Inexcusable
"I stood next to President Obama as the Marines carried those flag-draped caskets off the plane at Andrews. I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters and the wives left alone to raise their children.
"I did not see these requests. They did not come to me. I did not approve them. I did not deny them."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
That impassioned testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington relating to the anniversary-September 11 attacks against the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya did her no credit. It was an exercise in planned bathos. Furthermore, she cannot, on the one hand, insist that she took full responsibility for what had occurred, with the deaths of four American diplomats at the consulate, while on the other hand insisting that no one could be held responsible for the manner in how the situation unfolded.
Her declaration of personal pain at commiserating with the families of the dead, as though her emotive sympathy cleared her of all responsibility, despite her empathic reiteration of having taken upon herself full responsibility for the situation, is nothing short of absurd. It is a lesson in awkward obfuscation, utter denial. Much, much better if she had simply admitted the entire situation represented a truly unfortunate lack of adequate diligence.
And then, had she done so, Ron Paul's verbal whiplashing would have appeared redundant. A humble and regretful admission of having neglected Harry Truman's stopped buck scenario, might have offered her some leeway; everyone makes errors. It's just that hers was a very costly one - for other people's lives, which is what makes it so inexcusable, as Mr. Paul said.
It was a situation that should never have occurred. And that it did was a startling admission of sloppy administration; vigilance that was needed was absent. The State Department decision to relegate security to Libyan nationals rather than American guards, aligned with the unforgivably slack intelligence in Washington, and the continual sloughing off of Ambassador Chris Stevens's appeals represented a stunning failure.
Compounded by the insistence that this was not foreseeable, that it was an unruly crowd of protesters, raging about the U.S.-produced video deriding the Prophet Mohammed, a clumsy film by an American-Egyptian Coptic Christian who attempted to portray it as a production that originated with a Jewish producer. Absolutely not a well-planned and -armed attack by Islamists hungering for the opportunity to humble America and take a few trophies in the process.
"With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided they would go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator", was her snappy rejoinder to being pressed for an intelligent response.
There was no respect intended, nor taken in her response. It was an ignoble response. A gruff I'm-still-in-charge statement. One that evaded a responsible answer to a reasonable query. One geared to make it appear as though her interlocutors were falsifying the situation when it was all just so simple and unavoidable. Her impetuous of-the-moment response was accomplished with the continual note-glancing belying its spontaneity.
If Hillary Clinton has plans to return to the political arena after her otherwise-credible stint as Secretary of State, this performance, will come back to haunt her.
Labels: Conflict, Controversy, Crisis Politics, Islamism, Libya, Terrorism, United States
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, January 24, 2013
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