This is a key point for those who think the report “exonerates” the administration:
…if you were to ask people who aren’t reflexively defensive of President Obama (as the media tend to be) what their main concerns with Benghazi were two years ago, they’d probably say something along the lines of:
That we allowed an ambassador to be assassinated by Islamist militants in Libya.
That we didn’t quite seem as concerned as we should have been, as evidenced by our commander-in-chief heading off to a Vegas fundraiser hours after it happened and a general patience about seeking justice.
That we claimed that an attack on September 11 probably actually had something to do with a silly video and nothing to do with Al Qaeda.
That we officially told the world that “since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others,” as President Obama said.
That our Secretary of State said of a video made by an American that “We absolutely reject its content and message.”
That these statements were dangerously untrue. In America, you’re actually totally allowed to disparage any religion you want. (I myself have fun targeting Methodists.) (Sidenote, check out how our Secretary of State gave a rhetorical beatdown to the Nazis when they complained about a mock trial of Hitler held in Madison Square Gardens in 1934.)
That our media seemed more obsessed with covering for Obama than investigating what the heck happened that night.
Now, the report whitewashes, excuses or glosses over almost all of this and fails completely to get at any of the deeper and troubling questions about what’s wrong with our intel community. It only “debunks” claims if you think that bureaucratic ass-covering and rather strained justifications of what I would hope all Americans would agree was a clear intelligence failure count as “debunking.”
Today’s Remembrance Day is particularly poignant, the first one on a century anniversary from the beginning of the war. And I think that no one who fought it is with us any longer. My paternal grandfather was a veteran. He had emigrated from Eastern Europe as a young man, and then returned to fight in France.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
But here’s what I find interesting. If you read through Scheiber’s piece, there’s a word that doesn’t appear in it: Iran. That is, her place of birth (she reportedly grew up speaking Persian as a child). Does no one really think this influence is one of the reasons he seems so eager to do business with the mullahs?
The borders were always arbitrary, imposed from outside, which is the only way that it could have been done. This is truly the end of colonialism. Sadly, what will follow will almost certainly be worse.
