What was Obama doing while terrorists attacked Americans in Benghazi?
By
Andrew C. McCarthy
You
couldn’t help but feel for Robert Lovell. The retired brigadier general is
haunted by the failure of AFRICOM, the U.S. military’s Africa Command, to
respond when Americans were under siege in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. His
congressional testimony this week was somber — no faux “What difference, at this point,
does it make?” indignation, no “Dude, this was two years ago” juvenilia for
him.
Ambassador
Christopher Stevens and the State Department’s Sean Smith were killed in the
early stage of the jihadist attack. By then, the actions that would surely have
saved their lives — e.g., an adult recognition that Benghazi was no place for
an American diplomatic facility, or at least the responsible provision of
adequate security — had already been callously forsaken. It seems unlikely
AFRICOM could have gotten there in time for them on that fateful night, though
that does not come close to excusing the failure to try.
Former
Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty are a different story. They fought
valiantly for many hours after our military learned, very early on, that the
battle was raging. Unlike AFRICOM, the SEALs did not stand pat. They ran to the
sound of the guns. After saving over 30 of their countrymen, they paid with
their lives. The armed forces, General Lovell recalled, knew that terrorists
were attacking them. Yet no one came to their aid.
Lovell
bears the burden of their abandonment with a heavy heart. His moving testimony
made that clear. Still, his version of events is deeply unsatisfying. Why did
AFRICOM fail to respond? “Basically,” he stammered, “there was a lot of looking
to the State Department.” Unfortunately, we’re told Secretary Hillary Clinton
and her minions were unclear “in terms of what they would like to have.” Come
again? “They didn’t come forward with stronger requests for action.”
This
Foggy Bottom focus had me groping for my pocket Constitution. Sure enough,
Article II was as I remembered it. Much as Hillary Clinton may desire to be the
commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces, that job does not belong
to the secretary of state.
It
was the solemn duty of the president to come forward with not requests
but commands for action. Why was AFRICOM hanging on the State
Department’s preferences? Why were our troops hamstrung by what Lovell
described as “deference to the Libyan people?” On the night of September 11,
2012, AFRICOM was not beholden to Mrs. Clinton or Tripoli. They answered to
Barack Obama.
Of
course, no one can answer to a commander-in-chief who abdicates his command, a
commander-in-chief who is AWOL.
A
commander-in-chief does not get to vote “present.” Over 19 months have
elapsed since terrorists savagely attacked the United States in Benghazi. Yet
we are still waiting, ever waiting, for an account of where the president was,
what he was doing, and what if any directives he gave during the hours and
hours during which Americans were being tormented and killed.
If
the president’s name were Bush or Reagan, we would long ago have had a
minute-by-minute accounting of his every move. And if the incident involved
some faraway American warrior’s slaying of a jihadist emir, we would long ago
have had a Situation Room photo depicting Obama as
maestro . . . with an accompanying soundtrack of classified
leaks portraying his courage while others were under fire.
Benghazi,
however, is a catastrophe wrought by Obama’s pro-Islamist policies, one
that puts the lie to his oft-repeated claim to have “decimated” al-Qaeda. So
with Benghazi we get the stonewall, a barricade his praetorian media have been
only too happy to fortify.
We
know that less than a day after Ty Woods and Glen Doherty were martyred
protecting Americans out of a sense of duty, the commander-in-chief in whom
that duty is actually reposed was at a Las Vegas fundraiser, insouciantly
repeating his campaign line: “A day after 9/11, we are reminded
that a new tower rises above the New York skyline, but al-Qaeda is on the path
to defeat and bin Laden is dead.”
Only
hours before in Cairo, al-Qaeda operatives empowered by the president’s
pro-Islamist policies had rioted outside our embassy, replacing the Stars
and Stripes with their jihadist black flag and chanting, “Obama, Obama, there
are still a million Osamas!” Even fewer hours before, in Benghazi, the United
States was dealt a humiliating defeat by the very jihadists Obama was still
risibly claiming to have quelled. Yet for those hours, we to this day have no
accounting of Barack Obama’s whereabouts and activities.
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