I’m Finally With Her: Hillary Clinton Is My Candidate

Last updated on: August 30, 2016 at 12:05 pm by Kerry Connelly

I’m Finally With Her: Hillary Clinton Is My Candidate 2016-08-30T12:05:09-04:00 Kerry Connelly

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On Benghazi

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There is no doubt that what happened in Benghazi was terrible, and I’m pretty sure that no one knows that more than Hillary Clinton. I can not imagine what it must have been like — the chaos of the attack, the sporadic information trickling in, not to mention the complete and utter frustration with a partisan Congress that had drastically reduced funding for diplomatic security measures.

Was there a failure? Yes. Obviously. There was a failure of communication, of security measures, and, quite frankly, of basic humanity. I mean, let’s keep our eye on the right evil doer, here, who would be the extremist perpetrators. Laying that aside, however, with all the criticism of Hillary Clinton around this event, I’m not exactly sure what people would have preferred happen? What would have been a better response by our government?

My point is, who can say? It was a pre-planned, surprise attack on an American diplomatic compound. The victims were people who knowingly engaged in a dangerous, risky job. The terrorists were counting on chaos. How many of us, in retrospect, would do a better job? I’m sure Hillary feels the same way, but retrospect is powerful only in its learnings for the future.

As is usually the case in politics — and it very much so the case with most of the criticism of Hillary Clinton in this election — there was a lot of wispy smoke blown around that in truth, was unimportant, but would serve to place blame on Clinton’s shoulders. Did it really matter if the President called it an act of terrorism? Did it matter if the attack was spurred by a movie or not? In the end, murder is murder. I think Hilary’s response to questioning during the hearing speaks to her real humanity, and her priorities (to read this quote in context of the questions that led to it, click here):

With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans! Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they’d go kill some Americans?! What difference, at this point, does it make?! It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator. Now, honestly, I will do my best to answer your questions about this, but the fact is that people were trying in real time to get to the best information. The [Intelligence Community] has a process, I understand, going with the other committees to explain how these talking points came out. But you know, to be clear, it is, from my perspective, less important today looking backwards as to why these militants decided they did it than to find them and bring them to justice, and then maybe we’ll figure out what was going on in the meantime.

In the end, though, as Secretary of State, the buck stops with Hillary. She took full responsibility for the whole deal. Anyone who’s ever been in a leadership position knows what it’s like to have everything resting on your shoulders. What most people don’t know — including me — is what it’s like to have the safety of 60k people on your back.

It takes a pretty formidable spine to stand up and say, “I’m responsible,” about something you did your best in and did not perpetrate. And that sort of character means something to me.

Up next: The Emails

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