To a large group of Americans, the Benghazi story looks simple. Only the fog of politics and the media’s protection of the president obscure an ugly narrative. This article is long because the extent of denial, dissembling, and delusion is hard to describe briefly.
It’s possible, though unlikely, there are reasonable explanations for the administration’s policies leading to September 11, for the command decisions made that night, and for the government’s still-shifting stories since about all that happened.
It’s not possible there’s an honorable explanation for the national media’s dismissive refusal to press for credible answers. These matters are important, disputed, and sexy. Yet, with a few proud exceptions, there is no press among Old Media to get to the truth.
Here’s what seems plain to many: The planned political slaughter of Americans in Libya showed the president’s foreign and security policies in the region to be weak and arguably failing. That revelation was not optimal for Obama, because it clashed with his campaign’s success story. Consequently, during and after the attack, the administration carried out an astonishingly brazen cover-up and successful effort to kick accountability’s can past November and maybe permanently.
The national media’s role, as smoothly cooperative as Ginger Rogers back-striding in Fred Astaire’s embrace, shows the distance we’ve traveled to becoming a one-party media state.
To a different group of Americans, that account sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory, exploiting an unpreventable tragedy, and connecting random dots in groundless speculation and accusations. It is divisive, opportunistic partisanship and political profiteering upon the graves of fallen Americans.
The latter view is, pardon my French, merde. Just consider what we know, what the administration did and said, and what its deflectors say. (I use “deflectors” rather than “defenders,” because there is no coherent counter-narrative, only threads and fragments to distract and obscure obvious, damning conclusions).
Approaching the election, the president touted foreign policy successes: His Muslim outreach appealed to billions of Muslims and Arabs and raised US stock. Then, he put our nation on the right side of history and human rights by standing with the people against old tyrants. But, no naïve weakling he, he also killed Bin Ladin and targeted terror leaders with strategic drone strikes, knocking networks like Al Qaeda onto the ropes. Pea