On Hugh Hewitt’s Thursday night program, National Review columnist Mark Steyn explained why the Obama administration’s response to last September’s terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was so appalling.
“They let him die, and then told lies over his coffin,” he told fill-in host Guy Benson.
Steyn said that the late U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was a true believer of President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s view of the Arab Spring, that it was a positive movement and was trying to make the best of it. Clinton and senior State Department officials, he said, let Stevens die, meaning that he was “sacrificed for the Obama-Clinton fiction of the Arab Spring.”
“All the players involved in this are Democrats,” Steyn said. “Chris Stevens is in fact the poster boy for the Obama-Clinton view of the Arab Spring. He’s one of their guys. I mean, as chaps like me look on it, he was in large part deluded about the nature of the Arab Spring, but he was a personally courageous and brave man who was on the front line of the Obama-Clinton narrative about the Arab Spring.”
“And Democrats, liberals should ask themselves about that — if they are willing to, that’s, no right-wingers, no Republicans, no conservatives are involved in this. They did that to one of their own. And as you say, the three elements of this story all got moved slightly further on in the course of the testimony yesterday. … He was there in Benghazi on a symbolic day at the personal request of Sen. Clinton. In a sense, he not only died for the Obama-Clinton fiction, he was sacrificed for the Obama-Clinton fiction of the Arab Spring.”
“This is absolutely disgraceful. I cannot conceive of how empty and dead you have to be inside to put Ambassador Stevens through that, then leave him to die, and all the nonsense we heard about, ‘Oh, they couldn’t have got there in time?’ Oh, really? You had, it’s like a football match, is it? It’s like a football game, you’ve got an end time, you know they’re all going to pack up and go home at 5 in the morning or whatever? They didn’t know how long it was going to last. They left him to die. They decided to let their guy die in the confusion of the stuff happening in Egypt and Tunisia over the stupid no-account video.”
The author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” continued by pointing out how both Clinton and Obama maintained that they had a personal relationship with Stevens, despite telling a story that was somewhat contradicted by the former number two diplomat in Libya, Gregory Hicks’ testimony before the House oversight committee on Wednesday.
“I understand there is partisan politics,” Steyn added. “I accept that. You want your side to win. You put your side’s interests at heart. But I personally could not do that knowing the truth. She called him ‘Chris.’ Obama called him ‘Chris.’ ‘Chris’ this — no Ambassador Stevens, no Mr. Ambassador, none of that — ‘Chris, Chris, Chris,’ like he’s — they’re best buddies. They’ve known each other all their life. And then she tells the families of the dead that they’re going to get this video-maker, and they’re going to put him in jail. And all the time she’s doing that, she knows that is false.”
“And as you say, she got the phone call,” he continued. “The very compelling testimony from Mr. Hicks, the number two guy in Libya, he calls her, he has this conversation with her. Then later, he calls back to leave a message that ‘Chris, Chris,’ as Hillary Clinton calls him, ‘Chris, Chris, Chris,’ is dead. He’s the first ambassador, first American ambassador to die in the line of duty in a quarter century. She doesn’t call back poor old Hicks on the front line trying to hold down what’s left of the American presence in Libya? She doesn’t call him back that night. She doesn’t call him back the following day. This is a failure of leadership at the top. And honor demands, she’s gone, she’s out of it. But if she were still in her job, honor would demand that she resign over this. I think there’s compelling evidence she actually perjured herself when she testified on this.”
