Obama: Sacrifice will not be forgotten

Their deaths, far from home, had become a flash point of politics in Washington, grist in the ongoing election-year debate about President Obama’s leadership at a time of uncertainty abroad. Yet on Friday afternoon, the bodies of the four Americans who perished in Libya arrived back on U.S. soil, and for a moment these men could be remembered for who they were in life, not what they had become in death.

Their coffins, each draped in an American flag, arrived at Andrews Air Force Base aboard a gray military aircraft and were carried down the ramp by seven Marines in dress blue uniforms. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three State Department employees — Sean Smith, an information management officer, and security personnel Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods — were killed Tuesday when militants overran the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

Video

President Obama spoke at a ceremony transferring the remains of the four Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya back to the United States. The President said, “Their sacrifice will never be forgotten.”

More from PostPolitics

On scandals -- real and imagined

Joel Achenbach

THE FIX | At the moment, the three scandals consuming the Obama administration don't quite measure up to Watergate.

Holder’s claim on the ‘Fast and Furious’ criminal citation

Glenn Kessler

FACT CHECKER | Attorney General Eric Holder said a U.S. attorney made his own decision not to pursue a criminal prosecution of Holder. But he got that wrong.

Part 4: ‘Why don’t you just make yourself legal?’ | Immigration: Pathway to now

VIDEO | The future remains uncertain for 11 million people living illegally in the U.S. Though immigration reform seems closer than it has ever been before, can Washington and the Obama administration effectively repair 30 years of broken policies?

• Immigration: Pathway to now

Read more

Now, the men, as Obama would say during the formal Transfer of Remains ceremony, had come “home.” The coffins were placed in front of four black hearses inside a vast hangar, a giant flag hanging from the rafters. After a benediction was read, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, dressed in dark colors, took turns putting a face on the fallen before dozens of family, friends and State Department employees.

“Four Americans, four patriots,” said Obama, who had met privately with family members. “They had a mission, and they believed in it. They knew the danger, and they accepted it. They didn’t simply embrace the American ideal, they lived it, they embodied it: the courage, the hope and, yes, the idealism. That fundamental American belief that we can leave this world a little better than before.”

Welcoming home the remains of the dead is a grim duty for a president. And it is one that Obama has done several times for troops from Afghanistan. But it was never like this — in the middle of an election, in a fight for his political life.

Here they were: There was Smith, the technology wizard who Clinton said was mourned as widely by “gamers” online as he was in the halls of federal Washington. There was Doherty, known as “Bub,” and Woods, known as “ ’Rone,” both former Navy SEALs who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before protecting America’s diplomats.

And there was Stevens, 52, who had worked closely with the Libyan people during their overthrow of strongman Moammar Gaddafi last year, then stayed on to help the new government rebuild. He became the first U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979, but Clinton wanted her listeners to remember a man who was beloved not just by his co-workers but by the citizens of the foreign countries in which he served.

She told the audience that she had received a letter this week from the president of the Palestinian Authority, who had worked closely with Stevens in Jerusalem and remembered his “energy and integrity.”

“What a wonderful gift you gave us,” Clinton said, addressing Stevens’s family. The statesman was known “not only for his courage but for his smile — goofy but contagious. For his sense of fun, and that California cool.”