Benghazi attack exposes Obama's fatal universalism

There are a number of seemingly reckless and unfathomable security decisions taken by the Obama administration leading up to, during, and after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans.

But before we examine the facts, we need to understand Obama's simple-minded universalism which is at the heart of his foreign policy. It is a key to understanding his actions. Obama's universalism believes that all folks are peaceful if left alone, and hence terrorism and anti-Americanism stem from America's heavy-handed interventionist approach around the world. So if the USA just stayed out and adopted a softly-softly approach, the world would stop hating them.

It's a cute theory, and it's partly true, but it is fatally wrong by ignoring the Islamic motivation of Muslims to wage war on non-believers simply for who we are.

Obama explained his approach in a radio interview in 2007:

The day I’m inaugurated, not only the country looks at itself differently, but the world looks at America differently … If I’m reaching out to the Muslim world they understand that I’ve lived in a Muslim country and I may be a Christian, but I also understand their point of view … My sister is half-Indonesian. I travelled there all the way through my college years. And so I’m intimately concerned with what happens in these countries and the cultures and perspective these folks have. And those are powerful tools for us to be able to reach out to the world … then I think the world will have confidence that I am listening to them and that our future and our security is tied up with our ability to work with other countries in the world that will ultimately makes us safer.

In 2009 we again saw Obama's universalism during his "apology tour" of Egypt and Turkey:

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust ...

Simple mistrust? And we saw it again during the Arab Spring when he sided with the protesters against their dictators, and even fought alongside them, bombing Gaddafi out of existence in 2011.

So, one year later, on September 11, 2012, what would Obama be thinking? He's thinking: problem solved. He helped liberate Libyans and Egyptians so, of course, now they love and adore him. The new beginning has arrived. In Obama's mind, there's no reason for Arabs to hate America anymore.

And recently he touted his "successful" foreign policy:

... we have taken the fight to the terrorists, but you notice that you have not seen the kind of international objections and outcry that you saw in the previous administration. And the reason is that we don't go around thumping our chest about it. We seek cooperation with other countries wherever we can ... What this shows is, I think, a smart, strong, steady foreign policy is different than a lot of saber-rattling and chest-thumping.

So, as we examine the key facts, keep in mind that at the time of the Benghazi attack, Obama thinks the Arabs now love him, and that may explain a lot about his reckless decisions.

1. Security was requested in the months before the attack, but was denied.

Diana West, Benghazi Cable: Al Qaeda Is Here

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Disturbing new information about Benghazi and the Obama administration. Fox News obtained a classified cable sent in August from the U.S. mission in Benghazi to the State Department in Washington. The cable, coming just weeks before the attack, warned the Benghazi consulate could not sustain a coordinated attack.

But that is not all that was in that cable. Fox News chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge, who has read that cable, is here with the latest -- Catherine.

CATHERINE HERRIDGE, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Well, the status of the cable is that I really believe, having read it, that it is the smoking gun warning here. You've got this emergency meeting in Benghazi less than a month before the attack. At that briefing, the people are told that there are 10 -- 10 -- Islamist militias and al Qaeda groups in Benghazi.

The consulate cannot sustain a coordinated attack and that they need extra help. And this information goes directly to the office of the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. So again, you're got the culpability of the State Department. This is a very specific warning that they are in trouble, they need help and they see an attack on the horizon...

HERRIDGE: It's very detailed. There can be no doubt that this is really a cry for help from the people on the ground. They also talk at length that they think the 17th February Brigade -- this is the Libyan militia that's supposed to be friendly to the United States that's really tasked with being the police force in Benghazi, has been infiltrated by our enemies.

It says the 17th February Brigade is not sharing information with the Americans anymore. So that's us. And we had information right after the attack that this brigade just kind of melted away during the attack. They were nowhere to be found.

"Nonsense! We just liberated them, for crying out loud. The Arabs now love us, there can't be 10 groups who hate us. Trust me." That's what Obama is thinking.

2. Was the local security hired to protect the consulate really on our side?

Diana West, Benghazi's Real Scandal? Uncle Sam Joined the Jihad

Imagine, pre-9/11/12, that you were responsible for arranging the defense of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Would you have considered American interests and personnel best protected by bringing in a local security outfit called the February 17 Martyrs Brigade?

The question has yet to come up in House hearings, but I think it holds the key to the Obama administration’s betrayal of the American people in “Benghazi-gate.” To an American with common sense not subverted by advanced degrees, the thought of putting Islamic “martyrs” in charge of American “infidels” in Benghazi – which, fun fact, literally means “city of holy warriors” – would trigger the inevitable “heck, no.” And that’s without even knowing what is significant about Feb. 17.

But I’m talking about Washington, D.C. Here, placing the lives of Americans in the hands of a thug-army linked to multiple atrocities and drawn from jihad-epicentral eastern Libya disturbs no collective brain wave. No matter that Benghazi and nearby Derna sent more men, per capita, to Iraq to kill Americans than anywhere else in the world. As far as the Obama administration is concerned, putting local boys in barracks inside the consulate compound was a great idea. Why not? President Obama’s ambassador, the late Christopher Stevens, was, as they say, “reaching out” across the jihad spectrum on official business.

Meanwhile, Ansar al Sharia (“Supporters of Islamic Law”), the al-Qaida-linked militia believed to have led the consulate assault in September, is a spinoff of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, but that didn’t scratch the lacquered political surface, either. And even as reports remind us of ties among February 17 Martyrs Brigade leadership, the Muslim Brotherhood and the web of jihad-poison spun by Qatar’s Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Libya’s Ali al-Salabi ...

(See Video: Diana West, Benghazi: Fox Inside the Henhouse)

And Libyan police were caught photographing the inside of the U.S. Special Mission, on the morning of the attack.

"More Islamophobia! Relax, you'll see. I've fixed everything. The Arabs love us now." says Obama.

3. Hours before the Benghazi attack, protesters attacked the US Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, allegedly in response to Innocence of Muslims, an anti-Islamic video made in the USA. Egyptian riot police eventually quelled the riot without using force.

4. The attack on the Benghazi consulate lasted 7 hours. There were 120+ heavily armed fighters, some dressed in Islamic garb. It was a planned terrorist attack, with no protest about a film.

There was high-powered air support available to be called in, but never came. Four Americans died in the attack: Ambassador Stevens, Information Officer Sean Smith, and two embassy security personnel, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, both former Navy SEALs. Woods and three others may have been ordered to stand down but ignored those orders and joined the fight.


CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack

... at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights.

In response to the first of those deaths Hillary Clinton linked the Innocence of Muslims video to the attack. And for the next two weeks, the Obama administration did likewise, before admitting it looked more like planned terrorism.

So why were these men apparently left to die when backup was available? Were the troops told to stand down?


I haven't kept up with all the facts, but here is one simple explanation:

What were Obama's instincts during the attack? He is thinking that the attacks in Cairo and Benghazi are the result of something we have done: a film that offended Muslims. At least, that's what he wants to believe. His mind is filtering facts to fit his demented universalism.

And so he wants this problem resolved without US forces intervening and looking like the big bad oppressor again. So he hopes the local Libyan security forces will fight off the attack, like the Cairo protest was quelled by their local security. In order to preserve the "new beginning" Obama desperately wants to avoid sending in troops.

But the flaws in Obama's thinking are (a) this was terrorism not an angry mob, and (b) the local "moderate" Muslims always seem to crumble whenever terrorists arrive. That's because universalism does not survive in Islamic societies. It is crushed by the doctrine of Islam, which seeks to conquer all. And it is fatal to think otherwise.

And what have we learned since the attack?

5. Obama, Clinton and Biden did not appear sincere when meeting the father of Tyrone Woods, and Clinton told him: "we’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video" (and he was arrested: so much for free speech). And Biden made the crude comment to Woods' father: "Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?". These are leaders in denial, living in a fantasy world where people are just "bumps in the road".


6. At the UN on September 25, Obama once again blames everything on the West, citing the video six times in his address, declaring: "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam". This is his instinctive narrative.

7. We are now repeating the same mistake in Syria, siding with the rebels. Hillary Clinton is shocked to now find head-choppers leading the rebellion:

The Obama administration on Wednesday renounced the proclaimed leaders of the Syrian political opposition and said any group seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad must reject attempts by extremists to “hijack” a legitimate revolution.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Syrian National Council, or SNC, should no longer be considered the “visible leader” of the opposition ...

Clinton and other U.S. officials are fed up with infighting among the SNC leaders seeking recognition as a shadow government and have become convinced that the group does not represent the interests of all ethnic and religious groups in Syria. It also has little legitimacy among on-the-ground activists and fighters, and has done little to stem the infiltration of Islamist extremists into the opposition forces.

She desperately wants the "visible leader" to be a moderate Muslim. Sorry, the facts don't fit your demented universalism.

8. The enquiry to Benghazi-gate is headed by a left-leaning Obama clone who believes the same brain-dead nonsense as Obama.

Conclusion: much of Obama's reckless decisions might be explained by his simple-minded, but fatally wrong, idea that all people are peaceful if left alone, and that Islam is a religion of peace. But Islam is not peaceful, it never has been, and never will be, and more people will die so long as that demented belief prevails.

Diana West, Will Benghazi Lies Determine Election? Not If MSM Have Their Way!

“You don’t just passively allow Americans to remain under attack for eight hours at a time when you have forces within range and do nothing,” Robert C. McFarlane, former National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan, told Fox News. “To have known what he [Obama] had available, to have known that Americans were under fire, and to have done nothing, is dereliction of duty that I have never seen in a Commander in Chief from a president of any party.”

If anything, the media’s dereliction of duty is even worse.

Charles Krauthammer, We're Seeing The Collapse Of The Obama Policy On The Muslim World

What we're seeing on that screen is the meltdown, the collapse of the Obama policy on the Muslim world. The irony is that it began in Cairo, in the same place where the speech he made in the beginning of his presidency in which he said, he wanted a new beginning with mutual respect, implying that under the other presidents, particularly Bush, there was a lack of mutual respect. Which was an insult to the United States, which had gone to war six times in the last 20 years on behalf of oppressed Muslims, in Kuwait, in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

So to imply that we somehow had mistreated Muslims which was the premise of his speech and how the Iraq War had inflamed the Arab world against us. Well there was no storming of the U.S. embassy in Cairo in those days.

What we're seeing now is al-Qaedaistan developing in Libya, meltdown of our relations with Egypt, you have riots in Yemen, attacks on our embassy in Tunisia. This entire premise that we want to be loved and respected, we'll apologize, has now yielded all of these results and these are the fruits of apology and retreat and lack of confidence in our own principles

Former CIA Officer: Obama Administration let Ambassador Stevens Die



Clare Lopez: "I have never seen a situation where a facility was under attack like that and nothing happens"
Melanie Phillips, The Game Changer

Despite CIA denials, Fox News reports that that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to ‘stand down’ rather than help the ambassador’s team....

The Obama administration now stands accused of refusing to come to the aid of its own forces seeking to defend its own ambassador and consulate staff against murderous attack, thus suggesting the administration was complicit in their murder through either pusillanimity or incompetence – and then of trying to cover this up by falsely blaming an irrelevant video. And yet, at time of writing, the mainstream media is even now trying to ignore this ...

I may have overlooked it, but at this moment I can’t see any reference to the Benghazi story anywhere on the msm apart from Fox. Yet it is hard to think of a more devastating set of claims against an incumbent President. Does anyone doubt that, if similar claims had been aired against a Republican President at this stage of an election campaign, the mainstream media would have gone collectively and ballistically into orbit?

Tyrone Woods’s father said this:

‘In real time the White House, from the minute the first bullet was fired, they watched my son, they denied his pleas for help; my son violated his orders in order to protect the lives of at least 30 people. He risked his life to be a hero. I wish the leadership in the White House had that same level of moral courage...’

A sickening scandal and an electoral game-changer – but only in any sane universe.

Mark Steyn, Benghazi bungle requires act of urgent political hygiene

... in those first moments of the attack, a request for military back-up was made by U.S. staff on the ground but was denied by Washington. It had planes and Special Forces less than 500 miles away in southern Italy – or about the same distance as Washington to Boston. They could have been there in less than two hours. Yet the commander-in-chief declined to give the order. So Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods fought all night against overwhelming odds, and died on a rooftop in a benighted jihadist hell hole while Obama retired early to rest up before his big Vegas campaign stop. "Within minutes of the first bullet being fired, the White House knew these heroes would be slaughtered if immediate air support was denied," said Ty Woods' father, Charles. "In less than an hour, the perimeters could have been secured, and American lives could have been saved. After seven hours fighting numerically superior forces, my son's life was sacrificed because of the White House's decision."

Why would Obama and Biden do such a thing? Because to launch a military operation against an al-Qaida affiliate on the anniversary of 9/11 would have exposed the hollowness of their boast through convention week and the days thereafter – that Osama was dead, and al-Qaida was finished. And so Ty Woods, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith and Chris Stevens were left to die, and a decision taken to blame an entirely irrelevant video and, as Secretary Clinton threatened, "have that person arrested." And, in the weeks that followed, the government of the United States lied to its own citizens as thoroughly and energetically as any totalitarian state, complete with the midnight knock-on-the-door from not-so-secret policemen sent to haul the designated fall guy into custody.

Lawrence Auster, The "investigation" of Benghazi

Of course the very idea of an “investigation” is a transparent fraud... Obama needs an investigation to find out what he himself told his administration to do and say? That such a transparent lie is allowed to stand unchallenged is proof that we are no longer living in a free society.

File under: "this entire premise" of universalism.