The Republicans continually astonish me. At least, the ones who believe their own bullshit do. A group of armed men attacked our consulate and another compound of ours in Benghazi, Libya and killed our ambassador and three other men. We knew this the next day. It was reported that way the next day. That’s what the administration said happened the next day. The president referred to it as an “act of terror” while talking about it in the Rose Garden the next day. The day after that, he referred to it as an “act of terror” on the campaign trail in Colorado. The only thing that was ever in dispute was what motivated the armed men? Were they incensed by a stupid YouTube video? Were they using a protest about the video as cover to launch an attack that was motivated more by the anniversary of 9/11? Were they anti-American for this reason or that reason?
That’s literally the only thing that was ever in doubt. What we knew was that armed men launched a coordinated attack on two of our compounds in Libya and killed our ambassador and three other people. The president called it terrorism. The Republicans seem to think that it can’t be terrorism if the assailants are mad about an insulting YouTube.
So, maybe we need to have an argument about what constitutes terrorism. Maybe the right-wingers should be chastising the president for calling the attacks “terrorism” when he had no right to jump to that conclusion based on the facts as he understood them at the time. After all, it’s not terrorism if it’s a spontaneous attack, right? It’s not terrorism if the perpetrators are motivated by a feeling that their religion has been insulted.
Who even knows what the fuck these Republicans are talking about. I think it boils down to nothing more than the administration had some bad initial information (some of which was provided by the Libyan government) and they relayed that information to the public and were slow to acknowledge their mistake. My understanding is that there is no record that anyone at the consulate asked for additional security. The Republicans have slashed the budget for diplomatic security. And this idea that the president didn’t call the attacks “acts of terrorism” (when he did, more than once) because his administration thought the video played a role is just muddle-headed nonsense.
I am not even sure that either the Republicans or the Democrats version of reality is correct. An act of terrorism is carried out to intimidate people and get them to pressure their government to change policy. I think our Ambassador was killed simply because his murderers wanted him dead. I don’t think they had a political goal. I don’t think things would be any different if a mob of YouTube protesters had overrun the consulate. They would have been committing murder without much expectation that it would change anything. The rage of a mob is not terrorism.
But, however you want to define terrorism, the Republicans have been keen to politicize the unfortunate death of our ambassador and three other Americans, and it has been a disgrace.
