I've been following the Benghazi 'controversy' (who hasn't ?) for a while now. It's pretty hard to escape, what with that Congressional Investigative Committee, and various politicians of the Republican stripe trying to harvest some political hay using a Benghazi scythe.
So: a mob gathers outside one of our isolated consulate buildings, which may or may not have had an actual diplomatic purpose (might have just been a CIA front) and things get violent. Well, things were getting mobish and violent all around our consulates and embassies in that region at the time, after an anti-Islam video was released on the internet, and Muslims all over the world were pissed.
Local American security forces were mobilized, emails and phone lines and cables between there and Washington heated up, more resources were committed and began to saddle up, but before anyone can actually move, it's all over and four Americans were dead, including our Ambassador.
The Middle East is a violent and unpredictable place. Its full of, pardon me, thug regimes propped up by oil money and foreigners, including ourselves. And people in the Middle East have a history of attacking, sometimes successfully, our diplomatic and military presence in the area. In fact, one of the reasons Osama bin Laden was so determined to attack a target in the United States was that he was upset at American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia. Troops who, two years after 9/11, were quietly withdrawn by Dubya Bush's minion Rumsfeld.
But, the attack in New York aside, in the past few decades, there have been scores of attacks on embassies, consulates, military barracks and places where Americans congregate. People were killed in these attacks.
Yet, except for 9/11, none of these attacks seem to have generated the attention that Benghazi has.
And I have a hard time understanding why this is so. But I might have an explanation, so follow me past the confused mass of swirling orange disruption...
It's difficult, from half a world away, to know what's going on with any degree of real time accuracy. That's why we have ambassadors. Someone on the spot who can keep up with what's going on, and report back.
So one can imagine it's doubly difficult when the ambassador is the one under attack.
Normally, when things go so disastrously wrong in any organization, but especially in the military and government, there is an investigation to determine what went wrong and how to prevent it. These investigations do not happen overnight. There are witnesses to find and interview, physical evidence to collect and analyze, operating procedure documents to read and understand, and people up and down the chain of command to interview to discover what they did or did not do during the incident, and whether those actions comported with standard operating procedures.
If any changes are recommended, the recommendations should be vetted by experts in the field. All of this takes time. Which is why, once the initial incident fades from the news, it isn't unusual to hear that the follow up report is released months, maybe years, later. These things take time.
Of course, our 24/7/365 news cycle (except for Fridays, and especially before three day weekends) demands instant answers. But even the most insistent of our news hounds will move on to new shiny things when an exasperated press secretary tells them for the umpteenth time: "The. Report's. Not. Out. Yet! You'll be the first to know when it is!"
So, what was different about Benghazi?
From the beginning, the Right Wing has insisted that the incident be characterized as an Act of Terror perpetrated by Terrorists. In addition, they also insisted that the administration did NOT so characterize it until a couple of weeks after the attack.
And why does this matter? It's not as if the President had a button on his desk labeled "Act of Terror" and, if only he pressed that button in response to the attack, the perpetrators would be magically zapped and all would be well in the world again.
Yet this insistence that Benghazi be labeled an Act of Terror perpetrated by Terrorists was so strong and widespread in the Right Wing media bubble it led Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney to famously step on his crank in that debate while President Obama smiled his amused little smile and asked Romney to "Please proceed, governor..."
Even today, apparently, the Right Wing is still outraged and concerned that the attack was not immediately condemned as Terrorism™.
Now, granted, the Right Wing uses "Keeping You Safe from Terrorism by Keeping You Terrified that Terrorists are Hiding Under Your Bed" to convince their more credulous constituents to vote for them, but can they really expect Democratic politicians to reflexively cater to their narrative? Or, more to the point, would they be this outraged, and for such an extended time, because the Democrats did not do so?
I have wondered about this for a long time, and have a theory.
It's about that video: "Innocence of Muslims".
Sometimes, after an attack or a bombing, some extremist group (Terrorists™) claims responsibility. Now, we have no way of knowing whether they are telling the truth, but it does give the news hounds something to print. In the case of Benghazi, while some established Terrorists™ expressed sympathy, no one actually said they were responsible.
So, if it wasn't terrorists, what could have precipitated the attack? Well, there was that notorious anti-Islam video that had just been released, and was causing widespread condemnation in the Muslim world.
And here is my theory. In addition to owning the "Keeping You Safe from Terrorism by Keeping You Terrified that Terrorists are Hiding Under Your Bed" meme, the Right Wing has also claimed Islamophobia to pander to their core constituency. Obviously, regardless of who produced that video, it is tied to the Right Wing modus operendi.
So, if it wasn't terrorists, and it was that video, then the administration was BLAMING the RIGHT WING for an attack that killed Americans. Now the outrage begins to make sense to me, as does the shouting from every available rooftop: "It was TERRORISTS!"
If the Right Wing becomes known as people who instigate attacks on Americans they can hardly claim to be keeping Americans safe. Now, they can't actually say it wasn't the video, since that would draw unwanted attention to that video. So, "Say it was TERRORISTS!" becomes the default demand.
Now, I don't have any evidence for any of this (sorry, reality based community) and I may be stepping over the line into Conspiracy Theory territory, but we all have seen how much Republicans project their methods and nefarious plans onto others instead of owning them themselves. I'll let you draw any conclusions that might be warranted.