BLAME GAME

The Senate Foreign Relations committee grilled Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding the attack on our embassy in Benghazi Libya last September. Democrats praised her role as Secretary of State and predictably the Republicans scolded her.

It's odd that politicians always want to know the details of something that went wrong but never take the action needed to keep it from happening again? They spend more time looking for someone to blame than they do coming up with ways to keep people safe.

One of the reasons the attack on Benghazi succeeded was the lack of security forces at the embassy. The reason for that is that Congress didn't give the State Department the money it needed to pay for those forces. So while Republicans try to blame the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton for failing to do their jobs, they forget that it was the Republican majority in the House of Representatives that voted against more funding for security forces at our embassies.

Republicans were also cautioned by their leadership to be respectful to the Secretary of State. The reason for that is that Hillary Clinton is the most popular political figure in the country with a whopping 65% of Independent voters endorsing her to run for President. Republicans are leery of dropping bombs on her because they don't want to alienate Independent voters.

The State Department had intelligence that there could be an attack on the embassy. They also have intelligence that our embassies are always vulnerable to attack, especially those located in volatile parts of the world.

Blaming others for something that went wrong is easier than fixing the problem to lessen the chances of it happening again. The first thing her Republican detractors might think about doing is to provide the funding needed to protect the embassies rather than blaming someone for something that was just waiting to happen.