[A Conservative Teacher] On Benghazi, Obama May Simply Be Inept and Negligent and Bad at Job

[A Conservative Teacher]

In a recent Business Insider editorial titled The Most Convincing Explanation For The White House's Benghazi Debacle, Grace Wyler suggests that all the inept and negligent and partisan Obama administration was trying to do when it lied to the American people was referee some sort of bureaucratic knife-fight:

...But the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler offers an alternative — and in our view, more credible — explanation for why the administration edited down the talking points, suggesting that the emails reveal a "bureaucratic knife fight" that pitted the State Department against the CIA.

As Kessler correctly points out, the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was basically a covert CIA operation — a fact that Congressional investigators have had to dance around as they proceed with their Benghazi witch-hunt.

But the talking points originally developed by the CIA at the request of the House Intelligence Committee downplay the agency's role in Benghazi, and reference past warnings about the threat of extremists in eastern Libya — implying that it was the State Department, rather than the intelligence community, that screwed up...

...In the end, Kessler argues, the White House tried to please both agencies, and the result was that the administration looked like it was trying to hide something...

...To be fair, this bureaucratic explanation for the White House's Benghazi "cover-up" probably doesn't tell the whole story. And it definitely doesn't answer all the questions that Republicans have raised about Benghazi.

But inter-agency finger-pointing is a fact of life in Washington, and it seems clear that both the CIA and the State Department screwed up in Benghazi. So it makes sense that both agencies would want to avoid bearing the full brunt of the blame for the tragic attacks, which left four Americans, including the beloved U.S. Ambassador to Libya, dead.

As more information comes to light about Benghazi, I am increasingly inclined to feel that this explanation is closest to the truth.

It is true that President Obama has no history of ever acting in an executive function, and during his four years so far as President his ability to act as an executive has frequently been called into question. Being an executive is about hiring the right people, managing a budget, avoiding scandals, and getting the job done- and on all these counts over and over again the Obama administration has done a horrible job. Appointments have resigned in disgrace, budgets are bloated and filled with graft and corruption, every week another agency is involved in a major scandal, and the jobs that these agencies are trying to do are not being done well. President Obama, as his his history and our recent experience, is a bad executive- and so what happened in Benghazi was that he did a bad job of running the executive branch.

President Obama's main desire is to look good, have fun, and avoid being personally blamed for anything. That is why he never says anything important- empty rhetoric about hope and change and attacks on straw men don't really count as saying anything. And he never does anything, because if he were to make any actions he might be held accountable. So he just sits there. But just because he sits there, doing nothing, doesn't mean that nothing happens- rather, because he is a radical communist, his appointments, weak directives, and personal advisers who reflect his views implement his radical communist policies. And he exercises no leadership of them, letting them engage in bureaucratic knife fights while Americans die and the American people are lied to about it.

Let us not forget that the State Department and the CIA are under the Executive Branch, managed by the Executive Branch, and are headed by people who the Executive Branch wants, and thus President Obama should be held accountable for their actions. He is not some sort of impartial referee standing above the fray, but rather he is the guy who runs these agencies and hired the people at the top of them and now is doing a bad job of managing them and holding them accountable.

President Obama is a bad President. This is not to insult him or to call him names, but rather to describe his abilities and skills in relation to his job. President Obama may have desired to 'please both agencies'- but pleasing bureaucrats who messed up and whose actions led to the murder of American citizens is not leadership and are the actions of a bad executive.

He can't be fired. But he should not be supported or defended by anyone anymore.

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Posted By A Conservative Teacher to A Conservative Teacher at 5/18/2013 01:00:00 AM