Déjà vu in Afghanistan: Obama’s Benghazi team is back

FPI / September 24, 2021

Team Biden's catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, which saw 13 American military personnel and nearly 200 Afghans killed in the terrorist bombing of Kabul airport and the bungled U.S. drone strike which killed ten members, including seven children, of an American-friendly Afghan family, elicited "an eerie sense of déjà vu," an analyst noted.

"We’ve been here before. In 2012, Islamic militants attacked U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, killing U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. It happened on President Obama’s watch, with Hillary Clinton leading the State Department," Judicial Watch chief investigative reporter Micah Morrison noted on Sept. 21.

For Joe Biden, "the Kabul disaster is Benghazi writ large," Morrison wrote.

Biden, who was vice president during the Benghazi disaster, has brought back key figures from the Obama team which bungled Benghazi.

Jake Sullivan, who was Clinton's chief of staff during the Benghazi terror attack, is now Biden's national security adviser. Susan Rice, who as U.S. Ambassador to the UN, falsely declared in appearances on major TV networks that the Benghazi terror attack was provoked by an anti-Muslim video, is now a White House domestic policy adviser.

Sullivan "enthusiastically promoted Mrs. Clinton’s 'leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country’s Libya policy from start to finish,' as he put it in a 2011 email to State Department colleagues.

Like Benghazi, Morrison noted, "the Biden team outsourced security to local actors with terrorist ties. In Libya, it was the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, a militia that melted away when another militant group, Ansar al-Sharia, moved on the American diplomatic compound and nearby CIA base. In Afghanistan, it was the Taliban itself that took control of the area around Kabul airfield, along with the entire country."

Morrison continued: "Like Benghazi, the collapse of the Kabul central government is turning the country into a way station for terrorists. U.S. intelligence officials have noted that Al Qaida could quickly regroup in Afghanistan. In 'one to two years' Al Qaida could 'build some capability to at least threaten the homeland,' the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency said last week. The Taliban named their close ally, Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani terrorist network, to the powerful post on interior minister in the new government. Haqqani is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. His supporters last week got in a gunfight at the presidential palace with non-Taliban Afghans seeking a role in the new government."

Judicial Watch was a go-to source on Benghazi facts, "as we continued through the courts to uncover revelation after revelation about the Benghazi attack and the Obama administration’s efforts to cover up the details," Morrison noted.

"The Benghazi revelations did not come easy, and we don’t expect that the truth about Afghanistan will come easy either. We’ve issued numerous FOIA requests related to Kabul airfield and the Afghan endgame. But in Washington, both parties have been deeply invested in the Afghan war for two decades — the drive to sweep the whole mess under the rug will be strong."

Free Press International