If an Exxon gas station gets robbed, you don’t blame the CEO of exxon for it, right? Even if the clerk at the station asked for more security, that request would never have reached the CEOs desk. The only way you could reasonably blame the CEO is that if the overall corporate policy was to deny such requests, and the policy was not well thought out. (after all, you can’t really afford to keep gas stations open if you need a SWAT team to guard them)
The wikipedia page says the missions there was a CIA front. So using the gas station analogy, basically it wasn’t even an Exxon owned station, it’s an independent station licensing the Exxon sign. So, shouldn’t the blame for the inadequate security go to the CIA mission coordinator who didn’t ask for enough assets? It wouldn’t even make sense for such a request to go to the secretary of state, this wasn’t really a state department mission, and more assets might have gotten in the way of the weapons smuggling.
Emails. Whitewater. Vincent Foster. Connect the dots, sheeple.
Of course she wasn’t responsible, or at least not as responsible as Trump was for the death of that Navy Seal during the recent raid in Yemen. But Republicans are crazy.
The right wing theory (which is false) is that Clinton had received intelligence of the attacks before they happened but refused to increase security at the threatened locations.
This incredibly tedious tale was merely the right Republicans’ pathetic attempt to blame Hillary for everything in the world. By dragging her into the wretched court of public opinion and plugging away non-stop like nattering old fishwives they tried to make her ( more as next Democratic inevitable candidate than anything personal ) unelectable.
How was Libya doing before? How would Libya be doing if Gadaffi had crushed the revolutionaries? Clinton made mistakes (most notably in giving unwarranted credence to the ‘mass rape’ stories) but if there was a path of action or inaction that would have led to Libya being all sunshine and lollipops I’m not seeing it, even in hindsight.
As for Benghazi, one could place blame on the Republicans for repeatedly slashing embassy security budgets or on the CIA for insisting that the Benghazi consulate be located in a relatively insecure location or on the late Ambassador Stevens for misreading the risk level and going to Benghazi after being warned not to. Clinton’s level of responsibility for the event probably falls somewhere below that.
But mostly I blame the assholes who carried out the attack in the first place.
It’s because she dissed baking chocolate chip cookies in 1992. The Republicans have been a baying pack of dogs after her ever since.
Annoyance with the Republicans aside, a lot of people have confused Clinton’s role as Secretary of State with that of a generallisimo in a banana republic. Secretary of State is an advisory role to the president, not Unquestioned Single Decision-Making Defender of the Country and All Its Stuff.
She was held to blame because senior Americans - including an ambassador, remember - died and
while she admitted responsibility for their deaths, she brushed it off by not resigning. Here in the UK it would most definitely be a resigning matter.
At a minimum Hillary acquiesced to the idea of placing an embassy in Benghazi in the first place, a location we were in no position to protect. It happened under her watch without her objection. The rest of the stuff was bullshit conspiracy theory but she never took responsibility for what was at least nonfeasance. Nothing new about that though.
While we’re at it, let’s not forget the 13 attacks on American embassies during Bush 43’s administration. Was anyone at all, much less Secretaries Rice or Powell, held responsible for those?
Clinton’s acknowledgement of responsibility was clearly of “the buck stops here” variety rather than “I personally orchastrated the deaths of a US ambassador and three other Americans,” and also gives lie to the claim that Clinton “Never took responsibility for any or the problems with US foreign policy.”. There are plenty of valid criticisms of Hillary Clinton in her tenure as Secretary of State, both in foreign policy and her internal management of the State Depatment, but assigning her plenary authority for a minor diplomatic compound and annex (not an embassy as often erroneously described) is pretty absurd.
They didn’t tip their hand at running for president, though; Hillary did. The GOP played the long game and wanted to make sure that candidate Clinton was crippled before she could get off the ground. This political hit job probably started as early as 2010 but the Benghazi attacks gave the Republicans some meat to chew on, and like a pack of pit bulls they never let go.
Going off on a bit of tangent here, but the Democrats should have seen the potential perils of trotting out Hillary Clinton.I’m also guessing, however, that there was an intimidation factor. Until Obama’s 2nd term, it was understood that the Democratic Party was still in many ways the party of Clinton. Her husband, despite being scandal-plagued, was generally regarded as being one of the more successful Democratic politicians since FDR. She also had 18 million votes from the last primary. What other candidate besides a cranky old Brooklynite who called Vermont his adopted home dared to challenge her?
Indeed, it took someone from outside the Democratic party to actually compete for her party’s nomination, because nobody inside her party, except for some no-name candidates, even conceived of challenging her. And while I was not a fan of Bernie’s anti-Wall Street demagoguery, I definitely sympathize with those who point out that the Democratic party nomination process is flawed when a political dynasty can control a party to the point that nobody dares to challenge the front runner. I think this is what a lot of Bernie voters (and later Trump voters) were really trying to convey through their votes. Not so coincidentally, the candidate representing the other political dynasty suffered his own inglorious end. But at least the Republicans could say that there was an open process, which in some ways helped them during the general campaign.
As for the thread topic, Clinton has obviously been turned into a recurring character in a GOP political horror fiction. But sorry, her foreign policy is on her. Certainly not all on her, but I don’t think she helped the U.S. make a transition from a country at war to a period of more stability.
Simply, she was Secretary of State and the overseas diplomatic corps was ultimately her responsibility.
There are many United States embassies and consulates all over the world. It is foolish to think that the security measures reasonably needed are the same for all locations. Security for the US consulate in Antigua and Barbuda might be adequately addressed by minimal security measures such as having a lock on the door and a burglar alarm account. Security for the US embassy in Moscow reasonably requires a much higher level of security measures.
So someone has to balance the security needs with available resources. Someone made that decision. And security measures for the consulate in Benghazi proved to be tragically inadequate. As Secretary of State ultimately the buck stopped with her.
Shit, judging by recent events, even losing an election by a staggering margin isn’t a resigning matter.
The simple truth about Benghazi is : she was the likely Democratic candidate. That’s it. My evidence is : there have been a gazillion investigations and probes and special reports in the runup to the election. Trump even campaigned on “Lock 'er up !”.
Since the day right after the election, however ? <crickets>