Benghazi-gate, Occam's Razor and Napoleon

They all come together here!

  

Occam's razor? Napoleon? What do they have to do with Benghazi-gate? In a few minutes, you will know. First a few preliminaries. In case you missed it, the much-ballyhooed demonstration, riot, or other disturbance outside our Benghazi Consulate on 9/11/2012 never happened; and the President knew it that very day. In reality, a group of terrorists launched a well-planned, well-executed military assault; they were equipped with heavy weapons, including a mortar. Earlier on the same day, a mob in Cairo had stormed our embassy in reaction to a video insulting Muhammad.

  

The Obama Administration tried to cover up what really happened in Benghazi with a blatant lie--the demonstration cover story--the idea presumably spawned by the Cairo riots. The Administration repeated and compounded the demonstration cover story for many days--until, and even after, the "inconvenient truth" gradually began leaking out. Those leaks have now burst forth and have ignited a cascade of controversy.

  

Pundits ranging from Rush Limbaugh to the relatively obscure have suggested myriad answers to the question, "What was the administration covering up and why?" Most hypotheses seem esoteric or the very complex. Some would require intricate conspiracies. Today, October 29, 2012, yours truly read an assertion that administration involvement in some kind of gunrunning scheme was "the only explanation" for Benghazi-gate. That signaled this observer that Occam's Razor had to enter the fray.

 

 
Occam's Razor:
 

 

". . . often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae, translating to law of parsimony, law of economy or law of succinctness, is a principle which generally recommends selecting the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions, when the hypotheses are equal in other respects . . . .” (From Wikipedia; retrieved 10/29/2012):

  

Rather than reaching hither and yon for elaborate explanations of a presumed Benghazi Cover-up, consider a relatively simple hypothesis, simple in the sense of Occam, and a few related facts.

  

Hypothesis: While watching live video of the Benghazi attack over a six-hour period, President Obama simply waffled; that is, he could not decide whether or not to send help.

  

This rather simple hypothesis seems to fit into the constraints set down by Occam's razor better than other explanations your faithful correspondent has heard to date.

• It requires only one new hypothesis: President Obama waffled.
• Fact: the President is in the midst of a close reelection campaign. Nothing new there.
• Fact: Foreign Policy has given President Obama his one consistent advantage over Governor Romney. Nothing new there.
• Fact: the Obama Campaign has repeatedly trumpeted the courage and decisiveness exhibited by ordering the bin Laden killing as evidence of the President's foreign-policy superiority. Nothing new there.
• Fact: evidence to date strongly suggests a Benghazi cover-up. Not universally accepted; not as widely known as one might expect.  

If the voters suddenly learned, before election day, that the President had waffled on Benghazi--if indeed he did--it would bring the President's basic qualifications to serve as Commander-in-Chief into question and largely sink the President's reelection bid. If anything could trigger a cover-up--if there is a cover-up--a waffling story surely could.

 

Speculating about the unknown, and speculating about motives in particular, almost always lands one on rather thin ice. Still, if the Obama administration launched a cover-up, the "waffling hypothesis" would seem to fit the circumstances as well as, if not better than, most notions offered to date. The suggestion, for example, that Benghazi was a false kidnapping to enable "trading" Ambassador Stevens for the now imprisoned "Blind Sheik" seems, by comparison, a bit deep.

  

Many would argue against any intimation of a Benghazi cover-up. They might ask, "Would a rational group of people really attempt a cover-up in light of the Watergate experience?" They probably would conclude that the idea is, at best, fanciful speculation. (One would presume then that the "well documented" complicity of the Bush Administration in the original 9/11 attacks simply proves the irrationality--not too mention the craftiness-- of the Bush Cabal.)

Enter the Emperor Napoleon

 

Napoleon receives credit for many insightful and memorable quotations. Few come up very often in the day-to-day lives of most people. While, "An army travels on its stomach," I get to work in a car. A relatively lesser-known quotation attributed to Napoleon does seem to fit the circumstances of Benghazi and provide an answer to the objections of any who might strongly doubt a cover-up:

 

"Never assume malice when incompetence is a possibility."

 

One might add that, despite the lessons of Watergate, incompetence plus arrogance could easily lead one to devise a "perfect and undetectable" cover-up.

Alternate Hypotheses:

 

Two similar ideas could fit the facts outlined above and still account simply, in Occam's sense, for a cover-up. Perhaps the President:

 

• For whatever reason, decided to let those people die
• Bungled the operation; by, for example:

            o Failing to make sure any help that he ordered sent arrived in time.

 

            o Having one or more subordinates who felt at liberty to blithely overrule a presidential                decision.

 

As with the hypothesis that the President "waffled", each of the alternates requires only one new hypothesis; either: President Obama didn't care; or, President Obama was incompetent.

  

Your thoughts and comments are welcome.

  

DJ