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What we learned from the Benghazi whistle-blowers

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From the PJ Tatler, seven points:

  1. There were multiple stand-down orders, not just one.
  2. Ambassador Stevens’ reason for going to Benghazi has been cleared up.
  3. Clinton was briefed at 2 am on the night of the attack, was never told that a movie had anything to do with the attack by those on the ground in Libya, yet blamed the movie anyway.
  4. Whistleblowers were intimidated into silence.
  5. “The YouTube movie was a non-event in Libya.”
  6. Democrats were uninterested in getting at most of the facts, but were very interested in destroying Mark Thompson.
  7. House hearings are a poor way to determine who did what and why during and after the attack.

Here’s my favorite one:

5. “The YouTube movie was a non-event in Libya.” Hicks directly testified that the YouTube movie, for which a man remains in jail, was not in any way relevant to the attack in Benghazi. Why Obama, Clinton, Rice et al blamed that movie for the attack remains an unanswered question. Hicks said that no American on the ground in Libya that night believed the movie was to blame. He also testified that there was no protest prior to the attack. When the attack began, he was in Tripoli. He texted Stevens, who was in Benghazi, to advise him of the riot in Cairo at the U.S. embassy. In that riot, jihadists had stormed the walls and replaced the American flag with the black flag of Islam. Stevens had not been aware of the Cairo situation at all, but shortly after Hnicks texted him about it, Stevens called and told Hicks that the Benghazi consulate was under attack. He never mentioned a protest.

Hicks also testified that blaming the movie had strongly adverse real-world effects. According to him, it humiliated Libya’s president, who had correctly stated that Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Blaming the movie, Hicks said, did “immeasurable damage” to our relations with Libya and delayed the FBI investigation. On Sept. 12, Ambassador Susan Rice told the first of her many untruths, claiming in an email that the FBI investigation into the attack was already underway. It would not actually get underway for 17 days after the attack, by which time the scene of the attack had been compromised and contaminated.

We still do not know who decided to change the original CIA talking points and blame the movie, but the finger is pointing directly at Hillary Clinton. She was briefed by Hicks during the attack, the movie was never mentioned, but in her first public statement on September 12, she blamed the movie. Her subordinate, Ambassador Susan Rice, also blamed the movie the following weekend. The fact that Obama himself blamed the movie repeatedly, though, strongly suggests that he took part in the decision as well.

The Obama administration just flat out lied, because they didn’t want the American people to know that their policies of appeasement and moral equivalence make us less safe. Democrats aren’t serious about national security and foreign policy. Their goal with national security, as with anything, is to feel good about themselves. And they do that by pretending that our actual enemies are our allies, and that America is to blame for any attacks against us. Benghazi is the direct result of this attitude of apologizing, disarming and bowing to dictators. Weakness invites aggression. Strength deters aggression. That’s the way the world works, like it or not.

The Weekly Standard has an excellent podcast summarizing the findings, as well.

UPDATE: Guy Benson lists twelve findings from the Benghazi hearings on Townhall.com.

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Is Richard Dawkins really the world’s leading thinker?

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Rabbi David Wolpe writes about it on the liberal Huffington Post.

Excerpt:

Prospect magazine just named the 65 leading intellectuals in the world.

First on the list was Richard Dawkins, known for his work in biology and for his polemics against religion. Dawkins on biology is an elegant, lucid and even enchanting explicator of science. Dawkins on religion is historically uninformed, outrageously partisan and morally obtuse. If Dawkins is indeed our best, the life of the mind is in a precarious state.

He breaks his criticisms into 3 sections:

  • Historical Ignorance
  • Intellectual Narrowness
  • Moral Obtuseness

Here’s my favorite:

To write, as Dawkins has, not only that religion is a form of child abuse but indeed may be more damaging than actual sexual abuse, is closer to raving than to reason: “Priestly groping of child bodies is disgusting. But it may be less harmful in the long run than priestly subversion of child minds.” Puerile swipes at the religion of a billion people are beneath any intellectual, much less a “leading” one.

That religions, for all their many and frequently noted faults, do great good in the world (the largest aid organization in the USA is World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian group), and are integral to the art, culture and even scientific development of both the east and west is all germane, but not central. Central to the evaluation of an intellectual’s integrity is whether they are arguing with the best in the opposing position. Dawkins grabs every depredation of religion as though it were a central tenet and everything noble as though it were an accidental, replaceable byproduct. This is a sophist’s strategy, unserious and unworthy.

Thoughtful atheism is an important contribution to the debate. Far more credible is the conclusion of an ideological confederate of Dawkins, editor of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer: “However for every one of these grand tragedies there are a thousand acts of personal kindness that go unreported. … Religion, like all social institutions of such historical depth and cultural impact, cannot be reduced to an unambiguous good or evil.”

Such vapid reductionism would never be undertaken, of course, by anyone with genuine intellectual integrity. The idea that this simplification would be assayed by the world’s leading intellectual is a mockery — like the list that enshrines him.

Jonathan M. posed this link to the scientific publications of the greatest thinker in the world. I’m not impressed.

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Carson Weitnauer: putting atheism on the defensive

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Here’s an article at Reasons for God that explains a few simple questions that you can ask your atheist friends.

He writes:

Though it has been persistently marketed to us as a worldview that stands for reason and science, the truth is that the atheistic worldview is riddled with contradictions and outlandish claims. And because most secular people haven’t studied why atheism is true, an excellent evangelistic strategy for you and your church is to understand these five challenges for atheism.

In my experience, it is only once people realize that their own worldview doesn’t work that they become interested in seeking something that does. While some would suggest you just have to wait for people to hit rock bottom, I think a more gracious and effective approach is to humbly challenge their pretense to have a sensible worldview.

By God’s grace, studying these five holes in the atheistic worldview can create a powerful opportunity for you and your church to share the wisdom and love of Jesus Christ.

[…]Because of their fundamental commitment to impersonal matter and laws, the atheist faces very difficult problems in at least five unique areas:

  • Consciousness
  • Free will
  • Purpose
  • Reason, including mathematics and science
  • Objective moral facts, including universal human rights and the reality of evil

Here’s my favorite of the 5:

Leading atheists such as Sam Harris dismiss free will as a matter of course. Or as Tom Clark at Naturalism.org puts it, “Judged from a scientific and logical perspective, the belief that we stand outside the causal web in any respect is an absurdity, the height of human egoism and exceptionalism.”

Dr. Angus Menuge, the current President of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, explains the problem: “before we can talk of being responsible for our decisions, we need an account of why those decisions belong to us. But the trouble is, on a naturalistic view, there is no entity that can plausibly own any mental states, there is simply a plurality of parallel, impersonal processes in the brain.”

The denial of free will logically leads to the denial of personal responsibility for any of our behaviors or beliefs. But if everything about “you” is determined, then “you” could not have reasonably chosen to believe what you do. If a-rational things and laws determined your neurological structure, “you” literally cannot make any decisions about what you believe or why you believe it.

This article is worth a look if you want to start a discussion with an atheist.