A sad truth about the world we live in is that there are people in the Middle East who want to harm our country. An even sadder truth is that no leader can provide absolute protection from this threat. Jimmy Carter couldn't do it. Ronald Reagan couldn't do it. Bill Clinton couldn't do it. George W. Bush really couldn't do it. And despite his tough-guy rhetoric, Donald Trump can't do it. Not 100% foolproof for the next four years. Neither can Hillary Clinton.
The 1983 truck-bombing of a Marine compound in Beirut, Lebanon is perhaps instructive of the way our government used to react to such tragedies back when grownups were in charge. Democrats controlled the House of Representatives at the time, with the Republican Reagan as President, and launched an investigation into the attack, similar to how Republicans are investigating Benghazi now. The difference is that the Democrats conducted a single investigation, it concluded in two months, and no one tried to use the tragedy for political gain. Everyone understood that the failure to prevent the attack did not indicate a lack of will, competence, or patriotism on the part of the Republican party generally or Reagan in particular.
What a difference 30 years makes.
September 11, 2012
There doesn't seem to be much disagreement about what happened in Benghazi, Libya on the night of September 11, 2012. The main criticisms of Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration seem to center on whether more could have been done to prevent the attacks, why the attacks occurred, and whether appropriate actions were taken once the attacks were underway to secure the safety of Americans in Benghazi.
In summary, the U.S. had a diplomatic consulate (not a full embassy) established in Benghazi, Libya, with a CIA annex 1.2 miles away. At 9:40 PM local time (3:40 PM in Washington, D.C.), 125 to 150 gunmen, armed with assault rifles, heavy machine guns, truck-mounted artillery, hand grenades and RPGs, attacked the consulate compound. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and information officer Sean Smith were killed in the attack.
At 10:05 PM local time, staff from the CIA annex, including Tyrone S. Woods, attempted to secure the consulate and rescue any survivors. Sean Smith's body was recovered, but the CIA team was unable to locate Stevens. The team returned to the CIA annex with the survivors and Smith's body, coming under attack by AK-47s and grenades along the way.
Shortly after midnight local time, the CIA annex came under attack, with the CIA staff able to hold off the attackers until morning. At 5:00 AM, a group of Libyans and Americans, including a man named Glen Doherty, arrived at the CIA annex from Tripoli to assist in the fighting and to evacuate survivors. Upon arriving at the annex, Doherty sought out Tyrone S. Woods, finding him on the roof of the annex. Shortly thereafter, mortar rounds killed both Woods and Doherty.
The Aftermath
As one might expect, there was quite a bit of confusion in the aftermath of the attacks. For one thing, the attacks occurred on the 11th anniversary of the infamous September 11 attacks which brought down the World Trade Center towers in New York City and damaged the Pentagon. There was therefore reason to suspect that Islamic militants might have planned the Benghazi attacks to celebrate their earlier successful attack. Also, an anti-Islam video, Innocence of Muslims, had been released on the internet just one week earlier, causing protests at a number of U.S. diplomatic missions across the Middle East. Five days after the attack, UN Ambassador Susan Rice indicated that the video was the cause, based on the government's "current best assessment". On September 28, the Director of National Intelligence released a statement reversing this view, "to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists."
Republicans and other opponents of the Obama administration have tried to cast this mis-assessment as some kind of cover-up, for the purposes of gaining an advantage in the upcoming 2012 presidential election. Republicans also spent a lot of time trying to make something out of the fact that Obama referred to the attacks as an "act of terror" or an "act of violence" rather than an "act of terrorism". It's really not clear why this matters. It seems to me that Republicans are just trying to cover for a Mitt Romney misfire in an October 16, 2012 debate, when Romney thought he nailed Obama with his accusation that "it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror."
Finally, some conservative/Republican-friendly news outlets tried to make something even more sinister out of the Benghazi attacks, insisting that Hillary or Obama or Someone gave the CIA orders to 'stand down' and not defend the consulate. This is completely absurd and unfounded, but it hasn't prevented such conservative luminaries as Allen West from repeating it, citing as his source --- I'm not making this up --- some guy he sat next to on an airplane.
Fortunately, as was the case with the Marine barracks suicide bombing in 1983, there was a congressional inquiry into Benghazi, conducted somewhat more rigorously than Allen West's rantings. Actually, there were EIGHT inquiries, the most recent of which wrapped up just a few weeks ago.
Why so many? I bet you can guess. Republicans want to insinuate that Hillary Clinton is somehow responsible for the four deaths in Benghazi, even if they can't prove it (and they can't). But don't take my word for it. Read for yourself the Executive Summary of the report issued by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, issued on November 21, 2014 after nearly 2 years of investigation (emphasis mine):
In summary, the Committee first concludes that the CIA ensured sufficient security for CIA facilities in Benghazi and, without a requirement to do so, ably and bravely assisted the State Department on the night of the attacks. Their actions saved lives. Appropriate U.S. personnel made reasonable tactical decisions that night, and the Committee found no evidence that there was either a stand down order or a denial of available air support. The Committee, however, received evidence that the State Department security personnel, resources, and equipment were unable to counter the terrorist threat that day and required CIA assistance.
Second, the Committee finds that there was no intelligence failure prior to the attacks. In the months prior, the IC provided intelligence about previous attacks and the increased threat environment in Benghazi, but the IC did not have specific, tactical warning of the September 11 attacks.
Third, the Committee finds that a mixed group of individuals, including those affiliated with Al-Qa'ida, participated in the attacks on US. facilities in Benghazi, although the Committee finds that the intelligence was and remains conflicting about the identities, affiliations, and motivations of the attackers.
Fourth, the Committee concludes that after the attacks, the early intelligence assessments and the Administration's initial public narrative on the causes and motivations for the attacks were not fully accurate. There was a stream of contradictory and conflicting intelligence that came in after the attacks. The Committee found intelligence to support initial assessment that the attacks had evolved out of a protest in Benghazi; but it also found contrary intelligence, which ultimately proved to be the correct intelligence. There was no protest. The CIA only changed its initial assessment about a protest on September 24, 2012, when closed caption television footage became available on September 18, 2012 (two days after Ambassador Susan Rice spoke), and after the FBI began publishing its interviews with US. officials on the ground on September 22, 2012.
Fifth, the Committee finds that the process used to generate the talking points HPSCI asked for --- and which were used for Ambassador Rice's public appearances --- was flawed. HPSCI asked for the talking points solely to aid Members' ability to communicate publicly using the best available intelligence at the time, and mistakes were made in the process of how those talking points were developed.This is the summary of a report which a Republican-led congressional committee took two years to produce. Trey Gowdy's committee just wrapped up after another 2 years and $7 million, and despite being widely recognized as a partisan endeavor to hurt Hillary's presidential bid, was also unable to reach any damning conclusions. That's because whatever your opinions about Hillary's or Obama's politics, they didn't do anything wrong when it comes to Benghazi. Look elsewhere.
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