OPINION:
Politics is a rough game. There’s no rule that says you can’t rough the passer or avoid making hits to the head. There’s not even a rule that says it’s unfair to take a dispassionate look at the record of a candidate who offers himself — or herself — for president of the United States. This includes a thorough baggage search.
Hillary Clinton, who may be her party’s best hope for retaining the White House in the wake of a feckless incumbent, will have to face the facts about her role in the weak American response to the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Only then can voters judge whether Mrs. Clinton has accounted for the decisions that led to the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. As the secretary of State, she was responsible for their safety. What she did, or didn’t do, when the telephone rang at 3 o’clock in the morning says everything about whether she is capable of being president.
A hearing by the House Select Committee on Benghazi broke down in partisan sniping this week, revealing how crucial a fair but exhaustive inquiry has become. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat, cried foul because Republicans interviewed witnesses without Democrats being present: “We need someone in the room to defend the truth.”
Facts, though, have no party affiliation. “Our hearing should be about substance, not process,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, the Republican chairman. Substance has been missing because the State Department and the CIA have withheld both documents and witnesses.
Democrats insist the Benghazi inquiry is only about embarrassing President Obama and their candidate-in-waiting. But what could they say? Hillary set the Democratic tone and tint with her remarkable defense at an earlier hearing in 2013: “What difference, at this point, does it make?” What Hillary must learn is that needless sacrifice of American lives makes a big difference. This remark will haunt Hillary to the grave.
If she had left the national stage to go home, bake cookies and pour tea for her friends, America would still be entitled to know how Islamic terrorists, by whatever name the White House wants to call them, were able to overrun the U.S. compound in Benghazi. The suspicion grows that this White House has shortchanged security to preserve the president’s naive worldview that he can protect the nation’s interests by carrying a short stick and speaking so softly that no one can hear him. He thinks he can cool the Third World’s seething envy with deference to their violence. The events of the last six years have proved that this is fantasy, and the notion that Hillary and others responsible for American diplomacy need not explain themselves must be firmly put to rest.
A poll taken for CNN last year found that 61 percent of Americans believe the Obama administration has been “generally dishonest” about Benghazi, and 55 percent say that about Mrs. Clinton herself.
In her book “Hard Choices,” she scolds congressional Republicans for their relentless search for answers about her performance during the night Americans died at Benghazi. Merely by asking questions, in her view, they politicize a tragedy. “I will not be a part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans,” she says. But she borrows the corpses to point the shame toward those looking for answers. The Democrats so far pay no mind to high-minded axioms like “the truth shall set you free.” Their only defense is a brazen offense.
Presidents must hold the interests of the nation above all others in time of war, and sometimes that means sacrificing good people in dangerous places. From what we already know, Benghazi was not one of those times nor one of those places. Armed with accurate intelligence about the local terrorists, the administration — including first of all the secretary of State — could have had appropriate security measures in place to have prevented the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2012. The right questions must be asked to make sure the next president has clear eyes and a good heart.
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