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Bill Kristol and Peter Wehner have thoughts about the president’s insouciance during the attack on the Benghazi consulate.
We’ve both had the honor to work in the White House. We’ve seen presidents, vice presidents, chiefs of staff and national security advisers during moments of international crisis. We know that in these moments human beings make mistakes. There are failures of communication and errors of judgment. Perfection certainly isn’t the standard to which policy makers should be held.
But there are standards. If Americans are under attack, presidential attention must be paid. Due diligence must be demonstrated. A president must take care that his administration does everything it can do. On Sept. 11, 2012, as Americans were under attack in Benghazi, Libya, President Obama failed in his basic responsibility as president and commander in chief. In a crisis, the president went AWOL. …
Streetwise Professor has more.
… But obviously the most odious figure in this sorry episode is Obama. A person (I won’t say “man”) willing to bask in the glory earned by the risks assumed by others, but who retreats to the sanctuary of the West Wing when things get tough. Remember the old expression: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”? Obama got going, all right, but not in the way that aphorism usually connotes. He got going in the way Sir Robin got going in Holy Grail. He ran away, and distanced himself from failure. He has refused to answer questions about these events, and has acted as if they never even happened: endeavors which a courtier press has enabled. Worse, he attempted to distract attention from what really happened by pushing the offensive narrative about the Mohammed video. I am hard pressed indeed to find a historical parallel to Obama’s low, feckless, and unseemly performance.
What happened in Benghazi was a tragedy, and almost certainly a preventable one. Those who could have prevented it know they could have done so. How can I say that? Their assiduous efforts to consign the events to the Memory Hole speak volumes. But Obama’s distancing himself from the situation as soon as the looming catastrophe became manifest, and his refusal even to discuss the issue seriously, let alone admit any culpability, are particularly loathsome.
The title of this post says that Obama was AWOL. That’s actually a slur on deserters. For most deserters do not hold an elevated and prestigious office, and do not bask in the glory of those who achieve great things under their command, but abscond when things go bad. The ignominy of desertion is proportional to the elevation of the position deserted. Obama holds the highest office in the land, meaning that the ignominy of his scurrying to the sanctuary of the West Wing on 9/11/12 is very great indeed.
That’s what our friends think of obama’s indifference. How about a certified liberal? Here’s Richard Cohen in WaPo - The Obama Doctrine – Look the Other Way.
… Obama’s reason for inaction in Syria is so unconvincing that it suggests the election is what prompted him to play it safe. Here, after all, was a president seeking reelection on what amounted to a peace platform: He had ended U.S. combat involvement in Iraq and was winding things down in Afghanistan. How could he justify intervention in Syria? Maybe by saying that the region was about to blow up, that Syria was lousy with chemical weapons, that the Kurds might break away (Kurdistan is the next Palestine), that a sectarian blood bath loomed and that thousands of civilians were in mortal danger. By now, more than 70,000 of them have been killed.
Recently, Obama has been likened to President Dwight Eisenhower. There are, of course, some similarities — there always are — but in one significant way, cited in the book by David A. Nichols (“Eisenhower 1956”), they’re different. In the Suez crisis of 1956, Ike strongly condemned the invasion of Egypt by Britain, France and Israel — three allies — even though some thought it was politically unwise to do so. “I don’t give a damn how the election goes,” he told British Prime Minister Anthony Eden on Election Day itself. His paramount concerns, he said, were the revolution in Hungary and the Suez invasion.
At the moment, it’s impossible to imagine Obama making a comparable statement. (He couldn’t even fully support same-sex marriage until Joe Biden forced the issue, and he was likewise mute about gun control until after the election and the massacre at Newtown, Conn.) His foreign policy has similarly lacked any sense of moral urgency. As a result, the situation in Syria has worsened. It is now becoming a regional catastrophe that will soon enough pull in the United States anyway. Obama purportedly feared making the war worse. By inaction, he has.
As to why the white house deceived us after Benghazi, Ann Althouse says;
Ask Bill Kristol and Peter Wehner in The Wall Street Journal:
“Presumably for two reasons. The first is that the true account of events undercut the president’s claim during the campaign that al Qaeda was severely weakened in the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden. The second is that a true account of what happened in Benghazi that night would have revealed that the president and his top national-security advisers did not treat a lethal attack by Islamic terrorists on Americans as a crisis. The commander in chief not only didn’t convene a meeting in the Situation Room; he didn’t even bother to call his Defense secretary or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not a single presidential finger was lifted to help Americans under attack.
This is an embarrassment and a disgrace. Is it too much to hope that President Obama is privately ashamed of his inattention and passivity that night?”
I think he is ashamed. Here’s what I’ve been assuming happened: It looked like our people were overwhelmed and doomed, so there was shock, sadness, and acceptance. But then the fight went on for 7 or 8 hours. The White House folk decided there was nothing to do but accept the inevitable, and then they witnessed a valiant fight which they had done nothing to support. It was always too late to help. It was too late after one hour, then too late after 2 hours, then too late after 3 hours…. When were these people going to die already? After that was all over, how do you explain what you did?
Michael Barone says the weakness shown by our commander in chief is exactly what causes the miscalculations that create wars.
… there are also arguments for aiding the Syrian rebels if, as Obama stated months ago, you want to see the regime of Bashir Assad ousted from power in a country far more strategically located than Libya. And if you want to reduce the bloodshed going on now for more than a year.
Evidently those arguments weren’t persuasive to Obama. On Syria, he chose to lead from very far behind.
“That now looks increasingly like a historic mistake,” writes Walter Russell Mead in his invaluable American Interest blog, and not just because it helps the rebels aligned with Islamic terrorist groups.
“Iran seems much less worried about what this administration might do to it,” Mead writes. “The mullahs seem to believe that faced with a tough decision, the White House blinks.” And, he adds, “both the Israelis and the Sunni Arab states have smelled the same weakness.”
The two disclosures last Thursday came at a time when other presidential actions sent a similar message. One was the withdrawal of one of two aircraft carriers scheduled to patrol the Persian Gulf.
The other was the nomination to be secretary of defense of former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a longtime opponent of not only military action but also economic sanctions against Iran.
The Hagel nomination was baffling. Most incoming secretaries of defense in the last 40 years have had extensive experience in the Pentagon, at the White House or on the congressional armed services committees.
Hagel has none of these. And, as he admitted at the end of a confirmation hearing when he misstated administration policy, “There are a lot of things I don’t know about.”
“A decade of war is ending,” Barack Obama declared in his second inaugural. His response to Benghazi, his decision on Syria and his nomination of Hagel suggest he thinks he can draw down our forces and avoid military conflict.
But weakness is provocative, and retreat invites attack. Threats abound — Iran, North Korea, China versus Japan. Obama’s moves may end up making war more likely, not less.
Pickerhead has often wondered if the president’s speechwriters and flacks split a gut writing stuff for the narcissist in chief. Jennifer Rubin catches the latest.
When I saw this, I thought it was a parody of a presidential statement:
“On behalf of Americans everywhere, Michelle and I wish to extend our appreciation and prayers to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. Michelle and I warmly remember our meeting with the Holy Father in 2009, and I have appreciated our work together over these last four years. The Church plays a critical role in the United States and the world, and I wish the best to those who will soon gather to choose His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI’s successor.”
But no, that’s the real thing. To complete the theme, I’m surprised it did not end, “But enough about me, Your Holiness, what do you think of my agenda?”
What is important about the pope and his resignation is not, alas, that Obama met with him. And I am puzzled by the use of the phrase “our work together over these four years.” Did Obama reduce the number of abortions in the United States? No, that can’t be it. Did he reduce poverty here in the United States? Tragically not. (“Poverty has soared under Obama, with the number of Americans in poverty increasing to the highest level in the more than 50 years that the Census Bureau has been tracking poverty. Over the last 5 years, the number in poverty has increased by nearly 31%, to 49.7 million, with the poverty rate climbing by over 30% to 16.1%. Obama has also been the food stamp President, with the number on food stamps increasing during his Administration to an all time record high of 47.7 million, up 80% over the past 5 years.”) Hmm, what about speaking out against Christian persecution? Nope, that couldn’t be it. Ending the mass murder in Syria? Nope. Coming up with an initiative to save lives in Africa? No — that was President George W. Bush. …
Debra Saunders posts on the unintended consequences of San Francisco’s ban on plastic bags.
San Francisco passed America’s “first-in-the-nation” ban on plastic bags in chain grocery stores and drugstores in 2007. In a research paper for the Wharton School Institute for Law and Economics, law professors Jonathan Klick and Joshua Wright crunched state and federal data on emergency room admissions and food-borne-illness deaths and figured that the San Francisco ban “led to an increase in infections immediately upon implementation.”
They found a 46 percent rise in food-borne-illness deaths. The bottom line: “Our results suggest that the San Francisco ban led to, conservatively, 5.4 annual additional deaths.”
Is San Francisco’s bag ban a killer? Conceivably, yes, but probably not.
Intuitively, the Wharton findings make sense. The city’s anti-bag laws are designed to drive consumers to reusable bags. Consumer advice types warn people about the dangers of said bags becoming germ incubators. I got this from the TLC website:
“Designate specific bags for meats and fish. Wash these bags regularly – preferably after each shopping trip – to get rid of bacteria. If your bag is fabric, toss it in the washing machine with jeans, and if it’s a plastic material, let it soak in a basin filled with soapy water and either the juice of half a lemon or about a quarter cup of vinegar.”
Ask your friends and family how many of them regularly wash their reusable bags – ask how many folks ever have done any of the above steps – and you can intuit that a ban on plastic bags might not be the brightest idea. …
After looking in on the creeps in the administration, we need some laughs. Andrew Malcolm is loaded up with late night humor.
Leno: A new study finds that people working shorter hours can slow global warming. So President Obama’s economic policy is also his climate policy.
Leno: A new survey finds that 65% say they would not date someone more than $5,000 in debt. Good thing Barack Obama got married before getting elected.
Leno: A leak from a new U.N. scientific study says the Sun plays a far greater role in global warming than previously thought. The Sun and global warming. Always the last place you’d think.
Leno: They predict a huge asteroid will miss Earth Friday possibly by only 17,000 miles. Which is about as close as the Lakers will get to the playoffs.
Leno: Geologists say in 100 million years Asia and America will become one huge continent. So, just as we pay off our debt to China, we are China. One big Wal-Mart. …