Amidst a cluster of political yard signs outside an early polling station in Wilmette, IL, a handmade sign with stark black lettering on white poster board stood out. It listed the names of the four Americans murdered in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 — a day that has become known as “Obama’s 9/11.”
A voter — perhaps a mother, father, relative or spouse of a military loved one — was desperate to remind fellow Americans before voting to remember the four victims (Ambassador Chris Stevens, former Navy SEALs Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, and foreign service employee Sean Smith), and to remember the failure by the Obama administration to provide security for them when it was repeatedly requested.
The Obama administration’s refusal to provide additional security may have been because Obama himself refused to acknowledge the situation in Benghazi was a result of “terrorism.” If he did, an admission that “terrorism is alive” would not concur with his campaign’s slogan that “Osama bin Laden is dead.” The reality, that an al Qaeda affiliated group, Ansar al-Shariah, was probably involved, would be devastating to the president’s foreign policy credentials.
In his United Nations speech, Obama stated, “…it will not be enough to put more guards in front of an embassy.” In the same UN speech, Obama declared, “freedom and self-determination are not unique to one culture. These are not simply American values or Western values; they are universal values.” Increased security would mean an increased US presence in the region, thereby conflicting with his Middle East policy of “self-determination.“
When Steve Kroft at CBS News asked the President the day after the attacks why he “went out of [his] way to avoid the use of the word ‘terrorism’ in connection with Libya,” Obama went so far as to refer to the terrorists as “folks.” However, now that Obama has made clear that he did indeed know it was terrorism, why did he send his entire administration on a TV talk show tour blaming an amateur’s video mocking Islam’s prophet Muhammed? And why did he blame the amateur video for the terrorist attack in his UN speech?
Unfortunately, since CBS withheld key parts of the interview with Obama from the day after the debacle in Benghazi, many voters didn’t get the complete and accurate picture necessary to make an informed decision at the polls. Until now, that is, with new media outlets and Fox News holding the Obama administration accountable.
And ordinary voters with homemade signs.
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