this picture, with an
election coming up.
The key question that remains unanswered to this day is: What
speck of evidence is there that the attack in Benghazi was due to
the much-discussed video or that there was ever any protest
demonstration outside the ambassador’s quarters?
If there is no evidence whatever, then the whole attempt to say
that a protest over a video escalated into an attack was a
deliberate hoax by people who knew better.
There is no point in the administration saying that they did not
have all the facts about the attack immediately. All the facts may
never be known. But the real question is: Did you have even a
single fact that would substantiate your repeated claims that some
video led to a protest in Benghazi that got out of hand and led to
the attack?
Interestingly, Hillary Clinton herself was not featured in this
campaign, even though as Secretary of State she was a key figure.
Hillary was not about to create video footage that could come back
to haunt her if she runs for President of the United States in
2016.
In a larger context, the Benghazi attack showed that you cannot
unilaterally end the “war on terror” or the terrorists’ war on us,
by declaring victory.
For years, the Bush administration’s phrase “war on terror” was
avoided like the plague by the Obama administration, even if that
required the Fort Hood massacre to be classified as “workplace
violence.” But, no matter how clever the rhetoric, reality
nevertheless rears its ugly head.
Once the September 11th attack in Benghazi is seen for what it
was — a highly coordinated and highly successful operation by
terrorists who were said to have been vanquished — that calls into
question the Obama administration’s Middle East foreign policy.
That is why it still matters.
Photo: UPI
