It’s now a matter of record that Barack Obama made no phone calls during the many hours that transpired during the 9/11/12 Benghazi attacks. What’s also now a matter of record is the fact that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) – whether he realizes it or not – seems to have made the case for Obama’s impeachment and removal from office.
Via the Washington Times:
President Obama didn’t make any phone calls the night of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the White House said in a letter to Congress released Thursday.
“During the entire attack, the president of the United States never picked up the phone to put the weight of his office in the mix,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, who had held up Mr. Obama’s defense secretary nominee to force the information to be released.
Mr. Graham said that if Mr. Obama had picked up the phone, at least two of the Americans killed in the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi might still be alive because he might have been able to push U.S. aid to get to the scene faster.
The headline of the aforementioned story honed in on the admission by the White House that Obama made no phone calls during the attacks but unless I’m missing something, a U.S. Senator just accused the president of having the blood of two former Navy SEALs on his hands by not doing his job. In layman’s parlance, that sounds like manslaughter, which has two legal definitions, both of which could apply to Obama.
Check out what the legal dictionary has to say about that offense:
There are two types of involuntary manslaughter statutes: criminally negligent manslaughter and unlawful act manslaughter. Criminally negligent manslaughter occurs when death results from a high degree of negligence or recklessness. Modern criminal codes generally require a consciousness of risk and under some codes the absence of this element makes the offense a less serious Homicide.
An omission to act or a failure to perform a duty constitutes criminally negligent manslaughter. The existence of the duty is essential. Since the law does not recognize that an ordinary person has a duty to aid or rescue another in distress, a death resulting from an ordinary person’s failure to act is not manslaughter. On the other hand, an omission by someone who has a duty, such as a failure to attempt to save a drowning person by a lifeguard, might constitute involuntary manslaughter.
Try as one might, it’s hard to argue – based on the White House admission and Graham’s assertion – that Obama didn’t have a duty to at least make an attempt to repel the attacks sometime during the seven hour siege involving the consulate and CIA Annex. If Graham is right, Obama failing to execute his duty led to the deaths of Americans. That would be criminally negligent manslaughter.
How about the more egregious form of involuntary manslaughter? As you consider the application of unlawful act manslaughter, consider the claims made in a book by Brandon Webb and Jack Murphy. Among their charges is that the 9/11/12 attacks in Benghazi were in response to weapons raids ordered by John Brennan directly from Obama’s White House. Webb and Murphy also claim that then CIA Director David Petraeus and Ambassador Christopher Stevens were kept in the dark about it.
Unlawful act manslaughter occurs when someone causes a death while committing or attempting to commit an unlawful act, usually a misdemeanor. Some states distinguish between conduct that is malum in se (bad in itself) and conduct that is malum prohibitum (bad because it is prohibited by law). Conduct that is malum in se is based on common-law definitions of crime; for example, an Assault and Battery could be classified as malum in se. Acts that are made illegal by legislation—for example, reckless driving—are malum prohibitum. In states that use this distinction, an act must be malum in se to constitute manslaughter. If an act is malum prohibitum, it is not manslaughter unless the person who committed it could have foreseen that death would be a direct result of the act.
If Brennan was secretly ordering raids without the knowledge of the CIA Director and Petraeus should have been aware of those raids, that would constitute an unlawful act. If those unlawful acts were the cause of the attacks on the consulate and annex (CIA), it would seem that Brennan (acting as an arm of Obama) may be guilty of unlawful act manslaughter.
Such things would mean that Brennan’s nomination by Obama as CIA Director sets a new high water mark for audacity.