Editor’s Note: A version of this article was posted by Politico. Click here to read it.
The closed-door meetings this week between Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte and Susan Collins with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice left some on Capitol Hill more disturbed than before and served as an example of just how far a woman will go to stand by her man. Not to mention the lengths to which liberals will look the other way.
Although details of the terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi are few and far between, it’s still mind boggling there are those of the Kool-Aid-drinking Left who continue to propagate the falsehood that the attack was due to an unplanned uprising of a band of ruffians. Time Magazine’s Joe Klein lost his last shred of objectivity on Monday as he parroted the Obama administration’s messaging on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” He maintained that, “The talking points were accurate. They were absolutely accurate It was a spontaneous demonstration by extremists No, not by al-Qaeda. Anybody can call themselves al-Qaeda.”
Absent in Klein’s discussion was the demand for accountability, especially from Rice, a woman whose name is being floated as the next U.S. Secretary of State.
It doesn’t stop there.
“When they go after the U.N. ambassador apparently because they think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me,” President Obama said during his last White House press conference. The president’s insistence that Rice is, in essence, “his girl” and, therefore, untouchable, is uncharacteristically quaint and flies in the face of every feminist in the country. So much so, in fact, that left-leaning Washington analyst and columnist Kirsten Powers recently called Obama’s defense of Rice, “silly, sexist and paternalistic.” It seems Powers has given up the Kool-Aid, because she went on to pen: “Imagine George Bush saying that people criticized John Bolton because he was an ‘easy target.’ He wouldn’t.”
It’s absurd to think Obama would similarly defend his male subordinates. Such statements made by the president would undermine their authority and insult their professional capabilities.
But maybe public displays of “Me Tarzan, You Jane” are just one of the perks you get when you’re part of an administration that pays its women an average of 18 percent less than their male counterparts.
Or maybe it’s finally an admission that left-leaning women aren’t nearly as savvy and strong as conservative women and, therefore, need a little extra protection. Heaven knows there were plenty of times (a la Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann, etc., etc., etc.) when the president could have – and should have – called off his own misogynistic attack dogs. Those were full-on, unbridled, unrestrained, vicious attacks on conservative women. But honest-to-goodness, hard-but-relevant questions pointed at a female, Obama administration mouthpiece is what finally gets the president in an uproar?
Either way, it stands to reason that anyone capable enough to be appointed as U.N. ambassador is fully capable of standing up for herself and answer those lingering, legitimate questions. Here are a few for starters:
1. Why did Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ignore the State Department’s e-mail (leaked by Reuters) sent at 6:07 p.m. on September 11 crediting Anasar al-Sharia, a radical Islamist militia, with the consulate attack?
2. What sources did the State Department and Rice find that provided evidence of an amateur anti-Muslim YouTube video as motive for the attack?
3. Was it coincidence that coordinated anti-America attacks arose in Cairo, Tunis, Kabul, Beijing, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Beirut in the days following the Benghazi attack?
There’s no disputing the fact that there were premeditated terrorist attacks transpiring around the world on September 11, 2012, culminating in the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other brave Americans.
Ambassador Rice must come forward and explain why she went on five Sunday television shows and either purposely lied or regurgitated false talking points to bolster the Obama administration’s claim that “al-Qaeda is on its heels.”
Both Clinton and Rice were used by this administration in a carefully crafted cover-up and neither of them should have allowed it.
History has proven that women who blindly “stand by their man,” regardless of the facts, do so at their own peril. Just ask Hillary Clinton, who by the way was conspicuously absent on the September 16 Sunday shows. Remember back in January 1998, Clinton denied her husband’s extramarital affair with then-23-year-old intern Monica Lewinsky? Instead of questioning his integrity, Hillary blamed the scandal on a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” By August of that same year, Bill Clinton came clean about his affair, leaving his wife not only scorned, but shamed.
For such a smart woman, you’d think she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. But in the past month, Clinton has distracted the press’s scrutiny away from the president by stating, “I take responsibility.” She continued, “The president and the vice president wouldn’t be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals.”
Why has it been so difficult for the word “terrorism” to escape the lips of the Obama Administration? On September 16th, the same day Rice made the rounds on Sunday morning shows, Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that the Benghazi attacks were premeditated acts of terror. Three days later, more than a week after the attacks, the Obama Administration finally acknowledged the four Americans died “in the course of a terrorist attack.”
The reality is that the American public had valid questions about Benghazi and the Obama administration gave us Ambassador Rice who they admit “had nothing to do with Behghazi.” People died and we were lied to from the very beginning of this tragedy. This administration made it about a YouTube video, instead of coughing up the two words they refuse to utter: “terrorist attack.”
There should be no more closed-door sessions to discuss the truth about Benghazi. This breach of security was committed against the American people, and we deserve to know the truth.
As an organization that represents over 500,000 women, Concerned Women for America rejects the idea that Susan Rice or any other woman gets a pass simply due to their gender. Equality cuts both ways, not just when it’s convenient.