Lies, Truth & Character: Why Benghazi Matters

Now we know that they knew what many (including this writer) suspected in the days following the terrorist attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Libya. What, pray tell, is that? That the Obama Administration — led by “the Buck Stops at My Desk Hillary Clinton” — lied about the real reasons that Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died in the attack in Benghazi. It wasn’t, as was falsely claimed, because of some obscure internet video that no one had seen, but rather because an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Libya planned and carried out a deadly attack on SEPTEMBER 11!

The fiction of the video, which then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used as a convenient excuse — even trotting it out while standing over the coffin of Chris “her new best friend” Stevens — was always a lie. I wrote as much in a post on September 13, 2011:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is just as clueless as President Obama when it comes to the radical Islamic threat facing the United States and the West (including Israel), continues to trot out the lie that an internet video is somehow responsible for the attacks on our diplomatic installations in Cairo and Benghazi:

“I also want to take a moment to address the video circulating on the internet that has led to these protests in a number of countries. . . .” (emphasis added)

No. This is categorically not true. Why does this Administration — from Barack Hussein Obama to Hillary Clinton — make excuses for radical Muslims (who are, by the way, the mainstream in much of the world) who need no excuses to kill, maim, and destroy? (“Pass the Buck Democrats Excuse Radical Islamic Violence”)

From Benghazi to Boston, this Administration has a seemingly hard time with telling the truth when it comes to the threat that radical Islam poses to America. With the “Benghazi Lie” now being revealed for what it was all along, perhaps there is something deeper at work than just a difference of opinion on policy. Could the “Benghazi Lie” also reveal something more basic about those involved in the lies and deceit? Politics, of course plays a role in all of this, but even that can’t really explain why people lied about the Benghazi attack. And, yes, I am aware that all politicians lie. But, it takes a special politician to be able to look into the camera and tell the American people a bald-faced lie. To be able to pull that off, a “C” word comes to mind. No, not Clinton, although both Hillary and Bill are quite adept at using “righteous indignation” to pull off their lies to the American people. It did not work with Bill and it will not work with Hill.

When it comes to politicians and their lies, the root cause can be traced back to one word — Character. Either they have it or they do not. To be a person of character does not mean that you are perfect. It does not mean that you don’t make mistakes. But, what it does mean is that you do not continue to lie and obfuscate in order to hide the truth and to save your own skin. Men and women of character — even politicians — should own up to the truth on their own, not just because they were caught in a lie. Benghazi matters because character and truth matter.

Mark Steyn, in “The Benghazi Lie” on National Review Online, writes a powerful piece which answers Hillary Clinton’s cynical question that she asked during Congressional Testimony, “What difference, at this point, does it make?” While it is now quite obvious that Hillary Clinton does not have a clue as to what difference it would make, there are still Americans who know what difference character and truth makes:

But the embassy security chief, Eric Nordstrom, had the best answer to that: It matters because “the truth matters” — not least to the Libyan president, who ever since has held the U.S. government in utter contempt. Truth matters, and character matters. For the American people to accept the Obama-Clinton lie is to be complicit in it.” (“The Benghazi Lie,” Mark Steyn)