Obama's Foreign Policy Summed Up: Benghazi and Fast & Furious

The attacks on the Benghazi consulate are in the spotlight right now, and rightfully so. But we must remember that Benghazi is only one of Obama’s two big foreign policy disasters. The other is Fast and Furious, the ATF/DOJ operation which ended up contributing to the deaths of hundreds upon hundreds of Mexican citizens and of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry as well.

In Fast and Furious, guns were knowingly smuggled across an international border. Approximately 2,500 weapons were purchased by buyers who planned to sneak them across the U.S./Mexico border and pass them to cartel members on the other side.

The Obama administration did not warn the Mexican government ahead of time, and the death toll has been tremendous. Recently I’ve written about some of the earliest victims, 14 Mexican teenagers who were gunned down at a birthday party in Juarez with Fast and Furious weapons on January 30, 2010. 

When you look at the details of Fast and Furious, it’s hard to believe ATF and DOJ officials didn’t foresee the carnage, death, and chaos that followed. But the same can be said (and has been said) of the attacks on the Benghazi consulate.

There were more than 200 security breaches in Libya between July 2011 and July 2012, 48 of which were in Benghazi itself and two of which were at the very Benghazi consulate that would be attacked on Sept. 11. 

Yet after all these breaches, and after security officers Lt. Col. Andy Wood and Eric Nordstrom asked repeatedly for more security to be sent, the security teams were intentionally cut. Moreover, requests for an airplane that could have provided a last resort, just-in-case-of-emergency means of escape was also denied. 

In the end, Libyan militia teams were hired to take up the slack created by the absence of U.S. security, and when the attack began the Obama administration was hands off. 

As a result, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were added to the same list that Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the hundreds of Mexican citizens are also on. It’s a list that contains the names of those who’ve paid the ultimate price for Obama’s reckless approach to foreign policy.