

Let's learn from Benghazi

5:59 PM, May 10, 2013  |  Comments
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To many Republicans, the Obama administration's handling of last year's terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, represents a massive scandal rivaling the one that drove Richard Nixon from the presidency. A loss of trust "every bit as damaging as Watergate," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., insisted in an absurd bit of overstatement.

To many Democrats, the attack is old news, thoroughly investigated and put to rest. Nothing to see here, White House spokesman Jay Carney intimated last week: "Benghazi happened a long time ago." Tell that to the families of the victims.

Both views are wrongheaded, and the partisan posturing does a disservice to the memories of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the three other Americans killed on the 11th anniversary of 9/11. It also obscures the larger, more important security issues going forward.

Wednesday's hearing before a House committee featured Republicans bent on tarring President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a leading contender to succeed him in 2017, and Democrats straining to defend them, even if it meant verbally roughing up credible State Department witnesses. The session provided dramatic new details about the night of the attacks but did little to change the overall narrative of a tragedy compounded by incompetence.

At this point, the investigation boils down to two key questions: Could the four Americans have been saved, and was there a coverup?

On the first question, Gregory Hicks, Stevens' top deputy who was in Tripoli on the night of the attacks, testified that he tried to get the Pentagon to scramble F-16s over Benghazi in hopes of scaring off a mob of about 60 attackers. His entreaties were turned down. Officials in Washington also decided not to deploy a special terrorism operations team.

Top Pentagon officials testified in February that the planes, based in Italy, would have taken up to 20 hours to get there and were "the wrong tool for the job." As it turned out, the two attacks in Benghazi were about seven hours apart, and those actions might well have proved futile. But that night, neither State nor the Pentagon knew that. It is hard to fathom why no defense was mounted. Or why closer military assets were not on alert on the anniversary of 9/11, ready to fly to a trouble spot.

As for a coverup, Republicans certainly haven't proved one. But Hicks' testimony added to the case that the administration was either disingenuous or clueless when it initially peddled the story that the attack grew out of a spontaneous protest, spurred by an anti-Islamic video.

The Libyan government quickly called the incident a terrorist attack. Hicks said he was shocked when Susan Rice, Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, went on TV Sept. 16 and contradicted that report, talking instead about a protest turned violent. It took administration officials several more days to acknowledge that account was wrong.

Looking ahead, what matters is not what Rice said on Sunday talk shows. What matters is the government's responsibility to protect people it sends into harm's way in a dangerous world. That means bringing to justice the murderers of four Americans, improving security at U.S. diplomatic outposts and creating a rapid response force that can manage to get to the scene of trouble before it's too late.


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