Three hundred American and French servicemen in Beirut were killed in an attack by Hezbollah, and while the president vowed that we would not be intimidated or abandon our mission, our troops would not be driven out, etc., all American forces were out of the country in 4 months, and all other international forces in 2 month more. The responsibility was never pinned on anyone in particular, no one was “brought to justice.” The president “accepted full responsibility” for what happened, but there were no consequences for him. Another president ignored repeated warnings of impending attack until 3000 Americans were killed by Al Qaeda terrorists. Even assuming that we were unprepared in Libya, and reacted too slowly, etc., is there nothing strange in people who gave Reagan a pass in 1983, and Bush a pass in 2001, to damn Obama in 2012 for a tragedy that happened on his watch? Five U.S. ambassadors were killed between 1968 and 1979. Scores of foreign service officers have died in the line of duty, very many in the last ten or fifteen years. Meanwhile, McCain and another senator skipped the president’s briefing on Benghazi so that they would not miss the talk shows where they went to complain that they were not being given enough information about the events there. The same folks who voted to reduce the budget for diplomatic security. Not every tragedy, not every screw-up, is a scandal. And politicians are not bound by oath to treat them as such: only anti-administration (whichever administrator) pundits are paid to be scandalmongers. Legislators are paid for a different job. Should they get at the truth, certainly. But their efforts should be exactly the same no matter who is in the White House. Can anyone really believe that they guys would have acted this way if these events had taken place in 2008?
Three hundred American and French servicemen in Beirut were killed in an attack by Hezbollah, and while the president vowed that we would not be intimidated or abandon our mission, our troops would not be driven out, etc., all American forces were out of the country in 4 months, and all other international forces in 2 month more. The responsibility was never pinned on anyone in particular, no one was “brought to justice.” The president “accepted full responsibility” for what happened, but there were no consequences for him. Another president ignored repeated warnings of impending attack until 3000 Americans were killed by Al Qaeda terrorists. Even assuming that we were unprepared in Libya, and reacted too slowly, etc., is there nothing strange in people who gave Reagan a pass in 1983, and Bush a pass in 2001, to damn Obama in 2012 for a tragedy that happened on his watch? Five U.S. ambassadors were killed between 1968 and 1979. Scores of foreign service officers have died in the line of duty, very many in the last ten or fifteen years. Meanwhile, McCain and another senator skipped the president’s briefing on Benghazi so that they would not miss the talk shows where they went to complain that they were not being given enough information about the events there. The same folks who voted to reduce the budget for diplomatic security. Not every tragedy, not every screw-up, is a scandal. And politicians are not bound by oath to treat them as such: only anti-administration (whichever administrator) pundits are paid to be scandalmongers. Legislators are paid for a different job. Should they get at the truth, certainly. But their efforts should be exactly the same no matter who is in the White House. Can anyone really believe that they guys would have acted this way if these events had taken place in 2008?