Benghazi

Neither President Barack Obama nor Secretary of State Hillary Clinton deliberately lied in their official pronouncements in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack in either an attempt to cover up malfeasance by the State Department or to protect themselves from political consequences.  

A lie is deliberate prevarication with the specific intent to deceive or mislead.

Government leaders mislead or withhold information from their citizens at one time or another for reasons noble and patriotic or ignoble and base.  

Examples of government officials lying to the public abound. 

Richard Nixon lied by omission by withholding details of his secret plan to end the war in Vietnam to aid his reelection campaign and again about Watergate to save his administration.  

Ronald Reagan lied about whether his administration traded arms for hostages to fund a secret war in Nicaragua. The circumstances by which 58 Americans were held for 444 days before being released an hour after Reagan was sworn in remain shrouded in mystery and have never been disclosed - including the details of secret meetings in Paris in the summer of 1979 between members of Reagan's team, including former CIA head George H.W. Bush and Caspar Weinberger and representatives of the Ayatollah Khomein. We will never know what really happened because the Reagan administration records of those meetings were destroyed.  

Bill Clinton lied about having sexual relations with "that woman".

The British government refused for 70 years to release information about Winston Churchill's role in destroying the French Naval fleet as a ploy to bring the U.S. into WWII.

All for reasons noble or base. 

At the time of the Benghazi attack, relations between the U.S. and Libya were greatly improved. In 2006, the Bush administration had rescinded the U.S. designation of Libya as a state sponsor of terrorism.  
In the hours immediately following the attack, there were conflicting reports, fragmentary information and scant reliable intelligence available as to what happened and who was responsible. The first official pronouncements reflected confusion borne of what Secretary Clinton called, “the fog of war”.  

Following the Benghazi attacks, the Libyan government issued a formal apology and pledged assistance in finding the perpetrators; assistance that was needed.  

At the same time,  the Obama administration’s State Department, led by Hillary Clinton, was trying to preserve diplomatic relations with the Libyan government. Thus, what emerged in public statements over the next three days  were not intentional lies intended to mislead but rather, a public, albeit halting, search for language that condemned the violence but did not rebrand the Libyan government as a responsible party complicit in terrorism and murder.  

What remains most difficult for many to reconcile is the desire for immediate revenge through military intervention as opposed to the potential for greater long term gains through cooperative relations with the host government. 

The currency of diplomacy is cautions and reasoned language, not loose, bellicose rhetoric. When literally every word matters, subtlety and nuance mean far more than threats and hollow sabre rattling.

Within 48-72 hours of the attack, as further information became available, the administration’s language became more precise. The singular “act of terror”,  became the operative wording while the President’s resistance to using the phrase, “terrorist attack” drew criticism from many partisan quarters. A fine distinction but a necessary one to preserve and protect diplomatic relations with the Libyan government. 

The administration withheld the public release of intelligence information in an attempt to protect U.S. interests internationally and to secure the assistance of the Libyan government in apprehending the murderers, not to protect themselves as individual actors. 

There have been many previous attacks on U.S. embassies, (13 attacks and 60 killed during the Bush administration alone), yet none have generated anything remotely resembling the level of scrutiny of Benghazi. This is a function borne not of lies, but of of the simple fact that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were involved, both of whom have implacable enemies within the opposition party. 

Depending on the source of information, there have been 21 formal investigations into what happened at Benghazi. That includes 8 public hearings, two in the Senate and six in the House. That is one fewer than the 22 held after the 9/11 attack on the WTC and 20 more than were conducted following either Watergate or Iran contra. This is an affront to any concept of proportionality and fundamental fairness. 

Last October, before the most recent eleven-hour public inquisition even began, House majority leader Kevin McCarthy conceded the purpose of the hearings was to bring Clinton’s poll numbers down.

What purpose was served by forcing Ms. Clinton to endure questions such as the sequence from the congresswoman (her name escapes me at the moment but she was the one who stacked the emails on the table and announced that she had counted them all), who asked the Secretary whether she went home the night of the attack, if she was alone at the time and if she remained alone for the remainder of the night? There is no condoning that level of impudence. 

Those who charge that the Secretary of State ordered the military to "stand down" rather than engage in a fire fight misunderstand the chain of command. The diplomatic corps has no authority to issue orders to any member of the military regardless of rank or circumstance. 

Throughout the hearings, Secretary Clinton has repeatedly expressed regret and accepted responsibility notwithstanding that shortcomings in security were a direct consequence of House Republicans denying requests for increases in the diplomatic corps security budget and actually slashing that budget.

Not one single investigation has concluded that Hillary Clinton committed any personal or professional acts of malfeasance.

Yet the ceaseless and unseemly denigrating of her integrity continues unabated. 

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are intelligent, committed people of good faith who have devoted their lives to public service.  To brand them as duplicitous liars or as anything less than well-intentioned patriots is short sighted, unreasonable partisanship.

To those unable to appreciate the humanity of the moment when Secretary Clinton said of this incident, “I lost more sleep over this than any of you”,  you have excised compassion from your hearts in favor of unbridled and unprincipled hatred. Whether for reasons noble or base that is a damning shame.

HL October 31, 2016