The Polarity Resistance

Benghazi: And So, I am Not Very Smart, I am Told

Posted on May 10, 2014 Updated on May 10, 2014

The definition of Hogwash, according to TheFreeDictionary.com, is: “Worthless, false, or ridiculous speech or writing; nonsense. Garbage fed to hogs; swill.” That definition pretty much describes what Republicans have been doing since September 11, 2012. I was told a few months ago that I am “not very smart” because I choose to ignore the Republican propaganda about Benghazi, their petty political crusade against Obama and their ongoing attempt to paint him as the chief architect of a dastardly scheme to cover-up the identity of the Benghazi attackers for political gain.

This Benghazi thing has been going on for a little more than a year and a half now. It has wasted too much taxpayer’s money we can ill afford to accommodate given the current state of our economy. And, it has gotten so completely out of hand to the point where I have been told that I am “not very smart” for holding an opinion much different from the one the Republicans want to propagate.

A year and a half ago when this story first broke, I tried to take an extreme viewpoint to make a point. There was more of a cover up by President Bush over Iraq than there was a cover-up by the Obama Administration over Benghazi. President Bush has more responsibility in allowing 911 than Obama has in allowing the Benghazi incident. On 911, thousands of innocent American lives who had no official appointment whatsoever were lost, not in some distant foreign land, but, here on American soil.

How could Bush have let that happened? What kind of a competent President could have let such a disaster as 911 happen? How could Bush lie to the United Nations by concocting and fabricating a story that Iraq housed weapons of mass destruction? Thousands of American soldiers, an additional number of American lives, 4,488 of them, were lost because of that lie. Where was the Republican outrage during this obvious conspiracy while their Big Business cronies sought to secure their oil interests in Iraq? Does this mean the Republicans place more value on the lives of diplomats than they do on the lives of the thousands of ordinary Americans that, apparently, are expendable and less important in their eyes?

Of course, the implications of those previous statements are absurd, a little sickening and probably more than a little misdirected. American lives were lost on 911 for one single reason and one single reason alone: because a group of deranged, horribly twisted human beings thought it was their mission to kill thousands of innocent lives. The only people to blame for the attack are the perpetrators of the attack and nobody else. I don’t blame President Bush for 911 nor do I believe there was some great conspiracy that President Bush was somehow behind nor do I think Bush intentionally “lied” to the United Nations to get us involved in Iraq. But, you cannot convince some of my ultra-liberal Democratic friends of anything different.

Similarly, you cannot convince some of my ultra-conservative, rank and file Republican friends that there isn’t some grand conspiracy on the part of the Obama administration, politically motivated so that Obama could make himself look good right before the 2012 Presidential election. Just as nutty, in my mind, as any JFK conspiracy theory that you can pick out of a hat, crazy, ridiculous sounding, unsubstantiated rhetoric continues to flow from the Republican media machine, unrestrained and followed up by a seemingly unending stream of evidence offered that is ambiguous at best and only conjecture and innuendo regarding anything else.

When I try to point out to my Republican friends that it wouldn’t matter whether the attack was by an unorganized mob or whether it was by an organized group of conspirators, the story would still be bad for the President regardless and one version not really any worse than the other, it just falls on deaf ears. Think about it: an unorganized mob of people should be a little easier to outsmart than a group of sophisticated, highly trained al-Qaeda operatives–don’t you think? The President can still be accused of not providing adequate protection for our diplomats in both scenarios (and maybe that accusation becomes a little stronger in the case where responsibility was assigned to a mob).

In either case, the attack is no less an act of terror–which is exactly what President Obama called it in a speech a day after the tragedy happened (on September 12, 2012). Other factual accounts seem to go over their heads too, such as: the CIA’s talking points did contain a statement indicating that the “attack began ‘spontaneously’ in response to the Cairo protest.” Both of these are easily discoverable facts (see factcheck.com, www.intelligence.senate.gov, etc.). Additionally, according to CNN, the “The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Benghazi” released on Wednesday, January 15, 2014, had this to say: “It also blasted U.S. intelligence for inaccurately reporting — without ‘sufficient intelligence to corroborate it’ — that a protest might have led to the attack.” Lastly, any political gain the President could hope to accomplish would be so insignificantly small, meaningless; especially when you consider the capture of Bin Laden a year earlier, it is inconceivable that anybody in the White House would have thought up such a harebrained idea let alone attempt to implement it.

More plausible, the choice by the President to not immediately refer to the attack specifically as “terrorism” would seem to have had more to do with the diplomatic scene at the time, the reference to “spontaneous attack” in the initial CIA report and the confusion caused by the unrest still ongoing in Cairo. If the Benghazi attackers were protesters angry over the video, similar to the protesters in Cairo, a different response but no less committed might be required to avoid increasing the already high tensions in that volatile region of the world. Bottom line, I think the President’s motives for not explicitly acknowledging the incident as “a terrorist attack” were much different than the nefarious motives the Republicans want to present. Although, it has crossed my mind, more than once, that the Republicans would think the worst of somebody because, if the roles were reversed, that’s exactly how they might behave.

The President may not have explicitly labeled the Benghazi incident as “terrorism” but it is hard to argue against the statement “acts of terror” meaning anything else other than terrorism. Anybody who employs terror is, by definition, a terrorist. So, it doesn’t really matter who was responsible for the attack nor should we quibble about whether the President stated “terrorism” or “terror.” Given the speech the President made the day following the attack, this is absolutely made clear: people who commit murder are murderers. People who commit acts of terror are terrorists.

That seemed obvious to me from the start and it seems even more obvious to me now. Benghazi should have been a tragedy that would remind all of us that we need to stand together against terrorism and against unprovoked violent attacks by anyone who has chosen to make America their enemy. Instead, the Republicans have used this incident to divide the country, purposely, using deflection to obliterate any unity that might have normally resulted (a unity, obviously, that might have also endangered Romney’s election chances at the same time).

The fact that Republicans chose to exploit Benghazi for their own political gains is quite troubling. Republicans certainly seem to have abandoned any fondness they may have ever had for the old adage “United we stand, divided we fall” that was once their mantra. What a dismal state the Republican Party seems to have sunk into since the days of the “House Divided” speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln in 1858. I wonder what President Lincoln would think of his party today?

Being told that I am “not very smart” because I choose to be more pragmatic in my thoughts is very sobering but disturbing at the same time. There needs to be a little more objectivity, a little more presumption of innocence and a little more benefit of the doubt. It is really what our country is all about:   fairness and justice for all.

Even with this latest nonsense served-up by the Republicans over these past few weeks, the so called “smoking gun” that Republicans claim was found in an e-mail, it is painfully obvious that the sender of the e-mail was still under the impression that the Benghazi incident was a “spontaneous attack” by a group of protesters. In the e-mail, instructions outlined an included goal “to show that these protests were rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” This is the “smoking gun?” Hardly, to me it just confirms that the Republicans will stop at nothing to continue to sow the seeds of division wherever possible. The last thing we should do as a society is allow or encourage this pretentious witch hunt that truly is reminiscent of some McCarthy style Fifties mindless crusade.

There are several problems with this e-mail being the “smoking gun.” First and foremost, the statement the Republicans cite does not specifically reference the alleged Benghazi protest. In fact, a good argument could be made that it is referring to all the protests against the video that were in progress at the time. But, even if the statement was intended to reference the Benghazi protest, so what? White House advisors were still under the impression, based upon the initial CIA reports, that the incident was the result of a spontaneous attack inspired by the Cairo protests.

Second, the e-mail is not just specific to Benghazi but covers a wide range of different topics regarding current events in the Middle East. Lastly, Susan Rice is nowhere to be found in the list of recipients. I’m not sure if this really makes any difference but I thought I would note it anyway given that stories in the press seem to make it appear that it was an e-mail sent to Susan Rice. You can read the e-mail for yourself, here (page 14 of the “Judicial Watch” delivered document): declassified email. This so called “smoking gun” is more like a broken, dripping water pistol.

What I have seen over this Benghazi incident is an embarrassment; a demonstration of dirty politics at its worst, causing me to lose almost all respect for a Republican leader that I had once supported and, I am embarrassed to admit, had voted for in 2008. What these Republican leaders did and are still doing is reprehensible. Most of all, it is unfair. It’s not fair to be so condemning of the President for an intention that is pretty clear, never existed. My opinion is not limited to just President Obama in this regard but applies to any other President who has ever been unfairly judged, including President Bush, President Reagan, President Carter, President Hoover, etc.

Regardless, if it turns out, even after everything is said and done, that I am “not very smart” for giving the President the benefit of the doubt, then I am consoled by the fact that, at least, I am in the majority who do think pragmatism and levelheadedness less prone to political saber rattling are worthwhile investments that still have a certain degree of value in America. I wish the Republicans leadership would get on board with that type of thinking. In fact, I wish both parties would get on board with that type of thinking. If they did, we might actually be able to accomplish something positive for our country again. It might even result in bringing people together rather than tearing them apart. And for that last achievement, there is a hope, even a propensity for all of us to be just a little bit smarter.

More Class, More Unity, Less International Crisis

Posted on March 19, 2014

George W. Bush is a class act.  I truly admire the choice he has made to voluntarily restrain from making comments about decisions the current President is making.  Perhaps Bush is just as unhappy as his Republican colleagues with some or, maybe, all of the decisions Obama has made; still, no public statements are uttered to say as much.

Bush is not second guessing.  He knows he is no longer President and all the facts that used to be available to him are just not there anymore.  I am sure President Bush didn’t appreciate it when people second guessed him.  So, the former President has decided, instead, to honor the Golden Rule, to do unto others as he would have liked others to do unto him.

Mr. Bush knows what a tough job being President is.  When the Democrats criticized his every move, second guessed his every intention and questioned his motives, in the face of adversity, Bush went forward with what he thought was best for the country.  I always felt the President needed a better Public Relations manager and I had secretly hoped he would get one too.  But there also needed to be less knee-jerk reaction from his opponents.  President Bush received a lot of criticism that was unfair and unhelpful in my opinion.

I have to admit, I am guilty of cringing every time President Bush made a public address or gave a press conference.  But, if Mr. Bush will forgive me for that slight and, putting that aside, I think that history will judge his administration in an overall positive light.  I did not agree with everything the President did.  But, I also know that Mr. Bush really wasn’t all that bad of a President either.

Regardless, President Bush’s decision to employ a classy, respectful Post-Presidency is in stark contrast to the Post-Vice-Presidency we are witnessing.  Dick Cheney is quick to comment how bad Obama’s decisions have been and how they are most responsible for Russia’s invasion of Crimea.  Take, for example, Cheney’s appearance on “Face the Nation” a few Sundays ago.  Of course, if you ask any expert they will tell you that however bad Obama’s performance may be regarding other recent international events, it probably didn’t contribute much to the crisis occurring in Crimea.

It is interesting how Chaney is conveniently glossing over the Georgia invasion of 2008 when Russia annexed portions of that country’s sovereign territory.  How much was done about that particular crisis and what international foul-ups should we blame on Cheney for allowing Russia to get away with that particular theft? Mr. Cheney should be the last one to criticize anything Obama is doing with regards to Crimea when considering what happen to Georgia while Mr. Cheney was Vice President.

In a time when we should be showing unity, some, actually, most, Republicans still don’t get it.  It’s ironic that Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, who was also on the same “Face the Nation” program, when asked about bipartisanship, blamed that failure entirely on the President.  Huh? Right away, with that type of response, it tells me that there is no real effort on the part of the Republicans to take bipartisanship seriously.

There are appropriate times to criticize and inappropriate times to criticize.  More common sense needs to be used.  It is almost certain that part of the reason Putin went ahead with his plans to invade is exactly because of this polarized three ringed circus show that Republicans and Democrats (but, mostly, Republicans) insist on performing for extended engagements.

Too distracted by the abrasive, unproductive partisan politics they are practicing, Congress and the President were caught unaware and surprised.  Putin must have said to himself:  “I’ll invade and those crazy Americans will just continue on, busily spewing rhetoric and blaming each other for the first invasion that they won’t see my next move coming either.”

Divide and conquer.  That has always been a good strategy.  But, how sad it is when it is so self-inflicted?

Congress and President Obama have been so ineffective in the past, unable to do much of anything of real significance, why should this event in Crimea make things any different?  For example, last year Congress was willing to even risk damaging their own economy by failing to pass a budget due to the severity of their polarized factions and unwillingness to compromise.  Why wouldn’t Putin take advantage of this opportunity when he notices such seemingly self-destructive behavior?

It’s too bad Mr. Chaney doesn’t have the same discipline or motivation to follow his former boss’s lead.  Mr. Chaney does have a lot of good advice to offer President Obama absent his criticism.  But, we truly need leaders who can unite a people rather than seeking to continue to fuel the fires of a grand schism.

It’s time to wake up.  This is no time to be bickering among ourselves, trying to place blame.  Save that for later if you must.  But, now is not the time.  Now is the time to come together, to show a unified front without any hint of division, let Russia know what we think about their total disregard for international law, why we think it is unacceptable and, by George, what we intend to do about it.