State Department Had No $$$ for Consulate Security, But it Did Have $$$ For…

October 12, 2012
 By Daniel Greenfield 
FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE

The last, generally disavowed, excuse is that the Benghazi consulate lacked proper security because of budget cuts. This has already been disproven, but let’s take that excuse at face value.

The State Department has a 50 billion dollar budget. Within that 50 billion dollar budget there was no money for reasonable consulate security in a city rife with Islamist militias who had already attacked the consulate and other diplomats in the city. But here’s what there was money for…

The 770 million dollar Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund for the Arab Spring.

7.9 billion dollars for Obama’s Global Health Initiative.

2.9 billion for international debt relief.

2.2 billion to strengthen democratic institutions in Pakistan.

469 million for global climate change.

587 million for student exchange programs.

And of course there is the always popular Mosque renovation program reported on by Front Page earlier.

In 2010, the State Department provided monetary support for saving three mosques on Zanzibar Island off the coast of Tanzania, mosques which included the 900-year-old Kizimkazi mosque, considered one of the oldest Islamic buildings on the coast of East Africa.

That generous American donation was repaid in July 2012 when Muslim mobs, shouting, “Away with the church — we do not want infidels to spoil our community, especially our children,” burned down three Christian churches on Zanzibar Island.

In 2011 the State Department provided funds to restore the 15th century Gobarau Minaret in Katsina State in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north, an area which has become a virtual killing field for Christians at the hands of Muslim militants, led by the al-Qaeda-linked terror group Boko Haram.

Since 2009 over 288 Christian churches in Nigeria have been burned, thousands of Christian-owned homes destroyed, and over 2,000 Christians killed, including in July 2012 when fifty members of a northern Nigerian church were burned to death in their pastor’s house.

The State Department had billions for the Muslim Brotherhood and Pakistan, for the people killing us, but it supposedly did not have the money to defend against them.

Is it any wonder that with all the useful things the State Department does, it just couldn’t figure out how to budget consulate security too?

About Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.