She fell and hurt her head, but Hillary Clinton’s chutzpah survived intact. In her latest defense of Benghazi, the former secretary of state comes awfully close to making herself the fifth victim.
Not to worry — Libyan terrorists aren’t stalking her. It’s those evil Republicans and some in the media who are playing politics with the deadly attack that’s got her claiming to be a target.
“I will not be a part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans,” she writes in her new book. “It’s just plain wrong, and it’s unworthy of our great country. Those who insist on politicizing the tragedy will have to do so without me.”
She surely wrote that passage herself because only a Clinton would dare attempt such political jiujitsu. Her career was created out of the ashes of Monicagate, and playing the victim card has been her serial response to criticism ever since. When trouble is brewing, she invariably spies a vast right-wing conspiracy hiding in the bushes.
And so she begins the next phase of her presidential campaign by accusing any and all critics of being out to get her. Even the chapter’s title, “Benghazi: Under Attack,” seems to be about her feelings instead of the people actually killed.
Her gall is galling. Consider:
She timed the leak of the Benghazi chapter from her unpublished book to a new congressional investigation — and she accuses the other side of playing politics.
She urged congressional Democrats to put members on the select panel because their absence would have given her no defenders — and she accuses the other side of playing politics.
Politico, which got a copy of the chapter, reports that Clinton has hired Tommy Vietor, a former national security aide to President Obama, to help fend off Benghazi-related criticism — and she accuses the other side of playing politics.
Clinton’s decision to go this route is as predictable as it is disappointing. It recalls the essence of Obama’s criticism against her in the 2008 primaries: that she was backward-looking and nominating her would mean the nation would have to refight the battles of the 1990s.
How fitting that she launches her 2016 quest not with a new idea about how to secure the nation’s future, but with a tortured defense of her role in the attack that left four Americans dead, including our Libyan ambassador, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11.
If there’s any news, it’s that Clinton practically doubles down on the initial lie that an anti-Muslim video sparked the attack. She writes, according to Politico, that “there were scores of attackers that night, almost certainly with differing motives. It is inaccurate to state that every single one of them was influenced by this hateful video. It is equally inaccurate to state that none of them were. Both assertions defy not only the evidence but logic as well.”
Really? The video story has been completely debunked, with the CIA saying it had nothing to do with the preplanned attack. Even the White House has stopped blaming the video.
The video lie, which Clinton repeated to the families as they watched their loved ones’ bodies come home from Libya, marked the first interjection of politics into Benghazi. Coming late in the 2012 presidential campaign, the attack had the potential to discredit Obama’s claim that al Qaeda was on the run.
The attack also undercut Clinton’s claim of competence. It was on her watch that the first ambassador in more than 30 years was murdered, and it happened on the anniversary of the terrorists’ biggest triumph because there was insufficient security at the diplomatic outpost.
And so the video fiction was born. Clinton and Obama both screwed up big time, yet neither is willing to admit it. That’s the real politics of Benghazi.
And what is truly unworthy of our great nation are leaders who embrace the honors of office but spare no effort in trying to dodge accountability when things go wrong.
Clinton was vested with great power and respect, but, at the moment of crisis, she retreated to the corner. To judge from her book, she intends to keep hiding.
Chutzpah, yes. Integrity, no.
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