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Benghazi attack was a massive failure of Obama’s security policy

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Doug Groothuis tweeted this article from the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

In his United Nations speech on Tuesday, President Obama talked about the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya and declared that “there should be no doubt that we will be relentless in tracking down the killers and bringing them to justice.” What he didn’t say is how relentless he’ll be in tracking down the security lapses and intelligence failures that contributed to the murders. Let’s say there’s some doubt about that.

None of the initial explanations offered by the White House and State Department since the assault on the Benghazi consulate has held up. First the Administration blamed protests provoked by an amateurish anti-Islam clip posted on YouTube. Cue Susan Rice, the U.N. Ambassador and leading candidate for Secretary of State in a second Obama term: “What happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction . . . as a consequence of the video, that people gathered outside the embassy and then it grew very violent.”

Administration officials also maintained that the diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt, the site of the first attacks this September 11, were properly defended and that the U.S. had no reason to prepare for any attack. “The office of the director of National Intelligence has said we have no actionable intelligence that an attack on our post in Benghazi was planned or imminent,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week, calling the security measures in place there “robust.”

Cell phone video footage and witness testimony from Benghazi soon undercut the Administration trope of an angry march “hijacked” by a few bad people. As it turned out, the assault was well-coordinated, with fighters armed with guns, RPGs and diesel canisters, which were used to set the buildings on fire. Ambassador Chris Stevens died of smoke inhalation. Briefing Congress, the Administration changed its story and said the attacks were pre-planned and linked to al Qaeda.

You’d think this admission would focus attention on why the compound was so vulnerable to begin with. But the Administration wants to avoid this conversation. The removal of all staff from Benghazi, including a large component of intelligence officers, would also seem to hinder their ability to investigate the attacks and bring the killers to justice.

[…]On April 10, for example, an explosive device was thrown at a convoy carrying U.N. envoy Ian Martin. On June 6, an improvised explosive device exploded outside the U.S. consulate. In late August, State warned American citizens who were planning to travel to Libya about the threat of assassinations and car bombings.

Despite all this, U.S. diplomatic missions had minimal security. Officials told the Journal that the Administration put too much faith in weak Libyan police and military forces. The night of the Benghazi attack, four lightly armed Libyans and five American security officers were on duty. The complex lacked smoke-protection masks and fire extinguishers. Neither the consulate in Benghazi nor the embassy in Tripoli were guarded by U.S. Marines, whose deployment to Libya wasn’t a priority.

Rummaging through the Benghazi compound, a CNN reporter found a seven-page notebook belonging to Ambassador Stevens. According to the network, the diary said he was concerned about the “never-ending” security threats in Benghazi and wrote that he was on an al Qaeda hit list. In deference to the family’s wishes, CNN didn’t quote directly from the diary and didn’t divulge any private information in it.

His worries are newsworthy, however, and can inform America’s response. But Mrs. Clinton’s long-time and closest media adviser chose to attack CNN. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Philippe Reines called the network’s conduct “disgusting.” He then deployed words not fit for a family newspaper in an exchange with a reporter for the Web site BuzzFeed. Mr. Reines may wish to protect his boss’s legacy for her 2016 Presidential run, but that won’t be enhanced by the appearance of a cover-up.

Lack of preparation, lack of seriousness, blame-shifting and finger-pointing.

Bret Stephens has an article in the Wall Street Journal that added to that list of failures.

Excerpt:

The hour is 5 p.m., Sept. 11, Washington time, and the scene is an Oval Office meeting among President Obama, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi has been under assault for roughly 90 minutes. Some 30 U.S. citizens are at mortal risk. The whereabouts of Ambassador Stevens are unknown.

What is uppermost on the minds of the president and his advisers? The safety of Americans, no doubt. So what are they prepared to do about it? Here is The Wall Street Journal’s account of the meeting:

“There was no serious consideration at that hour of intervention with military force, officials said. Doing so without Libya’s permission could represent a violation of sovereignty and inflame the situation, they said. Instead, the State Department reached out to the Libyan government to get reinforcements to the scene.”

So it did. Yet the attack was far from over. After leaving the principal U.S. compound, the Americans retreated to a second, supposedly secret facility, which soon came under deadly mortar fire. Time to call in the troops?

“Some officials said the U.S. could also have sent aircraft to the scene as a ‘show of force’ to scare off the attackers,” the Journal reported, noting that there’s a U.S. air base just 450 miles away in Sicily. “State Department officials dismissed the suggestions as unrealistic. ‘They would not have gotten there in two hours, four hours or six hours.'”

The U.S. security detail only left Washington at 8 a.m. on Sept. 12, more than 10 hours after the attacks began. A commercial jet liner can fly from D.C. to Benghazi in about the same time.

450 miles? An F-15 Eagle can reach speeds of up to 1,600 miles an hour at high altitude. What is this two hour garbage?

I have said it before and I’ll say it again. You cannot entrust national security and foreign policy to Democrats. They just aren’t serious about these issues. All they can do is pull out of wars, cut defense budgets, hamstring the CIA, set up the Muslim Brotherhood in power, undercut our allies, and praise our enemies. They only care about winning the election, and after their failures are exposed, they play the blame game.

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New study: higher risk of divorce when men do housework

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Atheist commenter Jerry sent me this story about a Norwegian study that affirms traditional roles within the marriage.

Excerpt:

Couples who share housework duties run a higher risk of divorce than couples where the woman does most of the chores, a Norwegian study sure to get tongues wagging has shown.

The divorce rate among couples who shared housework equally was around 50 per cent higher than among those where the woman did most of the work.

“The more a man does in the home, the higher the divorce rate,” Thomas Hansen, co-author of the study entitled Equality in the Home, said.

Researchers found no, or very little, cause-and-effect. Rather, they saw in the correlation a sign of “modern” attitudes.

“Modern couples are just that, both in the way they divide up the chores and in their perception of marriage” as being less sacred, Mr Hansen said, stressing it was all about values.

“In these modern couples, women also have a high level of education and a well-paid job, which makes them less dependent on their spouse financially. They can manage much easier if they divorce,” he said.

There were only some marginal aspects where researchers said there may be cause-and-effect.

“Maybe it’s sometimes seen as a good thing to have very clear roles with lots of clarity … where one person is not stepping on the other’s toes,” Mr Hansen suggested.

“There could be less quarrels, since you can easily get into squabbles if both have the same roles and one has the feeling that the other is not pulling his or her own weight,” he added.

I think that this article is basically correct – men like having clearly defined roles. A man has the traditional roles of protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. He has the responsibility to lead in those areas. He doesn’t want to have the woman’s role, he doesn’t want to be forced to perform it. Men don’t like to be nagged. He doesn’t want to be micromanaged. He doesn’t want the government telling him how to do his roles, either. I think that one of the reasons why men are so unwilling to marry is because they sense that they could be dominated by their wives and by the state – a state that is not very interested in promoting the interests of men.

In my case, I am a bachelor, so I have to do all my own cleaning, cooking and nurturing. I like learning more about cooking and cleaning and anything else practical. But I hope that if I did get married, then my wife would take the lead in those areas, and push me to be better at my special male roles. I would also hope that she would vote to protect my ability to perform my roles. For example, lower taxes and less regulation, so that I can easily find a job to provide for the family. And concealed carry, so that I can always protect my family. And school choice, so that the schools do not undermine our values and teaching. I think that women should be focused on supporting their husbands, and raising effective, influential children. Once the children are old enough, she can focus having an influence outside the home through engagement in the church, the university and in the political sphere. I think someone like Michele Bachmann has done everything right at the right times, for example.

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Presidential debate schedule kicks off this Wednesday: live streaming available

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Here’s the debate schedule:

First presidential candidates’ debate between President Barack Obama, former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney

  • Topic: Domestic policy
  • Date: Wednesday, Oct. 3
  • Time: 9 – 10:30 p.m. EDT
  • Location: University of Denver, Denver, Colo.
  • Moderator: Jim Lehrer, executive editor of PBS’s “NewsHour”
  • Format: “The debate will focus on domestic policy and be divided into six time segments of approximately 15 minutes each on topics to be selected by the moderator and announced several weeks before the debate,” according to the Commission on Presidential Debates. “The moderator will open each segment with a question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond. The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a discussion of the topic.”

Vice presidential candidates’ debate between Vice President Joe Biden, Wis. Rep. Paul Ryan

  • Topic: Foreign and domestic topics
  • Date: Thursday, Oct. 11
  • Time: 9 – 10:30 p.m. EDT
  • Location: Centre College, Danville, Ky.
  • Moderator: Martha Raddatz, senior foreign affairs correspondent, ABC News
  • Format: “The debate will cover both foreign and domestic topics and be divided into nine time segments of approximately 10 minutes each. The moderator will ask an opening question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond. The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a discussion of the question.”

Second presidential candidates’ debate between Obama, Romney

  • Topic: Foreign and domestic issues
  • Date: Tuesday, Oct. 16
  • Time: 9 – 10:30 p.m. EDT
  • Location: Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.
  • Moderator: Candy Crowley, chief political correspondent, CNN, and anchor, CNN’s “State of the Union”
  • Format: “The second presidential debate will take the form of a town meeting, in which citizens will ask questions of the candidates on foreign and domestic issues. Candidates each will have two minutes to respond, and an additional minute for the moderator to facilitate a discussion. The town meeting participants will be undecided voters selected by the Gallup Organization.”

Third presidential candidates’ debate between Obama, Romney

  • Topic: Foreign policy
  • Date: Monday, Oct. 22
  • Time: 9 – 10:30 p.m. EDT
  • Location: Lynn University, Boca Raton, Fla.
  • Moderator: Bob Schieffer, chief Washington correspondent, CBS News, and moderator, “Face the Nation”
  • Format: “The format for the debate will be identical to the first presidential debate and will focus on foreign policy.”

My take: This debate schedule really worries me. It’s only 4 debates, and they are really late in the game. Voting has already started. None of the debates are with Fox News, so they will all feature biased questions about banning contraception and prayer in schools. Academic studies have all shown that the mainstream news media is largely biased to the left, so I just don’t expect that these debates will be fair. Why do Republicans agree to debates moderated by leftists, with topics chosen by leftists? I will never understand. We need more debates, and we need them to have longer speeches and fair and balanced moderators.

I’m expecting that Fox News Live will offer streaming of the debates as they occur, otherwise I will be watching the biased coverage of ABC News via Youtube.