From
my conservative friend in Ohio:
I’m
very angry over the Benghazi fiasco, but I am
absolutely astounded that the liberals around the country (yourself included)
are not.
The Benghazi
flap (not the incident but the flap that you support and are angry liberals are
not) is primarily political; an attack on the Democratic President and on a
potential future Democratic President. Before you throw up your hands or throw
up please consider your reaction to previous terrorist attacks.
April 18, 1983
a suicide bomber drove a truck load of explosives into the US
embassy in Beirut killing 63, 17 of
them were Americans. Of the Americans killed, eight worked for the Central
Intelligence Agency, including the CIA's top Middle East analyst and Near East
director, Robert Ames, Station Chief Kenneth Haas and most of the Beirut staff
of the CIA. President Regan said that the attack “will not deter us from our
goals of peace in the region.” Senator Goldwater said, "I think it's high
time we bring the boys home."
Did you feel similarly after the October 23, 1983 terrorist attack in Beirut
that killed 241 American servicemen? U.S. President Ronald Regan called the
attack a "despicable act” and pledged to keep a military force in Lebanon.
Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, who had privately advised the
administration against stationing U.S. Marines in Lebanon,
said there would be no change in the U.S.'s
Lebanon policy.
Did this make you very angry?
December 12, that same year, a suicide truck bomber drove
through the gates of the US
embassy in Kuwait City
killing 63. It would have been more if the bomb hadn’t misfired. Three
terrorist attacks in one year! Were you outraged that nothing had been done to
protect our embassies in dangerous places after the first attack? I don’t
recall liberals attacking Republican President Reagan either.
Feb 26, 1993
World Trade
Center bombing, first terrorist
attack on US
soil killed six and injured over 1,000. Were you angry at the Democratic
President Clinton?
August 7, 1998
two US
embassies in East African were bombed by al Qaeda killing 223; 12 were
Americans. President Clinton ordered missile attacks in retaliation one of
which knocked out a pharmaceutical factory. The administration said there was
ample evidence the factory was producing chemical weapons, but a thorough
investigation after the missile strikes revealed the intelligence to be false.
I don’t recall an uproar from the right or left.
October 12, 2000
seventeen American sailors were killed in the terrorist attack on the USS Cole.
Did you feel the same about any of these as you feel about Benghazi?
My feeling about all of them is pretty
much the same, sadness over the loss of life and hope for a better future.
Posts
2 comments:
This is, of course, much to do about nothing. But it shows the blatant hypocrisy of the wingnuts. GW Bush was warned many times about the fact that Al Qaeda was determined to attack INSIDE the US. This was, in fact, the title of the daily briefing given to Bush, at his ranch, from the CIA, on Aug. 6. FBI agents who tried to tell AG John Ashcroft that Al Qaeda agents were learning to fly planes without wanting to know how to land were told to never bring any more crap like that to him, he was sick of hearing it. Cheney was supposed to have meetings on the warnings that Richard Clark was giving them (with his "hair on fire") and Cheney never had ONE meeting on terrorism. Condoleeza rice, then head of the NSA, thought the daily briefing was a "historical" document. And W himself sat there like a bump on a log for what seemed like forever when he was told we were under attack. Any Republican who has the balls to bitch about Benghazi, which was NOTHING in comparison to 9-11, should be smacked upside the head for such willful ignorance and blatant partisanship.
My Old Friend’s response: Wow! Well ya, those previous incidents did bother me … though maybe not quite as much as Pearl Harbor and the assignation of Abe Lincoln, but how is that relevant? I disagree that the flap over the Benghazi is primarily political, any more than the Watergate fiasco was primarily political.
Ah, me, my old friend never disappoints. He really doesn’t understand the relevance. Dear friend, in each of those cases the United States was attacked by terrorists. In several of them the administration’s response was at least as lacking as your criticism of the Obama administration’s response. Fairness is, I freely admit, unlikely but some effort should be made.
Post a Comment