As usual, Victor Davis Hanson brilliantly captures the historical significance behind present-day headlines, in this case the Benghazi fiasco: The Ever-Stranger Case of a Murdered US Ambassador ~
In the past — in Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, etc. — the murder of an American ambassador sparked immediate debates over security lapses, but in the Libyan case the media seems to be doing its best not to investigate the circumstances around the murders. And there seems to have been not so much a breach of security, as no security at all. In the past, hostage-taking, sniper shootings, or plane crashes accounted for the deaths of our ambassadors. The notion of an American ambassador trapped nearly alone for hours before succumbing to smoke inhalation, while helpless under sustained armed assault, cries out for explanation.
Likewise in the past, often the perpetrators deliberately tried to obfuscate culpability, but in this instance — also a first, I believe — the US government tried to deflect attention away from an Islamist plot to a sort of spontaneous general chaos that got out of hand, in which no one quite planned or even deliberately sought to kill Ambassador Stevens — a scenario that only the killers might appreciate in that it might delay or even prevent retribution coming their way.
Until either the media assumes an investigatory responsibility or the administration offers a candid assessment of what happened, we are still left puzzled over the quite amazing statements offered by Jay Carney, James Clapper, and Susan Rice, and those also of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, which all can only invite speculation:
An election-mode administration apparently was deeply invested in the post-convention narrative of Middle East calm — brought about by the end of bin Laden, the new reset diplomacy of a popular and cool-headed Barack Obama, the dismantling of al Qaeda by Predator-drone assassinations, and a US-shepherded Arab Spring. To the extent that official scenario was endangered by the Libyan murders, the causes were a hate-speech video disseminated by a right-wing, unhinged Florida preacher and a hate-mongering immigrant criminal that evoked “natural” anger from aggrieved Muslims.
A final generic observation: When comparing the furor over Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib with the current lack of interest, it almost seems that the media, over the last two administrations, goes ballistic when the US purportedly causes injury to suspected radical Islamists, but becomes comatose when the latter cause injury to us.
And can you even imagine the media outrage if the Libyan Embassy tragedy, and subsequent dissembling by an administration, had occurred on a Republican’s watch?
