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How did Obama mess up in Benghazi?

Unabogie said:
So that's it? Obama messed up because following an event with hazy intelligence, they were too unspecific about what actually happened when appearing on cable news, even though they felt they had a pretty good idea but wanted to make sure before confirming that in public? Damn those careful, deliberate technocrats!

McCain figured it out with his gut! Why couldn't Obummer?
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in the gop mindset, hazy intelligence is good enough to start wars.
 
Malcolm Kirkpatrick said:
War on Libya without provocation, Congressional authorization, or plan for succession.
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How soon you forget. The rebellion against Gaddafi arose out of internal strife long before the USA got involved. Shouldn't those Libyans determine what the plan for succession should be? Who gave the USA the right to set that nation's future path? Does Italy have a say? Spain? Morocco?

This kind of hubris must certainly be one element that lowers the respect of the USA around the world.
 
JihadJane said:
Liberating Libya has turned out well....
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It has, actually. At least things are a great deal better than they were when Ghadaffi was still in power. Obviously a country that has suffered such trauma is not going to pop up and be perfectly healthy, but they're doing much better now.
 
Malcolm Kirkpatrick said:
US military support (air cover) for libyan anti-government forces, without any Congressional authorization. This would qualify as an act of war if Mexico did this to the US.
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Whether we call something a civil war/insurrection or a revolution depends largely on which side you put your allegiance. The same is true for foreign support of the group trying to overthrow the government.

I think we had a favorable view, for example, of the help France gave our founding fathers in the American Revolution.

However, I too criticized Obama for not getting Congressional authorization for the war powers he exercised in the Libya "no fly zone". I reject utterly his argument that it doesn't count as military intervention if there are no boots on the ground.

I also argued that the U.N.Charter prohibits intervention in a sovereign country's internal strife if there isn't a credible threat to regional peace. (Though that criticism goes against the entire UN rather than against Obama--particularly against the self-contradictory UN resolution used to establish the so-called "no fly zone". It called for an immediate cease fire, but in practice, it only called for a cease fire from the Gaddafi government, and not also from the rebels who were being supported by the "no fly zone".)

Note well: I'm certainly not saying I would have preferred that the government put down the rebellion. I'm merely pointing out that it really wasn't our decision to make--at least not under our own laws.

I also criticized Obama for throwing support behind the rebels without knowing that we weren't possibly supporting terrorists, and when we knew for sure they weren't working toward establishing a secular democracy (and I don't believe there can be such a thing as a Muslim state that is a democracy--in other words, that such a thing as a theocratic democracy is possible).

However, none of this is justification for the incoherent criticisms I've been hearing against Obama for the attack on our embassy in Benghazi.
 
I'd like to hear an argument against intervention in Libya that couldn't also be applied to Iraq, Kosovo or Nicaragua.

Keep in mind I was for going into Iraq so me supporting going into Libya was at least consistent.
 
Elypsis44 said:
I wonder where the right wing outrage was on previous attacks. This thread was very telling.
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Exactly, the party of "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" and "WMD" has no credibility on this. If they once held Bush's feet the fire on either of these issues, I might take them seriously now.

Daredelvis
 
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And angry old man McCain accusing Susan Rice of "not being very bright" is horrifically ironic considering he is responsible for subjecting a national audience to the wisdom of Sarah Palin.

Daredelvis
 
When all is said and done, there was a terrorist attack on Benghazi. Some Americans were killed. This has happened before. There was some confusion as to the reasons for the attack and who made the attack. It's a bit ludicrous to blame this on Obama. If you don't like what he's doing as president, say, for example, on healthcare, criticize that.

As far as providing air cover for the Libyan revolt, I didn't hear any criticism for that when it happened, and IIRC, it was a NATO action.
 
Travis said:
I'd like to hear an argument against intervention in Libya that couldn't also be applied to Iraq, Kosovo or Nicaragua.

Keep in mind I was for going into Iraq so me supporting going into Libya was at least consistent.
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I was definitely opposed to Bush's invasion of Iraq too, but one distinction is that Bush did get Congressional authorization for that use of war powers. Constitutional law scholar Obama violated his own analysis of the presidential war powers with the flimsy idea that intervention that doesn't include boots on the ground doesn't count as military intervention.
 
TimCallahan said:
When all is said and done, there was a terrorist attack on Benghazi. Some Americans were killed. This has happened before. There was some confusion as to the reasons for the attack and who made the attack. It's a bit ludicrous to blame this on Obama. If you don't like what he's doing as president, say, for example, on healthcare, criticize that.
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I agree.


As far as providing air cover for the Libyan revolt, I didn't hear any criticism for that when it happened, and IIRC, it was a NATO action.
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I voiced opposition to it. And in fairness, it was led by the U.S. at the beginning. I would venture that without that leadership from the U.S., it probably wouldn't have happened. At least Obama stuck to his promise that our role as leader would only last a matter of days rather than weeks to months.

But I criticized it at the time for all the reasons I listed in my post today in response to Malcolm's post.

One other criticism I leveled at the time was a rejection of Obama's false dichotomy he offered to justify the action to his base. He claimed that we couldn't just sit idly by when a massacre of innocent people was imminent. First, the U.S. under Obama has done just that wrt other places. Second, there are many alternatives to either doing nothing or to joining a civil war in support of the rebels.
 
I wonder if the Republicans got the memo that Obama won re-election. This nonsense was cooked up to hurt him in the elections, after all.
 
DavidJames said:
You don't think the Republicans wouldn't like a nice juicy scandal where they could start to rumble about impeachment?
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Of course. They want to impeach Obama, just to get him out of office. They failed with the Fast and Furious "scandal", they'll fail with this nonsense as well.
 
TimCallahan said:
When all is said and done, there was a terrorist attack on Benghazi. Some Americans were killed. This has happened before. There was some confusion as to the reasons for the attack and who made the attack. It's a bit ludicrous to blame this on Obama.
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So who's blaming the terrorist attack as being BO's fault? What were seeing is something a bit more than "some confusions for the attack"...
 
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