Post by leiade116 on Dec 4, 2012 22:14:13 GMT -5
The President of The United States, as the leader of the free world, has a responsibility to be truthful and honest to the people of the country. On September 11th, 2012, four United States citizens were killed in an assault on the US compound in Benghazi, Libya. US ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens was murdered along with one other state department employee and two CIA officials. Though this was a planned terrorist attack, it was not initially described as one. The measured political reaction to these horrific murders on the part of the administration and the obvious lack of transparency demonstrate how effective intensely crafted communication can be, incorporating in its rhetoric a perceived consensus of what people want to hear.
In the days after the attack, White House operatives rallied around the notion that the murders resulted from a demonstration gone wild, set off by an American film depicting the prophet Mohammed in an unflattering way. Although all the facts of the event have not been released, the timeline of the unfolding of the tragedy is largely undisputed. We now know that the assault was not spontaneous and that a film had nothing to do with the violence. The rhetoric that came from the White House characterized the event as a spontaneous demonstration, when in fact the attack made on our ambassador was likely a planned act of terror. The administration downplayed the significance of these events and deflected attention away from their seriousness as a terrorist attack. While President Obama did state in the Rose Garden on the morning after the raid that, “no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation,” the Administration avoided a direct link to terrorism for many days after, while downplaying the significance of the attack (factcheck).
The CIA, the FBI, and the White House all had a hand in crafting the rhetoric that explained to the American people what happened in Benghazi. We now know that the message was wrong. This was not a random response to some underground video. Either there was incompetence throughout the various agencies of federal government or there was an attempt somewhere along the line to deemphasize the seriousness of the event for political reasons. If the latter is true, President Obama was protecting his campaign for re-election by not labeling the Benghazi incident as a terrorist attack. A renewed terrorist threat and an inadequate response to it might have caused the President to lose the election. The White House’s desire to avoid bad press came at the cost of being less than truthful with the American people. Literature contains many exampled of characters “playing to the crowd”. In The Crucible, for example, Danforth, the less than impartial judge, spoke the rhetoric of consensus by unjustly accusing people of being witches, simply to appeal to the baser instincts of the populace. The message on Benghazi had more to do with what the White House wanted the public to know rather than what actually happened. In speaking the rhetoric of consensus, by avoiding the key word “terrorist”, the President erred on the side of caution to increase his chances of winning the presidential election.
Word count: 531
Works Cited
"Benghazi Timeline." FactCheckorg. EUGENE KIELY, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2012. <http://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/benghazi-timeline/>.
Staff, CNN Wire. "CNN Fact Check: A Day after Libya Attack, Obama Described It as 'acts of Terror' - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 04 Dec. 2012. <http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/17/politics/fact-check-terror/index.html>.
In the days after the attack, White House operatives rallied around the notion that the murders resulted from a demonstration gone wild, set off by an American film depicting the prophet Mohammed in an unflattering way. Although all the facts of the event have not been released, the timeline of the unfolding of the tragedy is largely undisputed. We now know that the assault was not spontaneous and that a film had nothing to do with the violence. The rhetoric that came from the White House characterized the event as a spontaneous demonstration, when in fact the attack made on our ambassador was likely a planned act of terror. The administration downplayed the significance of these events and deflected attention away from their seriousness as a terrorist attack. While President Obama did state in the Rose Garden on the morning after the raid that, “no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation,” the Administration avoided a direct link to terrorism for many days after, while downplaying the significance of the attack (factcheck).
The CIA, the FBI, and the White House all had a hand in crafting the rhetoric that explained to the American people what happened in Benghazi. We now know that the message was wrong. This was not a random response to some underground video. Either there was incompetence throughout the various agencies of federal government or there was an attempt somewhere along the line to deemphasize the seriousness of the event for political reasons. If the latter is true, President Obama was protecting his campaign for re-election by not labeling the Benghazi incident as a terrorist attack. A renewed terrorist threat and an inadequate response to it might have caused the President to lose the election. The White House’s desire to avoid bad press came at the cost of being less than truthful with the American people. Literature contains many exampled of characters “playing to the crowd”. In The Crucible, for example, Danforth, the less than impartial judge, spoke the rhetoric of consensus by unjustly accusing people of being witches, simply to appeal to the baser instincts of the populace. The message on Benghazi had more to do with what the White House wanted the public to know rather than what actually happened. In speaking the rhetoric of consensus, by avoiding the key word “terrorist”, the President erred on the side of caution to increase his chances of winning the presidential election.
Word count: 531
Works Cited
"Benghazi Timeline." FactCheckorg. EUGENE KIELY, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2012. <http://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/benghazi-timeline/>.
Staff, CNN Wire. "CNN Fact Check: A Day after Libya Attack, Obama Described It as 'acts of Terror' - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 04 Dec. 2012. <http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/17/politics/fact-check-terror/index.html>.