Taking Responsibility

I'm gonna' wing this one since I have a very... small amount of material for this on the top of my mind.

Benghazi.

This has been a bit of an issue recently thanks to the hearing featuring Hillary Clinton. Several senators had plenty of questions for her. Questions revolving around how much of a failure she was- incidentally, she was virtually uninvolved with any meaningful process related to Benghazi.

This is something that's bugged me about people expecting a fall-guy with a recognizable face whenever something bad happens.

A system has some unforeseeable problems thanks to the tangled web of bureaucracy. As a result of an emergency, that tangled web allows for some lowly peon to make a mistake or an error in judgment or assessment. Resulting from this, a few bad things happen.
 It's a public debacle.

So what happens? Well, you'd expect the guy who made the mistake to get fired and everyone move on.

But that's not good enough for people. They can't direct their anger towards the peon they've never seen before. They need a scapegoat with a public face, even if that scapegoat is, for all intents and purposes, not related to the incident at all.
In this case, Hillary Clinton.


By virtue of the nature of terrorist attacks, the initial information obtained is typically the first and most basic assessment made by whichever peon sees it first and reports it. All information from thereon is going to be predicated upon that first assessment.
And can we really blame the first guy that much? He made a really typical error- one that most people would make, since no one has normal experience with terrorist attacks. Why would they? That kind of experience is a rarity. Simulating it to be prepared for it isn't easy.

But more than that, why would we blame anyone except the person who made the initial mistake?
(Unless of course, there's someone who made a very negligent mistake that allowed the situation to happen in the first place. In the case of a terrorist attack, that's a little harder to predict or blame though)

The alternate factor here is Libya requesting additional security and whether or not anyone ignored those cables (messages).

Simply put, yes, they requested more security. Months before the attack. Numerous times. Totaling 12 requested security officers
SOURCE
However, the House Oversight Committee (in charge of such appropriations) told them "no." Hillary Clinton should never see these cables because it's not her job.

Despite this, she's taken personal responsibility for the system being slow and awkward and she's vowed to begin fixing it in response to the problem. Instead of, say, blaming it on other people around her and avoiding the problem altogether like many politicians are wont to do.


What I'm getting at here is that personal responsibility is something we should take for our actions and thoughts, but not those that are legitimately out of our control. It's nice of you to apologize for your friend's shitty luck, but ultimately, it's not something you caused or contributed to.
It sucks that your love is unrequited, but you can't blame someone for simply not being romantically interested in you- it's out of their control.

Our thoughts and our actions are what we have control over.
The problems that we cause directly or indirectly are our responsibility- but only that.

I don't really know where I'm going with this.

Take responsibility for what you do.
Don't take responsibility if it's legitimately out of your control or influence.

-
Wad