Benghazi Goose Chase

You gotta wonder why it's taking so long for Republicans to wise up to themselves, but there's a reason: It's hard for someone to admit that he's been a fool all along.  It's even harder for a group.

The G.O.P. shouted "Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi" to discredit President Barack Obama in the election and yet -- Amazingly!  Inexplicably!  Befuddlingly! -- he won anyway, and the Republican nominee, Governor Mitt Romney, lost.

A manufactured controversy, the American public either saw right through the Benghazi controversy or just didn't care.  The September Eleventh terrorist killings this year in Benghazi, Libya, of four Americans, including the ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was a tragic loss for for their families, friends and colleagues and a sorrow for the United States, but there's no "there" there.  The men didn't die from official gross negligence, and there is no massive cover-up.  There's just a murky set of facts of which the Republicans thought they could take advantage.  Moreover, look who's talking: The G.O.P. just came off a five year binge of defending to the hilt the invasion of Iraq and its lies because the president was their man.  Even if Republicans were right about Benghazi, which they aren't, the travesty of Iraq is so much worse.  Where the public isn't confused or jaded, it's cynical.

The controversy began with rioting in Egypt ginned-up over an anti-Islamic hate film called "The Innocence of Muslims."  Made in the U.S.A., the film's obvious intention was to offend Muslims, and it worked.  Islamic extremists in Egypt used their propaganda outlets to preach rage and riot against the United States for allowing such blasphemy against their religion.  On the anniversary of the al-Qaeda terror attacks of September Eleventh, 2001, angry Egyptian crowds in Cairo approached the American Embassy in protest and disorder, hurling rocks and molotov cocktails.  In the hours immediately preceding the riot, the American embassy released a statement condemning the bigotry in "The Innocence of Muslims."

Almost simultaneous to the Cairo riot, an extremist Islamic militia to the west of Cairo, in Libya, launched an armed assault on the American consulate in Benghazi and a nearby C.I.A. annex building.  They were able to start a fire in which the American ambassador and Sean Smith, a mission officer, died of smoke inhalation at the consulate.  The other two Americans were security personnel, and they died in a mortar attack on the annex.  Some of the Libyans involved in the assault had expressed indignation over the American film, but anger over the film does not appear to have been the primary motive for the attack.  Rather, what seems more apparent is that the militia was motivated by sympathy for al-Qaeda.

After the Cairo riots and before news of the Benghazi attack was fully known to him, Governor Romney chose that moment to use the episodes and go on the offensive against President Obama with the object in mind of degrading his approval rating on foreign policy.  Romney also attacked the president's patriotism.  He said: "It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn the attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks."  Romney was attacking the administration for the Cairo embassy's condemnation the American-made hate film.

Romney took a lot of heat for that statement on a few fronts.  First, he rushed to the microphone before the facts were fully known and his rashness made him look desperate because he was behind in the polls.  Secondly, at a time of national alarm, he sounded the clarion call of division when unity and support would have been more patriotic and less selfish.  And third, he preposterously implied that a sitting president was unpatriotic.  Moreover, and this can count as a fourth point if not just a subset of the third, he struck a rather ugly note by seeming to imply that President Obama, who has for years been falsely accused of being a secret Muslim, was sympathizing with Islamic terrorists.

So Romney came off really badly with that attack, but he couldn't let go.  He had to double down because to walk away from the issue would be to admit embarrassment.  Refusing to acknowledge his own defeat was the first stage of his denying it.  The second stage was to use Benghazi as a cover for the first.

Hyping Benghazi was Romney's way of masking the disgrace of his initial comments, and it also seemed to be an opening he had been waiting for.  Remember his infamous "47 percent of Americans are moochers" comments?  During the speech at the same fundraiser, the subject of foreign policy came up and Romney started talking about Iran.  He said as a digression that if a scenario similar to Operation Eagle Claw, Jimmy Carter's failed rescue mission during the 1980 hostage crisis, came up during the campaign, he, Romney, would try to "find a way to use it."  That is, to try and discredit Obama as Jimmy Carter was with Operation Eagle Claw.  That's what Benghazi was for Romney, a political opportunity.  And it was sand to scratch over his previous blunder of jumping the gun.

So the G.O.P. got on board the Romney train and shoveled Benghazi into the furnace.  They generated a lot of smoke but not enough fire to make steam: Chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, ploosh... whump... whump... ploosh.... Then they ran out of track before they could get going.

Mitt Romney lost the election, but his party still had Benghazi on its hands and still do.  It's Romney's problem all over again.  "In for a penny, in for a pound": They can't just walk away from what they had been claiming was a scandal worse than Watergate, but, the more they hyperventilate over it, the worse they look.  So how do they get out of it?  What's the exit strategy?  There is none except to slink away and skulk.

Benghazi was nakedly political all along.  The American public saw it, too.  Republicans were making mountain out of a molehill, a tempest in a teapot.  Benghazi really is just a bump in the road.

Republicans, of course, will never admit it.  But what they will do is, slowly, one by one, walk away from the issue.  There's nothing else to do.  It didn't help Romney during the campaign and it won't help them now.  As more facts come to light, the administration's case is only bolstered with each new point.  Any day now, the G.O.P. will look up to see a small patch of sky rimmed with darkness and decide it's time to stop digging.  The need for candles is finally cluing them in.  Republican senators are starting to moderate their rhetoric.

Libya is an American foreign policy success.  The United States helped to overthrow a murderous dictator with no other object in mind than humanitarian intervention, a desire for America's foreign policy to live up to our values and the cementing of NATO alliance internationalism.  The intervention only cost four American lives, and, afterwards, Libyans, feeling gratitude, came out and publicly protested their deaths at the hands of the militia.

From everything I've read about Ambassador Stevens, I feel shure that he would say it was a worthy death of which he could be proud.  He died for his country and the people of Libya.  The Republican Party has dishonored his sacrifice and embarrassed their prospects by using it as a political stick and breaking it in beating for no good end except to hurt the brandishers' hands.