Ineptitude
by John Schroeder
I have yet to read a news story on the Benghazi report. I have read some, and seen countless, bits of spin wrapped in a newsy outlook, but no actual news. Hewitt’s interview with Mike Pompeo yesterday was the best “just the facts” reporting I have seen to date.
And so, I have turned to the report itself. Yes, that link takes you to the official congressional web site summarizing the report and linking to the whole thing. Let me repeat that – you do not have to take my word for anything, GO HERE and read it for yourself. Now, having said that, I have not had time to get through all of it – the thing is enormous. Nonetheless, I’ve seen enough to draw at least one conclusion.
The best that can be said here is that the Obama administration, inclusive of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was utterly, totally, and completely inept when it came to dealing with the crisis the attack on the Benghazi station created. Forget the who’s and the why’s for a moment and focus on the fact that things did not work. Simply put, the organization that is the US government did not function. In a sense this is no different than what we saw over the BP oil spill – a government that when confronted with something that had to be done, could not decide what to do, let alone get something done.
Certainly nefarious intent can be ascribed to the situation, politics before the realities of the situation, etc. But in the face the such overwhelming and consequential ineptitude is it even necessary to ascribe motive of any sort? Where I come from, you screw up that badly there are consequences regardless of motivation or intent.
I wrote a while back about faith being replaced by identity. I think what we are seeing here is part of that. When identity is your primary concern, motivation matters because it allows one to preserve some sense of self in the face of incredible failure. Christianity on the other hands starts with the fact that we are failures from the get-go and concentrates on how we deal with failure and what we are going to do to avoid repeating failure. But again, examining motivation, philosophizing or moralizing is a secondary concern in the face of failure this dramatic and consequential. Something has to be done.
The failures described in this report are systemic. They are never going to be pinned on any one or two people. When an entire organization fails, you change the top of the organization and let the new head of the organization wade through the issues in the organization. And you always bring in the new head from the outside because you don’t know who else inside the current organization is compromised by the failure. Thank goodness, Obama is gone soon. Thus Hillary Clinton cannot reasonably be the next president.
I do not currently have a great deal of confidence that Donald Trump will be any better at this than Obama and team have been. Knowing who will be on Trump’s team and that they are committed to being on the team will go along way towards building that confidence. But this I do know, Trump was not involved in this particular ineptitude and that makes him more suited for the job than Hillary who is deeply compromised by it.
Yesterday, Hillary responded to the Benghazi report by saying “It’s time to move on.” You know what? She’s right. It is time to move on from Obama, Clinton and a Democrat administration generally. We cannot afford to have this level of ineptitude running the nation.
