Ian Swanson thinks the decision to have a special House committee devoted to investigating the administration’s reaction to the Benghazi attacks is part of a midterm strategy. He actually thinks the issue has the power to hurt Democrats with independent voters, which is laughable. If there is a strategy behind the move at all, it is clearly aimed at tarnishing the reputation of Hillary Clinton in the hope that her approval numbers will come back to Earth. But I kind of doubt that we can explain this decision rationally at all.
After all, the real issues involved (security for embassies and consulates, the decision to get militarily involved in Libya, the CIA’s role in Benghazi) aren’t even under discussion. The Republicans are upset that the administration said that an anti-Muslim video was responsible for creating a spontaneous riot that led to the attacks in Benghazi. That turned out to be only partially true. So, is the problem that the administration was wrong?
No, that’s not it. The presumption is that they lied. Okay, so what if they lied? Did they lie about something that mattered? Have there been any follow-on attacks on our government officials in Libya? Did they misdiagnose the problem? Have there been any negative consequences for anyone from this alleged lie?
It’s hard to understand why the Republicans think that anyone beside themselves cares in the slightest about their version of the Benghazi controversy.
The latest iteration of outrage is that the Obama administration released an email to the public that the Republicans feel should have been released to Congress last year. Okay, perhaps the email should have been released to Congress last year. What is the appropriate penalty for failing to promptly and fully comply with a congressional subpoena? Is impeachment the proper penalty? And, for whom? It’s not as if President Obama was in charge of combing through White House emails to see what was germane to the Benghazi attacks. Should he fire his legal counsel?
What is actually going to be investigated? Not how better to protect our CIA officers in the field. Not how better to protect our consulates. Not who is responsible for the crime. So, what, then?
Are they seeking to prove that the administration knowingly misled people and then impeded a congressional investigation about it? Because they’ll never prove that. The people that are convinced of it don’t even know why it is supposed to matter. They know next to nothing about Libya or the militant groups that menace Benghazians. They don’t admire the State Department or care much about the safety of its workforce. They have offered nothing in the way of policy advice for Libya. And they were acting strangely deranged about this issue long before this latest email came up, so that can’t explain their seeming dementia.
It’s almost as if they think that the president was only reelected because he lied about Benghazi, and that proving that would somehow make Mitt Romney the president.
