Shrugging at Lies

One of the most distressing things about the Benghazi hearings this past week was the almost complete indifference in the liberal media to the fact that Hillary Clinton was shown to have lied to the nation about what happened at Benghazi in Libya. The attack on our embassy that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the ambassador to Libya, was a coordinated terrorist attack. Mrs. Clinton has maintained ever since that it was a spontaneous riot precipitated by an obscure video that painted an unflattering picture of Islam and the Prophet. This was false and the hearings have shown that she knew it was false at the time.

Jonah Goldberg at National Review summarizes:

Yesterday’s hearings confirmed that Hillary Clinton deliberately and knowingly lied when she blamed it [the attack] all on that video. This really isn’t a debatable point now. We can argue about why she lied and we can debate whether that lie matters. But that she lied is incontrovertible.

First of all, we know that the video story wasn’t, in fact, true.

Second, we know that the Obama administration knew it wasn’t true.

Third, we know that Hillary knew it wasn’t true. (You could claim that she was lying to the Egyptian prime minister when she said, “We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film.” But it seems less likely that she would have lied to her own daughter on the night of the attack.)

After reading many of Clinton’s e-mails -- never mind her bizarre claim in the Democratic debate that the Libyan intervention was a success story -- it seems pretty clear that one of her motivations was to shift blame away from what she -- and Sid Blumenthal -- had wrought. They had schemed for a long time to find a way to spin the Libyan adventure as her triumph in anticipation of a presidential run. The Benghazi debacle threatened to shed light on the underlying policy failure -- not just of failing to provide security, but of the whole intervention. Better to blame the video.

In the wake of the hearings I heard commenter after commenter enthusing about how Mrs. Clinton was poised and graceful, how the Republicans failed to goad her into "screech mode," how she now has a clear path to the presidential nomination, assuming the FBI uncovers no wrongdoing, or, if they do, assuming the Justice Department chooses not to indict Democratic wrong-doing.

Scarcely anyone seemed repelled by the acknowledgement that she had lied to the nation in order to save President Obama's bacon (Recall that he had assured us that al Qaeda was on the run. It wouldn't do to admit that al Qaeda was actually running through our embassy killing our diplomats) and to deflect questions about her own failure as Secretary of State (No one, for example, has been held accountable for not granting Ambassador Stevens' many requests for more security).

We bemoan the fact that politicians are corrupt, yet as long as they're on our side, so far from punishing them for their corruption, we applaud it.

Perhaps the left is willing to shrug at Mrs. Clinton's lies because they believe that everyone does it. The idea of integrity and character is foreign to so many of us that confirmation that the woman who could be the next president of the United States has lied persistently makes as little impression on them as a bb shot at the side of a battleship.

Now if the liar were a Republican, well, that would be different. Democrat lies are peccadilloes, at worst. Republican lies are evil at best.

The moral fiber of our nation has deteriorated to the point where it's hard to believe anything anyone tells us, and a big part of the reason is that too many of us don't see anything wrong with lying. Indeed, too many of us don't see much wrong with almost anything short of murder, child abuse, and opposition to gay marriage.