Benghazi: Enough with the grandstanding

The events that resulted in the death of four Americans in Benghazi are a tragedy, not a scandal.

 
Recently, a new email was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act regarding the controversial talking points that United States U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice provided after the attacks.  Although Republicans are touting this email as evidence that the White House politicized the talking points to help Obama’s 2008 reelection, it proves nothing of the sort; rather, the obsessive coverage of this issue merely illustrates the remarkably unabating will of Republicans to misconstrue the Benghazi “scandal” for political gains.

 
Ever since the Sept. 11 2012 militant jihadist attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost and a nearby CIA annex, Congressional Republicans and the right-wing media have assailed the Obama administration for allegedly covering up Al Qaeda’s involvement in the attack in order to mitigate the event’s political fallout for President Obama’s 2008 election campaign.  However, such political grandstanding has squandered millions of taxpayer dollars and wasted thousands of hours of personnel time, according to the Associated Press; moreover, such efforts to undermine public officials in relation to this “scandal” have consistently exonerated the Obama administration of any wrongdoing.

 
Let’s begin by outlining the allegations of Congressional Republicans and right-wing media outlets.  The chief accusation of Republicans is that the White House crafted the talking points given to Rice, who discussed the events on camera for the American public five days later, in order to deliberately mislead voters just in time for Obama’s reelection.  Republicans accuse the White House of downplaying Al Qaeda’s actual involvement with the attack and deceitfully portraying the attack as a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islam video. This accusation is plainly false.

 
Although Republicans are touting the newly surfaced email as evidence of the administration’s cover-up, the email actually serves to eviscerate the credibility of the Republicans’ crusade against the Obama administration.  This email shows that the infamous line from Rice’s talking points, namely, “We believe, based on currently available information, that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. consulate and subsequently its annex,” was actually copied and pasted directly from the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis.

 
Republicans also assert that the Obama administration is culpable of this tragedy since it failed to beef up consular security prior to the attacks.  However, it was these very same Republicans who blocked such efforts in the first place; for example, CNN reports that “the amount that the GOP-led House passed for two accounts that pay for embassy security in fiscal 2012 ($2.311 billion) was $330 million less than the Obama administration had requested ($2.641 billion).”

 
Finally, Republicans assert that the Obama administration failed to mobilize resources fast enough in response to the attack.  However, a review of the terrorist attacks by the bipartisan U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that “There were no U.S. military resources in position to intervene in short order in Benghazi to help defend the Temporary Mission Facility and its Annex on September 11 and 12, 2012.”

 
This political charade has wasted time and money without accomplishing anything substantive.  According to POLITICO, Republican-led congressional investigations on Benghazi have included “13 hearings, 25,000 pages of documents and 50 briefings.”  Additionally, the Pentagon provided a letter to Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), which stated that “the total cost of compliance with Benghazi-related congressional requests sent to the Department and other agencies is estimated to be in the millions of dollars.”

 
In sum, the Republicans’ accusations that the Obama administration is to blame for the tragic events in Benghazi are wholly unfounded.  As a result of this witch hunt, a substantial amount of time and money has been wasted, even after incontrovertible evidence that the Obama administration did not engage in any malfeasance.  As such, it is time to finally put the Benghazi “scandal” to bed.