Out of Benghazi's many tragedies, the worst is Washington's blame game

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/16/benghazi-senate-report-washington-blame-game

Version 0 of 1.

In Washington, Benghazi has two different meanings. One understanding holds "Benghazi" as a watchword for government malfeasance. The other, as a banner for unrestrained conservative rage.

In fact, Benghazi is a city in Libya. And on the night of 11 September, 2012, four American public servants died there. These days however, that history has been rendered irrelevant. These days, the Benghazi attack is just another pawn in the Washington blame game. And now it’s election year … the blame game playoffs, where truth goes to die.

Take Wednesday’s report on the Benghazi attack by the Senate intelligence oversight committee. Among 14 findings, three in particular stand out. First, that the State Department failed to address the pre-attack security situation in Benghazi. Second, that the attack was ‘’preventable’’. And third, that members of Al-Qaida ‘’participated’’ in the attack (although premeditation and/or commands by authorities involved remain unclear).

Of course, the report’s rather balanced assessment was never going to get a warm reaction in Washington, and certainly not in Congress. After all, in the House, where 82% of seats are safely Democrat or Republican, politicians have little incentive for bipartisanship. In Washington, with rare exceptions, only a total partisan victory will suffice.

In that vein, while some conservatives (such as House intelligence chair, Mike Rogers) carefully welcomed the committee’s findings, others were quick to sense an opportunity. Case in point: the Washington Post’s conservative blogger, Jennifer Rubin. In a post titled "Can Hillary Clinton Survive Benghazi?", Rubin was happy to show her cards: "The media this week insisted one 2016 contender may be too hobbled to run for the White House. Right diagnosis, wrong candidate?"

For Rubin, the Benghazi attack offers the perfect counterpoint to Chris Christie’s Bridgegate<em>;</em> an opening born of human tragedy. But it wasn’t just Rubin. Never one to be left out, Michelle Bachmann soon followed suit. The Minnesota congresswoman claimed that the report provides a "high hurdle [Clinton] has to overcome in the future". Not to be outdone, a prospective 2016 presidential candidate, Marco Rubio, proclaimed his own desire to "re-examine … Clinton’s failure to provide adequate security … as well as what actions she and others, including the president, took in the hours and days that followed the attack."

Predictably, liberals interpreted the report in a very different way. Committee chair Dianne Feinstein asserted that there’s "no evidence" Clinton was aware of security problems at the consulate. Over at MSNBC, Steve Benen argued that continuing concerns over the attack are the product of "paranoia". Also at MSNBC, Aliya Frumin claimed that the report "discredits many right-wing criticisms". Full of gleeful scorn, the Daily Kos’s Jed Lewison used the report to say that conservatives think that Benghazi is in Cuba.

If you're playing the Washington blame game, it’s all so obvious. To the players, finding out what actually happened in Benghazi isn’t nearly as important as that which can be sold as having happened.

From the right, conservatives want to tar Democrats with a double brush of dishonesty, hoping it will boost a double election effect. Expect GOP ads combining Obama’s "You can keep your plan" with Clinton’s "What difference does it make?" exclamation. At the same time, you can bet that Democrats will claim bureaucrats rather than politicians were the ones wholly at fault in Libya. On defense, blame smells better downstream.

And so we have the confused rowing boat that is American foreign policy. A boat in which half of the crew row forwards and half row backwards. Unsurprisingly, instead of progress, the result is confusion, drift and a lot of splashing. Consider the chaos in Iraq. Instead of examining Iraqi politics and regional sectarian tensions, Democrats are happy to blame Bush and Republicans are happy to blame Obama. The domestic politics of the 2003 invasion continue to pollute the foreign policy of today, 16 January, 2014. The blame game doesn’t afford sensible analysis.

So our political culture fails us, and it fails those who served us.

Sadly, there are no easy fixes here. In the end, fixing the Washington blame game will require our purer appraisal of the relationship between people and politics. The coming elections will help us know where we stand.

There will be those of us who want Chris Stevens forgotten; there will be those of us who want Chris Stevens in a campaign ad; and there will be those of us who remember Chris Stevens and his colleagues at their best: walking Libyan streets and fostering warmth towards America. 

Perhaps, paying heed to the right choice, we might put our political culture onto a better track.

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.