This is having a practical impact in conflict-torn countries like the Central African Republic or South Sudan, where embassies were closed in part because of the Benghazi effect.Īs the Benghazi incident lamentably demonstrates, caution is not necessarily a bad thing. Increasingly, however, it is an abundance of caution that dictates the actions of US diplomats and beyond that a fear that if something goes wrong, State Department officials may find themselves appearing before a congressional committee, with their careers hanging in the balance. That means getting US diplomats outside the protection of embassy walls and into the cities, towns, and communities of the countries where they are serving. In recent years, one of the hallmarks of American diplomacy - and certainly the ethos of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who died in the Benghazi attacks - is expeditionary diplomacy. Then there are the larger foreign policy implications - the impact on the State Department’s ability to do its job. According to the Pentagon, “the total cost of compliance with Benghazi-related congressional requests sent to the department and other agencies is estimated to be in the millions of dollars.” But the consequences of “Benghazi’’ have been significant.įirst there are the costs of more than a dozen public hearings, 50 member and staff briefings, and the turning over of 25,000 pages of documents. This is certainly not the first ginned up partisan attack. There was the accusation hurled at Hillary Clinton that she faked a concussion to avoid testifying before Congress about the matter and the almost routine assertion that the White House had left those in Benghazi to die. Then there was the steady stream of conservative pundits who claimed, among other things, that the White House was blackmailing then-CIA Director David Petraeus to keep him quiet about Benghazi. For two years, party graybeards like John McCain accused the Obama administration of engaging in a “cover-up’’ on Benghazi Speaker of the House John Boehner brazenly asserted that the Obama administration was “misleading the American people ” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina accused the president of having “failed as commander-in-chief before, during, and after the attack ” and House committee chairman Representative Darrell Issa floated unfounded “suspicions” that Hillary Clinton gave a “stand down” order to prevent military resources from being sent to help those under attack. Clinton ignoring the advice of State Department lawyers, convinced Obama to grant full diplomatic recognition to the rebels.The report’s release gives us the opportunity to focus on the real Benghazi scandal: the shameless and irresponsible politicization of this tragedy by the Republican Party. I think my - my personal favorite is this. She went to Paris, there were no instructions from the White House on whether to support strong action in Libya, said a senior State Department official, yet within three days, the official said Clinton began to see a way forward. Here are some excerpts, Washington Post, "A foreign policy success for the Obama administration and its most famous cabinet minister, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton." Or this. Now, this article is one of these articles that you read a couple of times - it's - if it's about you. "Joby didn't do any independent research." That's according to your staff. And again, according to your staff, "the great detail Joby had came entirely from Jake." That's Jake Sullivan. Now, this timeline was put together, according to your senior staff, explicitly for an article that came out in The Washington Post entitled, "Clinton's Key Role In Libya Conflict." In fact, according to your staff, quote, "The comprehensive tick-tock memo Jake had put together was done in large part for the Warrick piece." It was a piece written by Joby Warrick at The Washington Post.
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