Benghazi!

There are probably few living Americans who do not know or think that they know the story of what happened on September eleventh of last year at the United States consulate at Benghazi where ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his associates were killed by militants bent on achieving whatever that they could in their collective relentless probing of Americans defenses both here and abroad.

The question has come down to who knew what and when and why did they not do more about what they knew or thought that they knew. Yesterday, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spend five and one half hours testifying before both the house and the senate as to what her feelings were about the whole affair. Republicans were very testy in some instances in both chambers as they tried to get the secretary to admit that she was culpable and guilty of mismanagement in the whole affair. Senator Rand Paul, in particular, notated that he would have relieved the secretary of her post at the state department when he found out that she had not read cables asking for more security in the Benghazi area if he had been president. One pundit has remarked since then that the idea that Rand Paul would have ever appointed Hillary Clinton Secretary of State was absurd. One might make the case even further that the idea of Rand Paul as president of these United States is equally as absurd.

It has been reported in the Internet news media that the Fox News outlet spent the entire evening that Hurricane Sandy came ashore in late October postulating on the building scandal over Benghazi, giving the hurricane only passing mention even though Fox is located on Manhattan island in New York City. We mention this because Fox is part of the leadership constellation that directs the efforts of the neoconservative Republicans in their efforts to undermine anyone who would stand in their way. The Republicans in the house and senate are merely other tools in this effort and what they tried to do to Hillary Clinton on Wednesday is merely a part and an aftermath to what they were trying to do that was not successful on November sixth of last year when Mitt Romney was not elected president of the United States. The neocons will use anyone and anything, living and dead, in their efforts to regain power and thwart the national good!

And, one can be sure that the neoconservatives will bring up Benghazi if Hillary Clinton makes a bid for president in 2016, so, this was part of an ongoing effort that will never really end. In our opinion, there was less effort to arrive at some sort of truth than there was a concerted effort to arrive at some sort of present or future political advantage. And, that is sad because there are some essential truths that have not been well discussed in this whole sad affair. Among the political truths is the fact that senators such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham have used this tragedy to secure their ends of regaining the control of the senate for the republicans by torpedoing the potential nomination of United Nations ambassador Susan Rice which resulted in the inevitable nomination of democrat senator John Kerry to hold that post, thus possibly freeing up defeated republican senator Scott Brown to regain a seat for the republicans in Massachusetts.

There has been a great deal made of what Susan Rice said on the Sunday talk shows in the days after the Benghazi attack. What has been overlooked is the fact that the United States government did not want to credit this attack to any particular terrorist group even though, as president Obama said in the aftermath of the attacks, it was obviously an act of terrorism. Susan Rice was simply parroting back the information that she was given by the intelligence community at the time. To have done anything else would have been irresponsible! Al Qaeda has made a great deal of hay over the years over what they did on September eleventh, 2001 and to prematurely give credit where credit was not due would have been a grave mistake in judgment by the United states government. It was also sad to see that Mitt Romney, the day after the attack, jumped all over the story and tried to make political hay out of it almost while the slain ambassadors body was still warm!

It has been noted that John McCain has been the leader among the neoconservative republicans in the senate on foreign policy matters for a long period now and it might be time for them to find someone different for that post. There is no more feckless politician in America than John McCain. If his father had not been a ranking admiral back in the Vietnam war era. McCain, after losing four previous expensive military aircraft, would never have been even close to North Vietnam and would be a non entity in American politics today. McCain has used the celebrity gained from his time in North Vietnamese prisons to advance some good and several bad things in American political history. Although he did help to foster campaign finance reform a number of years ago, he also appeared at a crucial rally in New Hampshire back in the 2000 campaign that helped to secure the presidency for George W. Bush. And, we can never forget how McCain forwent all of his supposed principles to hold his senate seat back in 2010! Although this Benghazi affair is not about McCain, it is still very much about the death of Chris Stevens and that needs to be probed in ways that it has not yet been.

Chris Stevens was among the brightest stars in the constellation of the United States State Department. Stevens was among the brightest of our ambassador corps and his presence in Libya through the years even before he became ambassador there was a great advantage for the United States in North Africa. When it was becoming increasingly more apparent that Mohamar Ghadafi would be tossed from power Stevens was sent back to Libya as our ambassador because of his great knowledge and connections in that nation. There was, by all accounts, really no one else to send who had anywhere near his qualifications. And, the reason that we needed him there was because that the Arab Spring was spiraling in many different directions and Libya, along with Egypt, was going to play a key role in what happened there. Libya, after Ghadafi, had no institutions at all and was going to have to rebuild a nation from the ground up. American know how and the intelligence to secure that know how was, along with Western Europe, going to be the key to building a relationship that would both benefit the Libyans and help to bring stability to the entire North African and Middle eastern region. One can argue that Chris Stevens was a linchpin to that whole project. Libya was the first Arab Spring nation to fall by great and prolonged violence and perceptions built there would be noted and observed by the whole rest of the region.

When Hillary Clinton testified before Congress, she notated that United States ambassadors do not want to be holed up behind barricades in these sensitive areas and that they need to be out and about gaining knowledge and the resulting advantages that the United States needs to function and be effective. She also stated quite succinctly that these ambassadors are very independent people who work autonomously from the state department in Washington for much of the time. The United States government depends on these people and they cannot stand over them in supervision nor would they want to do so.

No one knew more about Libya than Chris Stevens and no one probably knew more about the dangers that lurked there than Mr. Stevens did! So, the unasked question that is being asked here is why was Chris Stevens in Benghazi on September eleventh when he knew that it was the anniversary of the most successful terrorist attack in history that had occurred in New York City just eleven years before? If the United States has learned anything from Chris Stevens death is must be not to take any excess risks with our ambassadorial corps around the time of such sensitive events! It may be true that Chris Stevens may have asked for more security weeks before his death, however, it was still his job to look out for himself and his employees and try to protect their safety and their very lives. There have been many fingers pointed in many different directions since ambassador Stevens death, but, perhaps out of deference to that fact that he died, none has been pointed in his direction.

It should be noted and hoped that Chris Stevens had access to the intelligence, or apparent lack of it, that existed in the vacuum that prevailed after Ghadafy’s fall. Stevens knew that there were many tribal groups operating in the various parts of Libya and that the central government existed in name only. Chris Stevens was a very intelligent and aware individual living in an environment that he knew so very, very well. And, the bottom line on the whole business is probably what no one wants to admit. Chris Stevens was as much responsible for his own death as anyone else was. He did not have to be in Benghazi on this very critical date. Everyone knew that the terrorists would attack somewhere at sometime on some September eleventh and it was only a matter of time before they did so. Perhaps it was Stevens great openness and accessibility throughout Libya that aided in the plan that eventually cost him his life! It could have been no accident that those who did the deed knew that they wanted to do it on September eleventh and we wonder if it was widely publicized that Stevens was going to be in town on that date.

In the aftermath of all that went on in Benghazi and has gone on since that time, the one enduring fact is that the United States lost an almost irreplaceable asset in the person of Chris Stevens on that fateful date. We do not lose ambassadors in the line of service often which speaks to the emphasis that both they and our government places on their safety. But, as Secretary Clinton stated yesterday, they cannot remain hidden behind walls of security just so that we can say that we have a presence in the country. In Libya, as in so many other places, we need a purpose more than we need a presence! But, perhaps the greatest lesson to be learned from Benghazi is that there is a greater thing sometimes than self, and, that living to fight and serve another day can be much more advantageous than simply securing what one particular series of events might gain for the national good. We will, as a nation, go on without Chris Stevens in Libya because we have to. However, it did not have to be that way and Chris Stevens is partially responsible for that and the quicker that we accept that fact, the better off we will be! We all learn our lessons individually and collectively but, sometimes, the price we pay for those lessons can be so high! No one paid a higher price than Chis Stevens but Libya and the United States would have been so much better off if he had not paid it at all!

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.