Study

ORAL PRESENTATION

Topic: The government’s failure to anticipate and botched response to the Benghazi attack during the Obama administration

Link:

https://www.vox.com/2015/10/12/9489389/benghazi-explained

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-113shrg86780/html/CHRG-113shrg86780.htm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/from-video-to-terrorist-attack-a-definitive-timeline-of-administration-statements-on-the-libya-attack/2012/09/26/86105782-0826-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/politics/explanation-for-benghazi-attack-under-scrutiny.html

Part I: The Larger Context: What was the background of the failure? Why was the government involved in the first place, and what was it trying to achieve?

Part II: The Actual Failure: Explain what happened. Depending on what makes sense for the case study, you can use a timeline, or break down the failure into different parts (The State Department’s mistakes, the Defense Department’s mistakes, etc.) or some combination of both. Give a well-developed picture of what went wrong.

Part III: What was the fallout from the failure? Who got hurt? Use statistics (how many child separations were there, and over what period of time? How long did reunions take, etc.)

Part IV: Why was there a failure? Cite at least two causes and give at least one specific connection between the listed cause and an aspect of what happened on the ground. You can draw from the list below.

· Leadership problems, such as having punitive intent (abuse of power), embracing bad ideas, ignoring warnings, over-riding objections, trying to do “more with less”, failing to anticipate problems or plan ahead, deciding to use “dirty hands,” delegating without adequate oversight, or creating perverse incentives.

· Organizational problems, such as an insular culture, institutional self-deception (groupthink), sloppiness or corruption, conflicting mandates, corruption/lawbreaking

· Structural problems, such as having inadequate resources, trying to solve intractable problems, taking on virtually impossible tasks, or a public expectations/on-ground reality mismatch

Part V: Proposed reforms. List and explain at least two proposed reforms for making sure that the failure (or one like it) does not occur again.

Sources:

List your sources on the last slide. They should include the source for your failure listed above, as well as at least six other sources. These sources should be mainstream news sources, such as the Washington Post, NPR, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, etc. Other than such news sources, avoid “.com” sources, such as history.com. You can also draw on “.org” sources that are from think tanks, like the Center for American Progress or the Brookings Institution, or academic sources like jstor.edu, or sources on university websites that end in “.edu”, Primary sources, such as government agency reports (the General Accountability Office, the Senate or House of Representatives, Inspectors General Offices, etc.) are excellent. These sources typically end in “.gov,” DO NOT USE “opinion press” sources, such as Fox news or MSNBC. Also DO NOT rely on or cite Wikipedia, Youtube, or conspiracy theory sources like Inforwars.