The Benghazi attack raises fundamental
questions on how to keep America safe and whether to trust the
administration. We need a substantive debate on how to protect America
against the growing threat of Islamic extremists.
In the aftermath of the killing of the U.S. ambassador
in Benghazi and three other Americans, the Obama administration did the
classic dance of political operatives confronted with an inconvenient
truth: deny, deny, deny, and then say, “Oh that doesn’t matter because
it was a long time ago.” President Obama has called efforts to get to
the bottom of what happened a “sideshow.” But, alas, Benghazi is not a
sideshow and it does matter. The administration’s actions in this and
other scandals facing the Obama team go to the very foundation of any
presidency: can the American people trust their president and his
administration?
Thirty years ago, I assumed post as chief of mission in my first
ambassadorship. One thing I learned from the able foreign service
officers with whom I served was that if there was a legitimate security
issue, all I needed to do was send a cable to the State Department’s
undersecretary for management and the problem would be addressed
promptly, professionally, and effectively. We now know that did not
happen in Benghazi. America’s full arsenal of security assets was not
deployed to protect Ambassador Stevens. Why not? How has the culture
changed where legitimate security requests from a U.S. ambassador go
unheeded by the State Department?
I’ve served four secretaries of State in a variety of positions in
the State Department and in various ambassadorships. I’ve seen how the
building works. Benghazi was not just a mid-level bureaucratic failure.
It was a failure of leadership. The secretary of State sets the tone and
the bureaucracy responds. If the secretary makes a priority of keeping
American diplomats safe and secure, then the bureaucracy responds by
doing the same. I know and have worked with Undersecretary of State for
Management Patrick Kennedy; he is an able man. But I also know that if
the secretary of State had made security for our diplomats a priority,
more would have been done.
Politics is a tough business — a contact sport — and even on national security, the Obama team played politics the Chicago way.
From the moment the Obama administration brought up the video, it was
self-evidently a MacGuffin. The ugly video had been out on the Internet
for months. Why had this little-seen and little-noted video launched
spontaneous demonstrations around and attacks on U.S. diplomatic posts
throughout the Middle East? Oh yes, it was September 11th! Now, what
exactly is the significance of September 11th? And is it remotely
credible that spontaneous demonstrators bring along missile launchers?
As Albert Camus once wrote, we should set “ideological reflexes aside
for a moment and just think.”
Why were the president and his political operatives so anxious to divert the attention of the media and the American people?
Just think.
It was the final phase of a hard-fought election campaign and these
events pulled back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz, revealing that a
pillar of the president’s reelection campaign was smoke and mirrors.
The Reality of the Record
Generally, in presidential campaigns, Republicans have an advantage
on foreign policy and security issues because they are perceived to be
stronger on those issues. In 2008, however, the excesses of the Bush
administration and public fatigue from the long Afghanistan and Iraq
wars made foreign policy a winner for Barack Obama. But let’s look
closely at the record. Again,
set ideological reflexes aside for a moment and just think.
By 2012, the Obama administration had failed to get a Status of
Forces Agreement in Iraq, and that country, in which Americans had
sacrificed so much blood and treasure, was teetering on the verge of
violent chaos. North Korea’s WMD programs had not been curbed. A rising
China wasn’t playing fair and was taking away American jobs. Repeated
skirmishes in the South China Sea between Chinese vessels and Philippine
and Vietnamese fishing boats signaled a bolder China unwilling to play
by the international rules of the road. The Obama reset policy with
Russia had failed as Vladimir Putin assaulted civil society at home and
opposed U.S. interests abroad in Iran, Syria, and elsewhere. The Arab
Spring had unleashed forces that cast the broader Middle East into
turmoil with a rising influence of Islamic fundamentalists. Syria was a
conflagration where the government was committing atrocities and killing
tens of thousands of its own people. And, perhaps most menacing, the
rising Persian Shia in Tehran sought regional hegemony as they continued
to relentlessly pursue nuclear breakout. The list goes on. Rather than a
shaper of events around the world, America had become an observer. Just
because America could not do everything, the Obama administration
seemed to believe we need not do anything. Increasingly, the view was of
a world in which American interests were threatened or compromised. All
in all, for President Obama these events did not provide a great
foreign policy and security platform on which to seek reelection.
But the White House and the president’s reelection campaign had a
rebuttal. President Obama had killed Osama bin Laden and had decimated
al Qaeda through the aggressive use of drones. Obama, they argued, was
strong, tough, and effective. He had brought troops home and won the war
on terror. It was simple, powerful, and ultimately effective with the
media, and eventually with the American people.
Unfortunately, that clean, clear narrative was untrue. The president
and his campaign were desperate to keep a lid on Benghazi because it
fundamentally challenged their narrative. It simply could not withstand
close scrutiny. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not
their own facts. And the facts were that Islamic extremists willing to
engage in terrorism were on the march across North Africa. Benghazi was
but one of the developments that revealed this fact for anyone willing
to look. The president’s statements about Benghazi during the foreign
policy debate revealed a lawyerly slipperiness and a contortionist’s
ability to bend the truth to his immediate political advantage.
There is a significant difference of opinion on how to best prosecute
the war on terror. There are good people of experience and sound
judgment on both sides of this debate, and it is a debate that must be
joined. But it was not a debate the Obama campaign wanted to have during
the 2012 presidential campaign. By all indications, it is not a debate
the Obama administration ever wants to have.
President Obama believes he can prevail against terrorism on the
cheap: light footprint, leading from behind, and killing bad guys with
drones. That’s the strategy he has pursued, and he has achieved some
success. But dangers continue, the terror threat rises, and so far there
is no victory to be claimed. Others believe that dealing with the clear
and present danger from Islamic extremists will take a long,
ideological struggle. Terrorists have been killing Americans for decades
— in Kenya, Tanzania, and on the
USS Cole. Unfortunately, it
took the horrific events of September 11, 2001, for America to begin to
fully appreciate the nature of the extremist threat and to adequately
respond. As we confront this existential threat, there are some things
we have gotten right and some things we have not.
What Is Required Today
Those who recognize that this will be a long, difficult struggle
believe we must speak out clearly and identify the threat for what it
is: an illegitimate extremist strain of Islam that wages war against
modernity. We must engage in an ideological struggle, just as we once
did against the totalitarian extremism of Nazism and Communism. We
should not blur the clash or soften the edges. The ideology these
extremists embrace is illegitimate. It is evil.
We must confront the immediate threats, whether they are extremists
in Yemen or terrorists in Boston. But, more fundamentally, we must join
the ideological struggle. We must confront these terrorists,
delegitimize them, isolate, marginalize, and eventually crowd them out.
It will take time, but our values can and must prevail.
Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an Evil Empire. He was correct,
and it shook the foundations of the Kremlin to be so clearly and
plainly identified for what they were. Our leaders should not hesitate
from similarly stating that the Islamic extremists who hate modernity
and who embrace the tactics of terror are also evil. We must engage in
battles of might, but the war will be won by our ideas and our ideals.
Those who embrace moral relativism, who are uncomfortable with
American power, who put their trust in multilateralism, who have
excessive faith in international law, who feel they are too
sophisticated and multicultural to recognize American Exceptionalism,
and who find it uncomfortable to discuss good and evil, shy away from
recognizing the threat we face from Islamic extremism. They seek to
marginalize it. They seek quick and easy answers. They too readily claim
victory when none has been achieved.
By 2012, the terrorist threat had metastasized. The al Qaeda that
planned the terrible terror of September 11, 2001, was no longer what it
had been. Yet the Obama administration failed to recognize the changed
terror threat and pursued a drone campaign as if al Qaeda had remained
static. By 2012, terror extremists had spread to Yemen, Somalia, Sudan,
southern Libya, and Mali. The entire Maghreb had become the new front
for Islamic extremists and terror. Those outside the administration who
followed this dynamic understood the growing danger and raised their
voices. But the president and his operatives either didn’t recognize
these self-evident facts or chose consciously not to acknowledge them.
After all, if the terror threat had not been decimated but had instead
metastasized and was growing stronger, then the Obama narrative of being
a tough, effective commander-in-chief would be brought into question.
Then the debate on confronting the threat would commence and the
Pandora’s box of inconvenient truths on President Obama’s litany of
foreign policy and security setbacks would be fair game.
The events in Benghazi showed clearly that the president’s political narrative was not true. Again,
set ideological reflexes aside for a moment and just think.
The Obama political spinmeisters inside and outside of government
went to work: Deny, divert, and delay the truth. Throw out misleading
information and watch the media scramble. Send out the U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations to spin, spin, and spin some more. Have the
president himself give interviews saying we don’t know if what happened
was a terrorist attack, even though we did. Almost two weeks later, have
the president go to the UN General Assembly and condemn that nasty
video. Attack those who raise legitimate questions as politicizing a
terrible tragedy, even as the administration through its misdirection,
politicization, and outright misstatements was dishonoring the fallen
Americans. Politics is a tough business — a contact sport — and even on
national security, the Obama team played politics the Chicago way.
Why is this important? It matters because those who fail to learn
from the past are likely to repeat the same mistakes. It matters because
the families of those Americans killed in Benghazi on September 11th
deserve to know the truth. It matters because the terror attack in
Algeria, the French military incursion into Mali earlier this year, and
recent terrorist plots against U.S. embassies in Tripoli and Sana’a
reinforce the message of Benghazi. Killing bad guys with drones has not
turned the tide in the war on terror. Al Qaeda has changed and the
threat remains a clear and present danger. However well-intended,
President Obama’s approach has not succeeded. We need a real,
substantive, meaningful debate on how to protect America against the
growing threat of Islamic extremists. That’s why Benghazi matters.
And it also matters as one piece in a larger mosaic of concerning
events that raise serious and substantial questions about whether or not
President Obama’s administration should retain the trust of the
American people.
Just think.
Whether one labels Benghazi a sideshow or not, it goes to fundamental
questions of how to keep America safe and whether or not we can trust
the president.
Ambassador
Richard S. Williamson is a principal at Salisbury Strategies, LLP, and a
senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He has served
as an ambassador and U.S. representative in several capacities to the
United Nations, as an assistant secretary of State, and as assistant to
the president for intergovernmental affairs in the White House for
President Ronald Reagan.
american.com
اتهم
الأخوان المسلمون في ليبيا، اليوم الثلاثاء، حكومة علي زيدان بالضعف،
مطالبين البرلمان بمحاسبتها على الأحداث التي جرت في بنغازي خلال اليومين
الماضيين والتي راح ضحيتها 31 شخصاً. وقال المراقب العام
للأخوان المسلمين في ليبيا بشير الكبتي ليونايتد برس إنترناشونال، إن حكومة
علي زيدان تعاني من الضعف والعجز في استيعاب الثوار وإعادة بناء الجيش،
وطالب البرلمان بمحاسبتها على الأحداث التي جرت في بنغازي خلال اليومين
الماضيين والتي راح ضحيتها 31 شخصاً. وأضاف أن الحكومة
تعاني من التخبط والفوضى، ولم تتمكن من إيجاد حلول مناسبة لأوضاع الثوار،
إلى جانب الفوضى التي تعم الجيش، مطالباً الحكومة بالكشف عن أسباب هذه
الفوضى والإعلان عنها للشعب.