Even before we watched Mitt Romney fall on his face with the “please proceed, governor” moment in the second presidential debate, the way that the right was responding to the September 11th, 2012 attacks on two CIA compounds in Benghazi had morphed into something bizarre. One year later, the right was more inclined to commemorate that tragedy than the hijacked planes catastrophe from twelve years earlier that cost almost 3,000 people their lives, crippled the airline industry, and sent the economy into a tailspin.
If you’ve been reading my recent pieces on Syria, you know that the Bush administration made a decision in late 2006 and early 2007 that they had miscalculated in invading Iraq. They had inadvertently empowered Iran and their Shiite brethren in the Arab world, much to the consternation of our Sunni allies in Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the gulf emirates. Israel was none-too-pleased about the development, either, especially after their difficult confrontation with Hizbollah in 2006. As a result, the neo-cons devised a plan to combat and contain Iran which involved raising holy hell about Iran’s nuclear program, as well as efforts to destabilize Bashir al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Over time, this meant that al-Qaeda types and other radical jihadists with Sunni sympathies got into the fight to topple Assad’s regime. Admittedly, this really got rolling after the 2011 Arab Spring began, which was on Obama’s watch, but Obama had tried to reverse this policy and engage Syria and Iran diplomatically. He did not buy into the idea that the way to rectify the mistake of invading Iraq was to fuel a region-wide sectarian war on the side of the Sunnis. That makes it all the more ironic that the Benghazi conspiracy theorists are making allegations like the following:
The lunacy began when Cliff Kincaid, a leader of Accuracy in Media, the group holding the gathering, suggested that the Obama administration is covering up events regarding Benghazi because the CIA operation there was secretly arming the enemy. “This administration has a policy of supporting al-Qaeda, the same people behind the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11,” he declared.
One of the panelists, former CIA officer Clare Lopez, picked up the theme. “Have we flipped our policy,” she asked, “to where we are placing the power, the influence, the might, diplomatic assets, military assets, intelligence assets, financial assets, at the service of al-Qaeda in the Middle East to bring to power forces of Islamic jihad? . . . Are we involved in the Middle East to help the forces of Islam, of al-Qaeda, of the Muslim Brotherhood, of jihad and sharia?”
[Rep. Frank] Wolf’s [R-VA] reply: “I think Clare makes a very good point.” And this is the man leading the effort to create a “select committee” to investigate Benghazi.
It’s ironic because it was the Bush administration that decided, in the midst of a violent insurgency led by al-Qaeda in Iraq, that it was actually the Shiites who were the greater threat to our interests. They made that conclusion because our Sunni allies were so angry with us that we needed to respond to their concerns or our relationships with them would have been damaged. So, they set out to fight the Shiites and Shiite-influence in the region, which is the policy they handed to Obama.
The rest of the history is basically a record of Obama trying and failing to change this Sunni-Shiite paradigm, while still maintaining decent relations, as best as possible, with the players that the Bush administration first sought to appease.
To accuse the president of taking the side of al-Qaeda against moderates or against Iran or against Russia, is to completely misunderstand everything that has happened.