If you’re someone who pays even the slightest attention to the news or to politics, then you have undoubtedly heard about the attack on the US consulate and the CIA Annex in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. It was undeniably shocking and tragic to those back home who learned of the attack through the media, and learned of the four deaths: U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and two CIA contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty, who were all caused by these attacks.
Political opinions as to how these events happened, or why they were allowed to have happened have been very split between the two major parties, with some stating that the high members of the State Department knew that these attacks may have been coming, and did not plan of defend well enough, which the State Department even admitted in their report about the attacks (link here), while others believed that the government was negligent and has covered up this negligence.
In particular, then Secretary of State, and current presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton had taken a lot of blame and heat for these events, with eight government investigations and six Congressional hearings with Clinton herself, every time with proposed new information about the attacks, but little has actually come out of these investigations and hearings that was not initially reported.
Republican Majority Leader and, at one point in time, considered the likely successor to House Speaker John Boehner, Kevin McCarthy stated how the Clinton investigation was part of a “strategy to fight and win”, which many took as an admittance that the investigations were solely politically motivated to smear Clinton’s name, and not a true attempt to clear up the true story of what occurred more than three years ago.
It is a subject that I wouldn’t consider myself to be a real expert on, because I, like pretty much everyone else, have received the primary amount of my information from the media, which is highly bias to whatever side they want to cater to, and is only truly helpful on about a fraction of the topics they actually discuss.
Everyone seems to have their own opinions about it, and no one is really willing to meet at the idle and say that negligence did occur but it wasn’t malicious. We can all sit tight and know that this is topic that will not be leaving any time soon, at least not until the 2016 election, unless Clinton is elected, in which case this will probably still come up from time to time.
Overall, it is a very murky storyline that is highly bereft of summary without intense bias -- until now!
YouTuber Hank Green, of the vlogbrothers, uploaded a video a few days ago, which lays out the history of Benghazi, the city, as an epicenter of the Libyan revolution and civil war, as well as the actual events and the aftermath, while giving both political sides’ viewpoints on said events.
It’s (mostly) unbiased (because nothing is without bias), but it is a wonderful guide to a subject that is seldom wholly understand, or not chosen to be, by people of the media and many citizens of the country.
Here is the link to the video!
Please check it out, and give me your thoughts on the video and on the actual events.
