A Notable First! Hillary Takes Responsibility for Benghazi

A Notable First! Hillary Takes Responsibility for Benghazi by The Elephant's Child

October 15, 2012, 9:13 pm
Filed under: Election 2012, Foreign Policy, Middle East, National Security, Terrorism | Tags: Benghazi, Taking Responsibility, Terrorist Attack!

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said “I take responsibility” for the protection of U.S. diplomats., today in Lima, Peru. She said an investigation now under way will ultimately determine what happened in the attack that left four Americans dead.

Clinton said President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not involved in security decisions. “I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha” she added, noting that it is close to the election.

This is what you might call “symbolic responsibility” as head of the Department that is at fault. The public usually respects showy professions of “the buck stops here” statements, something the president has never mastered. “This lets the president accept symbolic responsibility, while continuing to shunt actual responsibility onto State,” said Allahpundit.

In anticipation of unpleasant questions in tomorrow’s debate about foreign policy in general and Libya in particular, Obama wants you to know that he is prepared, if necessary, to make another “gutsy call.”

 The White House has put special operations strike forces on standby and moved drones into the skies above Africa, ready to strike militant targets from Libya to Mali — if investigators can find the Al Qaeda-linked group responsible for the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya.

But officials say the administration, with weeks until the presidential election, is weighing whether the short-term payoff of exacting retribution on Al Qaeda is worth the risk that such strikes could elevate the group’s profile in the region, alienate governments the U.S. needs to fight it in the future and do little to slow the growing terror threat in North Africa.

All these details were made by officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, and were not authorized to discuss the high-level debates publicly. Uh huh. I can recognize a planned leak, and I imagine you can too. The White House declined to comment.

I wish some of the concern was for ambassador Chris Stevens, and Sean Smith, and the two former SEALS, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, and their families. But this is an administration that sends form letters to the families of fallen heroes.

2 Comments

2 Comments so far
Leave a comment

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI