No doubt you recall widespread media reports on that ragtag bunch of terrorists who attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on 9/11 last year, killing four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
I tune in to FOX News from time to time for comic relief and reports on the X-files in American politics, in which President Obama is often featured as some undocumented alien trying to do everything from taking away people’s constitutional right to bear arms to turning America into a European-style socialist, welfare state.
Hell, to listen to Republicans fulminate against Obama on this network – with words of delegitimization and nullification – you’d think that the MAJORITY of Americans who voted for him in last year’s election were actually from Mars; or even worse, that all Black and Hispanic voters are from Africa and Latin America – who these Republicans wish would just go back where they came from.
But if you never tune in, you probably have no clue that, almost from the day after this attack, Republicans were accusing the Obama Administration of, among other things:
- ignoring repeated requests to beef up security at this consulate;
- failing to deploy military assets to defend it when it came under attack;
- covering up these security failures by spinning this “Overseas Contingency Operation” as a spontaneous protest triggered by some anti-Islam YouTube video; and
- refusing to call it the terrorist attack it was simply because that would’ve punctured Obama’s re-election campaign boast about decimating al-Qaeda.
The point is that FOX News, which operates as the media arm of the Republican Party, has been doing its damnedest to be to Benghazi what the Washington Post was to Watergate. All the while, Obama haters – who watch FOX News the way born-again Christians read the Bible – have been seething with political indignation at other mainstream and cable networks for refusing to report on it. To appreciate why, imagine the national outrage if FOX News were reporting 24/7 on the Boston bombings while other networks were blithely ignoring it.
Never mind that this indignation is undermined by an ironic form of racism that has FOX News continually accusing the other networks of not reporting on Obama’s alleged failures just because he’s Black. (No doubt FOX thinks this charge of reverse racism is a clever form of reverse psychology.) This stems from its ideological conviction that the liberal media not only have a vested interest in covering up for the liberal Obama, but also have a mortal fear of being called racists if they report anything negative about him.
Mind you, I might be guilty of helping the “lame-stream” liberal media fuel their partisan indignation. For here is how I heaped political scorn on attempts by Republicans/FOX News to make Obama the Democrats’ Nixon:
To listen to all of the carnival barking by Republicans and their Amen chorus in the media, you’d think the Obama Administration actually conspired with al-Qaeda terrorists to attack the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on 9/11.
Whereas the only factual basis for all of their barking and calls for Watergate-style hearings is that, for national security reasons, the Obama Administration used ‘CIA talking points’ to characterize this attack.
(“Benghazi-gate? No, McCain Fried Rice,” The iPINIONS Journal, November 19, 2012)
Still, for the record, comparisons between Benghazi and Watergate are fundamentally flawed; and here’s why: Nixon actively participated in both the conspiracy to burgle the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and the subsequent cover up when the shit hit the fan.
By contrast, Obama clearly had nothing to do with the Benghazi attack. What’s more, even the most rabid Republican can only impute guilt to him in the subsequent cover up, which congressional testimony indicates was directed not out of the White House (as was the case with Watergate), but out of the Department of State.
In any event, demonstrating that, unlike far too many progressive commentators, I am not some Kool-Aid-drinking shill for the Democratic Party, here is the admonition I sounded later on in this same commentary:
All the same, the Obama Administration does have some splainin’ to do. Because it was put on notice that terrorists were targeting this specific outpost in Benghazi, but it failed to either evacuate all personnel or reinforce security.
Nonetheless, it behooves those hurling patriotic indignation at this failure, which resulted in the killing of four Americans, to appreciate that it pales in comparison to the failure of the Bush Administration to heed notice that terrorists were targeting New York City. After all, that failure – on the original 9/11 – resulted in the killing of 3,000.
It is with this background and perspective that I set aside time today to catch some of yet another round of congressional hearings by the Republican-controlled House Oversight & Government Reform Committee on this Benghazi attack. I was particularly keen to see what FOX News was hyping for days would be the “smoking gun.”
Except that, as things turned out, the “whistleblower witnesses” – who, not surprisingly, Democrats dismissed as disgruntled officials at the Department of State – did little more than rehash the accusations (bulleted above) that Republicans have been hurling at the Obama Administration from day one.
But let me hasten to clarify that I am convinced the Administration engaged in a cover up of its security failures, which included whitewashing the infamous CIA talking points by deleting all references to terrorists to make them comport with Obama’s re-election narrative. Never mind that Republicans are on record repeatedly voting against Administration requests for funds to increase security at U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide, which, arguably, is why Benghazi was left so defenseless.
I am even more convinced, however, that Republicans have fatally undermined their credibility by accusing Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of the far more impeachable offense of preventing the military from flying to the aid of American officials when that consulate came under attack.
After all, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey have already testified in congressional hearings that Obama ordered them to do everything possible to render immediate aid, and that they did. And none of today’s witnesses testified in any way that contradicted Panetta and Dempsey’s testimony.
Ultimately, though, here in a nutshell is why today’s Benghazi hearing, which featured Republicans acting like prosecutors and Democrats acting like defense attorneys, amounted to much ado about nothing:
With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans… What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.
(FOX News, January 23, 2012)
This, of course, is what Hillary exclaimed when Republicans were giving her the third degree in a previous hearing about whether this was a religious protest or a terrorist attack.
Republicans having been trying to impeach Obama from day one of his presidency with the same “destructive obsession and monomania” with which Ahab was trying to harpoon that whale in Moby Dick. And, captained by their Ahab personified, Republican Chairman of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee Darrell Issa of California, they seem fated to similar failure.
Not least because these self-righteous political jihadists simply cannot overcome the hypocrisy inherent in trying to nail Obama for lying about Benghazi, after covering up for Ronald Reagan – when he lied about Iran Contra (where, despite an official arms embargo, his Administration was selling arms to Iran to fund Nicaraguan freedom fighters – aka terrorists); and covering up for George W. Bush – when he lied about WMDs (where, despite clear and convincing evidence that none existed, he ordered the invasion of Iraq purportedly to find them).
Not to mention the instructive precedent Republicans set by trying in vain to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about having sex with that woman, Monica Lewinski. Apropos of which, besides impeaching Obama, they are hell-bent on so indicting Hillary for her role in this Benghazi cover up that she would not even think of running for president in 2016, let alone coasting on her current trajectory right into the White House. Of course their efforts to thwart Hillary’s campaign by framing her as an incompetent liar will prove even more futile than the Clintons’ efforts to thwart Obama’s 2008 campaign by framing it as a “fairytale.”
That said, I can think of no better epilogue for all congressional hearings on the Benghazi attack than the following remarks by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin):
I don’t think there is a smoking gun here to day. I don’t think there is even a lukewarm slingshot…
[This committee has held nine hearings on Benghazi.] Maybe it’s time we start looking at how best to protect our embassies instead of rehashing the same old stories.
(House Oversight & Government Reform Committee Hearing on Benghazi Consulate Attack, C-SPAN 3, May 8, 2013)
Frankly, for what it’s worth, when it comes to lying to the American people, I say a plague on both their parties! After all, nobody can gainsay that, if this were a Republican administration, Democrats would be trying to score the same partisan political points — the truth, to say nothing of embassy/consular security, be damned.
NOTE: It is perhaps an indication of how ill-fated today’s hearing was that even FOX News gave it short shrift as it joined all other networks in previewing, covering, and analyzing the guilty verdict in the Jodi Arias murder trial, which generated gladiatorial and prurient public interest in equal measure. In fact, begrudging Republicans even had to compete for coverage with the latest “breaking news” on the macabre kidnappings of those three teenagers in Cleveland, Ohio 10 years ago – who were finally rescued yesterday.
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* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Wednesday, at 5:54 pm