America Let Its Eye Off the Ball Leading Up to Benghazi

News networks are finally, grudgingly, beginning to tell how our four fellow U. S. citizens in the diplomatic service were targeted and murdered in cold blood in Libya last month.

These great Americans had no military detail nor hired civilian protection service. They were helpless to any onslaught, like what eventually happened. Our Ambassador's body was dragged through the streets much like what had been done in less civilized societies in the times of Rome, Carthage or the Eastern dynasties; where when military victories were won, some of the other guys were made into bloody messes to the applause of the crowds. A few recent examples of these “trophy displays” have been in Somalia (“Black Hawk Down”) and different times within the current Syrian civil war.

Prior to this enemy calculated “mob event,” Hillary Clinton's State Department (and I truly believe she was directly briefed on the requests) refused to authorize, from among three different civilian protection services available, to reinforce the Ambassador’s consulate, even though the Ambassador by all accounts, including from his own personal diary, repeatedly all but pleaded for additional protection. With any level of leadership the State Department might well have prevented this vicious atrocity, or at the very least take out many of these attackers.

Would there have been a street and house battle because of added security, and the end result still happen?  It’s possible. But that’s better than having our nation’s senior representative in the area outright murdered and dragged through the street (I’ve seen the pictures from Arab news sources, and it is Ambassador Stevens).  The American security leader in the area, a retired military (Special Forces) colonel, sought to have protection for our Ambassador reinstated, but was turned down (repeatedly, we are now finding out) by the State Department. They said added protection of our United States Ambassador was not possible because of “budget constraints,” or some other convenient blather or outright lies.

The job of the Executive Branch is to lead in the protection of America and Americans. Embassies and consulates are the United States abroad.  This was an attack on our soil, make no mistake, and that is exactly how it is being celebrated by numerous Islamist groups (remember right after the 9-11 attacks? I will never, ever forget some in the Middle East wildly celebrating in the streets over these mass murders).  The butchery of our Ambassador and his colleagues are not “bumps in the road” as some--including the president--brush them off as being.  They are more like cliffs.

I find it incredulous that the Libyan government had no idea Islamist radicals were after the Ambassador.  Conveniently (after the deed was done) the Libyan military subsequently came in and retrieved the Ambassador’s body and the three others.

The United States Secretary of State that presided over the murder of an American Ambassador which, in past years, would initiate Marines coming ashore (or it should).  But not today. Today we apologize to the murderers and their supporters, and we make excuses for them.

For two weeks President Obama, and the State Department, said it was an “instantaneous mob reaction to a 2-minute [unknown and underground] movie trailer that was posted on YouTube (along with about 10,000,000+ other such movie trailers or homemade “movies.”)  What total nonsense!  It was an Al Qaeda, or related Islamist terrorist organization(s), organized hit. Nothing less. Al Qaeda didn’t die with bin Laden’s death; if anything it has since grown.

Also, if Secretary Clinton has taken "responsibility" for what happened, should she not face any consequences for the ordeal? She has been, at best, mediocre and, at worse, criminal in her duties especially as regards to U.S. Embassies and Consulates’ protection, not to mention a litany of failed opportunities to anticipate and lead throughout that region of the world at the onset of the Arab Spring. Why in the world wouldn’t Congress, and the people of this nation, not want her fired, or at least demand her immediate resignation regardless of the White House?

America has let its eye off the ball--a situation that needs remedied beginning next month.