The release of the new book, 13 Hours: The Inside Account Of What Really Happened In Benghazi, a first hand account by the security operators who were on the ground fighting in Benghazi, tells us they were given an order to stand down and not go help at the State Department Compound that was under attack on 9/11/12. They don’t know how far up the chain of command the order came from. They disobeyed and went anyway after they were delayed. I saw these three men interviewed on Fox News (here).
I watched this interview thinking only of the comment that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made at the Senate hearings about Benghazi in January of 2013, “…the fact is we have four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest, or was it because it was guys out for a walk one night who decided to go kill some Americans. What difference, at this point, does it make?”
I think this question by Secretary of State Clinton is “the” question that we should be thinking about. Mrs. Clinton, you are correct, “at this point”, in January 2013, the question of how this truly happened “doesn’t make a difference” from a political standpoint. The truth about Benghaze only had major political significance if would have been told before the November election in 2012, and quite possibly it “could have made a difference”. And that’s the whole point. Gaining, or remaining in, the seat of Government power, through the political process, is the most important thing to politicians. And everything, including the lives of individuals, is to be sacrificed at the alter of politics.
HUMAN ACTION EXPLAINS POLITICAL ACTION
I wrote an article titled, Mises’ “Human Action” Explains Lies About Lybia, that sums up the thinking of politicians. Here are some excerpts from the article that are even more true today than when I wrote them in October 25th 2012. Here are excerpts from the article.
“Here is how “Human Action” by Ludwig von Mises helps us analyze the Libyan situation. Human action is purposeful behavior. Action is not simply a verbal preference, it is the individual choosing and acting to reach a particular end. Action is a tangible thing and cannot be confused with wishes, hopes, or after the fact quarterbacking. Men act to substitute what they think will be a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory state. We wouldn’t want to change our existing state of affairs if we didn’t think the result would be better. Our action reveals the correctness of our thinking. When a baseball manager makes a decision during a game he does it because he thinks it will help his team win the game. After the fact we can judge if his decision was correct or incorrect in attaining his goal, but that doesn’t mean we would have made a different or better decision than he did, because we cannot recreate that point in history exactly as it was. The science of human action is called praxeology it studies the action itself. Psychology studies the internal events that result in action. It studies the forces pushing a man toward a particular action. Psychology is where Monday morning quarterbacking takes place. Praxeology is where we can analyze success and failure. Lets look at Libya through these lenses.”
“Every Administration has the right to make its own policy about how heavy of a security footprint it will have at any one embassy. You can argue about which policy will achieve the particular goal an administration wants to achieve. What that particular goal is, may be misunderstood. For some administrations the goal is the safety of the people in the Embassy. For others the goal is what the people in a particular country will think if too much power is shown. There are obviously many degrees of security between completely locking down an embassy with every asset you can bring to bear, and simply allowing the people at the embassy to carry a sidearm. There are many foreign policy goals each administration is trying to attain, and security for their people may be sacrificed for these goals. The choice the administration makes is up for discussion and debate before anything happens. After the decision proves to be incorrect, we can say it didn’t work to achieve the end sought, assuming we knew the true goal of the administration beforehand. The end sought may not have been the security of the people. We can say the Obama Administration’s decision in Benghazi didn’t work from a security standpoint, just as we can say the Reagan Administration’s decision in Beirut didn’t work from a security standpoint. But we don’t really know if security was the primary goal in either situation.”
“What we know is that all politicians are self-interested individuals, and remaining in power is their main goal. This is the over-riding goal of every decision they make. They hire advisers to specifically look at everything they do and determine how it will affect them politically. If it is not the over-riding factor in decision-making, it certainly has a major influence in all decisions. This is my problem with the deaths in Libya. From the standpoint of security it was a failure, fine admit it and adjust. When you know what was going on within an hour of the start of the attack, and you put forth a story that’s untrue, and stick with it for weeks even as the truth starts to leak out, it tells me you have no other interests above yourself. You denigrate the lives of the fallen, you insult our intelligence, and you erode whatever trust remains, which is probably a good thing for liberty.”
“Every action that has been taken since the attacks began, is purposeful action toward the attainment of a more satisfactory state of affairs. Every lie told and photo-op taken was an attempt to reach a particular end, this is the science of human action. Since the situation was and is constantly changing, each day’s purposeful actions seemingly contradict the previous day’s purposeful actions. This contradiction only makes sense if we know the true ends sought. The end sought is to hold on to power through any means necessary. The administration believes their purposeful actions will result in them holding on to their power. We will find out in two weeks if their purposeful actions are correct or incorrect.
POLITICAL SPIN, AKA. LYING.
Parents of the fallen have said that Hillary Clinton told them, a video was responsible for the attacks, and she vowed to have the film maker arrested and prosecuted, read here. She told them this at a ceremony the day the bodies arrived at Andrews Air Force Base. If she lied in a situation where there were dead bodies and grieving families, wouldn’t she, and all politicians, lie to protect their own political power in every situation? They probably lie about trivial things in order to keep their skills sharp for the big things like Benghazi.
This is why I hate politics. The incentive to gain power or to remain in power overrides everything from a political perspective. Politics interferes with everything, and I mean everything, concerning our daily lives. We are being spun, or lied to, everyday. We can be inoculated from the spin, or lies, if we understand the concept of Human Action, and see all things through its lens.
Related Article – Human Action Reveals The Reality About Political Decisions, by austrianaddict.com.
AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT 