By Ben Shapiro
10/18/2012
During the second presidential debate, moderator-turned-Obama-advocate Candy Crowley helped President Obama make the case for why he'd been a true leader on the murder of our ambassador and three other brave Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Obama was asked a simple question: "We were sitting around, talking about Libya, and we were reading and became aware of reports that the State Department refused extra security for our embassy in Benghazi, Libya, prior to the attacks that killed four Americans. Who was it that denied enhanced security and why?"
President Obama jumped into a memorized sermon about how much he cared about our ambassadorial staff, how the buck stopped with him, and most of all, how Mitt Romney had turned "national security into a political issue." Nowhere did he explain why our ambassador was given no real security in Benghazi; nowhere did he explain why, for weeks on end, spokespeople for the administration, including Obama, insisted that the attacks in Libya had been caused by a YouTube video.
"[W]hen it comes to this issue," our cowardly president sniffed, "when I say that we are going to find out exactly what happened, everybody will be held accountable. And I am ultimately responsible for what's taking place there because these are my folks, and I'm the one who has to greet those coffins when they come home. You know that I mean what I say."
This was sheer rhetorical junk. But Crowley said nothing.
Then Romney had the temerity to point out that the Obama administration treated the Benghazi attack as a spontaneous uprising about a video, rather than a planned and executed terrorist attack. "The president's policies throughout the Middle East began with an apology tour and - and -- and pursue a strategy of leading from behind, and this strategy is unraveling before our very eyes," said Romney. Then Romney, quite correctly, pointed out that "it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror."
And Crowley, earning her check from the Obama administration, jumped in. She called Romney a liar. Then she reiterated her perspective when called upon to do so by Obama.
She was wrong, as she later admitted. Romney was right. Obama never specifically called the attacks in Benghazi a terrorist attack. In fact, asked on "The View" a full two weeks later about those attacks, he refused point blank to call them a terrorist attack. Even CNN -- Crowley's own channel -- called her on her blatant pandering on behalf of the president.
Now, all of this may seem mere semantics to some. Why does it matter whether the president called Benghazi a terrorist attack? And why would Obama lie about it? As Obama said, "the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the Secretary of State, our U.N. Ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we've lost four of our own, Governor, is offensive."
The answer is simple: President Obama and his team did lie about the causes of the attack in Libya. And they lied for a very simple reason: they didn't want the American people to ask serious questions about our "low profile" policy in Libya, which led our ambassador to go into Benghazi without a serious security team. If the attacks in Libya were about a YouTube video -- as the Obama administration still seems to imply from time to time -- then Obama and his cronies can tell the American people that nobody could have expected such an assault. If this was a well-planned, well-timed terrorist attack in one of the most terror-ridden areas on earth, Obama has no defense.
Here's the fact: Obama has no defense.
Ask any sane person in America whether it would be a good idea to send our ambassador in Libya to Benghazi without a security team. They'd tell you immediately that we need security around our ambassador in a hellhole like Benghazi. Obama knew that. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew that.
But they didn't care. They thought it was far more important to make nice with the native population than to keep our ambassador safe. They thought that the Arab Spring was a nice, happy little uprising, complete with gay bodyguards to apply to protect the ambassador. Really. An ad placed in Libya -- Libya! -- for the ambassador's security team made it clear that members of a same-sex marriage would be accepted.
No gay men applied. But the Libyan security team did tell the terrorist mob just where to find the ambassador. And now he's dead.
The Obama administration treats the Middle East as though it's "It's a Small World" writ large. Everyone just wears funny clothes, but shares our values. And if they don't share our values -- no big deal, since values don't really matter anyway. First Amendment, Shariah law. Potato, potahto.
That's why Libya matters. It matters because this administration is not merely incompetent in their foreign policy. They're deeply unprincipled. And that's why Candy Crowley should be ashamed of herself for not holding President Obama accountable, and instead helping Obama obfuscate the degrading truth about his responsibility in Libya.
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To read more about Libya, click here.
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To read another article by Ben Shapiro, click here.
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