It is hard to point to one thing as the worst element of the current scandal over the Benghazi cover-up. But there’s something that belongs on the list that has not been mentioned enough.
Obviously, it is a consuming matter to absorb the deaths of four Americans and a subsequent campaign of deceit designed to protect those in power now and those who may seek it later.
But politicians have a long history of lying to protect themselves. What is different here, and disturbing to a whole new level, is the capacity of this administration to plow well beyond its own corruption to corrupt others.
There is no more distressing victim of this phenomenon than the hierarchy and culture of the United States military.
This White House has very little use for our men and women in uniform, and no proper instinct for the respect they deserve.
They become useful props when it’s time to crow again about the killing of Osama bin Laden, but the war that made that possible is a cancer the Obama team is radiating into obscurity, as we cut and run from Afghanistan, Iraq and every theater where we had a chance to boost democracy with our stabilizing presence.
There is little doubt that the Benghazi terrorists were energized by this American surrender. Does anyone believe they would have pulled this off if we had maintained a strong presence throughout the Middle East?
But even with our Obama-depleted ranks in the region, we now know we could have mounted some response to minimize the damage done by the Benghazi terrorists.
But those response teams were told to stand down. Reaction throughout the ranks apparently ranged from fury to disbelief.
Both are warranted, among our armed forces and across the American landscape. How in God’s name were responding forces restrained? And by whom?
If Democrats can stifle their chant that all questions have been answered, they might work on that one. And then they might join the chorus of curious souls wondering how officials who knew better could continue to parrot that stupid story about a YouTube video as the catalyst for the Benghazi attacks.
But again, much has been written about that. Not enough light has been directed at the last shred of dignity stripped from our military by this White House. The intimidation of whistleblowers, the attempted muzzling of witnesses who might have more to tell, the stunning disregard shown to the forces who were begging to be loosed to help their countrymen-- this is the work of a wholly unfit Commander-in-Chief.
And yet because of that title, the aggrieved troops cannot speak truth to power. This tragedy demands answers from various military levels on questions about how their trust was trampled by the current President and the former Secretary of State who may wish to be his successor.
This is just the latest dishonor foisted on our armed forces by this regime. Here in the season of sequester, The budgetarily minuscule Blue Angels and Thunderbirds are grounded, silencing their ability to create goodwill. But far more seriously, a carrier group that should be patrolling treacherous Persian Gulf waters is stuck in port, all because this President chooses to strand them there so that an inattentive public can think this is what spending cuts do.
This cries out for a military hero to step forward to proclaim, “Enough!”
I can imagine the testimony of such a valiant figure. “The air shows did not need to be cancelled. Our ships certainly do not need to be shackled to their docks. This is pure politics.”
But this will never happen. The hierarchy of military power precludes all ranks from publicly highlighting the duplicity of the President, a rule which probably serves us well.
But we need more. We need military heroes to step forward with details of any effort by Barack Obama to spread lies about Benghazi and its aftermath. And we need for even more courageous voices to share any measures undertaken by Hillary Clinton to obscure the truth, including the question of who ordered the silencing of Benghazi survivors and key players.
I am dreaming, of course. This would be the height of insubordination.
The Benghazi hearings, thorough as they were, merely scratched the surface of what people did at the highest levels of power, to keep power.
They simply could not have witnesses spilling out with a story of a terror hotbed that Obama somehow had not fixed.
So the cover-up began, and it continues to this day, a corruptive stain that spreads across multiple figures.
Military personnel are not used to being caught up in political self-protection games. But they surely are now, and it sickens them. Or it should.