FoxNews — by Arthur Herman
That was our Secretary of State on a visit to Libya almost a year ago, when administration was touting the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi as its biggest foreign policy triumph after killing Usama Bin Laden–and the success of “leading from behind.” Well, now we know that leading from behind was just the excuse for a policy of weakness and passivity–and the cost of that weakness in American prestige and lives, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Remember that Hillary Clinton ad in the 2008 presidential campaign, about who we would want answering that phone call to the Oval Office at 3 a.m.? Now we can assume she would answer the same way she’s handled this Libyan debacle: with weakness, prevarication, and stunning misjudgment.
As details leak out about the events leading up to the brutal murder of Stevens and three other Americans, it’s becoming obvious the State Department knowingly put Stevens in danger of his life, and Secretary Clinton needs to take the lion’s share of the blame.
After all, Benghazi was no remote tropical post. Clinton was the first cabinet-level visitor to Libya back in October after Qaddafi’s fall. Libya has been a major focus of the administration’s policy on the Arab Spring, which has been to get the US out of the way and let the locals run wild. All the talk has been about the success of America’s hands off policy in Libya, even as armed militias were not only roaming the streets but taking over security, including supposedly protecting our consulate in Benghazi.
The Secretary of State is the person most responsible for how the United States presents itself to other nations–and protecting those who do that job for us. In normal times, under a normal president, Hillary Clinton’s performance on both would be enough to force her to step down.
The British knew better. A rocket-propelled grenade attack on an embassy motor convoy on June 11 in Benghazi led them to close their consulate there, but ours stayed open even after someone exploded a bomb nearby five days before.
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