Jane Mayer; Reagan’s Benghazi

ChockBlock sends us a link to New Yorker in which journalist/Yale grad, Jane Mayer strains to make a comparison between the Obama Administration’s tribulations in comparison to President Reagan and the Beirut bombing;

There were more than enough opportunities to lay blame for the horrific losses at high U.S. officials’ feet. But unlike today’s Congress, congressmen did not talk of impeaching Ronald Reagan, who was then President, nor were any subpoenas sent to cabinet members. This was true even though then, as now, the opposition party controlled the majority in the House. Tip O’Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House, was no pushover. He, like today’s opposition leaders in the House, demanded an investigation—but a real one, and only one. Instead of playing it for political points, a House committee undertook a serious investigation into what went wrong at the barracks in Beirut. Two months later, it issued a report finding “very serious errors in judgment” by officers on the ground, as well as responsibility up through the military chain of command, and called for better security measures against terrorism in U.S. government installations throughout the world.

In other words, Congress actually undertook a useful investigation and made helpful recommendations. The report’s findings, by the way, were bipartisan. (The Pentagon, too, launched an investigation, issuing a report that was widely accepted by both parties.)

In March of 1984, three months after Congress issued its report, militants struck American officials in Beirut again, this time kidnapping the C.I.A.’s station chief, Bill Buckley. Buckley was tortured and, eventually, murdered. Reagan, who was tormented by a tape of Buckley being tortured, blamed himself. Congress held no public hearings, and pointed fingers at the perpetrators, not at political rivals.

If you compare the costs of the Reagan Administration’s serial security lapses in Beirut to the costs of Benghazi, it’s clear what has really deteriorated in the intervening three decades. It’s not the security of American government personnel working abroad. It’s the behavior of American congressmen at home.

Yeah, well, there are vast differences between the two incidences which resulted in the murders of Americans by jihadists. In Benghazi, warnings were made to people in Washington to reinforce security personnel. In Beirut, there were already hundreds of troops, but they weren’t deployed properly with sufficient security measures employed to protect the facility. Although some of that was the fault of Washington, and ultimately the president, the culpability was also shared by commanders on the ground who didn’t foresee a truck bomb attack, although that method of attack had been employed in the recent past.

Mayers claims that Hillary Clinton took responsibility for Benghazi, and something about the “dismissal of four employees”. If I remember correctly those four employees were just moved to other jobs, and Hillary Clinton told us that the deaths of those Americans at Benghazi don’t matter.

The Reagan Administration were forthcoming with information to Congress in regards to Beirut, the Obama Administration has not – they let it out in drips and drabs to drag out the investigation, ala Bill Clinton so that America tires of hearing about it. All of the surviving victims of Beirut were allowed to have their say abut the investigation. There are 30 surviving victims of the Benghazi whose names we don’t even know yet.

She claims that there are Republicans calling for the impeachment of the President. Yeah, no one rational is doing that, but there are impeachable offenses in regards to the lack of candor in the executive branch. Not to mention that the Reagan Administration took their portion of the blame immediately, they didn’t blame some virtually unknown movie or video.

But you can bet that the low-information voters are going to eat this vacuous shit up like applesauce. Mayer just wanted us to know that she was at Beirut back when she considered an unbiased reporter, but years of drinking the koolaid has made her an apologist for the naked emperor.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Media