10-24-2012, 06:19 PM
There were two administration failures around Benghazi: a failure to provide adequate security at the consulate, and a failure to provide a consistent explanation for what had happened on September 11 as the facts emerged. But these failures do not add up to the grand conspiracy of fecklessness and cover-up that Republicans have sought to portray, and that furrow-browed coverage of the attacks has suggested. For one thing, there is the matter of scale: horrific as the attacks were, and unusual as the killing of an ambassador is, one cannot help but wonder how much attention the deaths of these four Americans would be getting if they were not occurring during a relatively quiet (or quiescent) time for Americans abroad—if, say, they had occurred amid the persistent, large-scale loss of American life in Iraq in the middle of the last decade. Second, the dudgeon over the attacks overlooks important context, namely that Libya remains, despite that day's horror, a relatively bright spot for the U.S. in the Arab world. Where else have we seen large pro-American demonstrations of the sort that took place after the attacks?
Then there are the mitigating arguments on each of the two failures identified above. Yes, security in Benghazi was inadequate. But Republican attempts to capitalize on this, and to cast Stevens as the victim of administration incompetence on this score, overlook a) the fact that the unfulfilled request for added security was for the embassy in Tripoli, not the Benghazi consulate and b) the inconvenient reality that Stevens was among those diplomats who believed in erring on the side of openness and risk, rather than on the side of fortress-like security.
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I haven't really heard everyone talking about Benghazi the past few days (have you?) Such echo-chamber spin may convince Romney that he should take one more swing at this. But Saturday also brought the news, from Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin, that the document dump by Darrell Issa, the House Republican who oversaw a committee hearing on the attacks last week, had compromised the identities of Libyans working with the U.S. That is, that Republican opportunism has come at a real cost for people far beyond the realm of campaign trail gamesmanship.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/108951/has-the-b...its-course
Then there are the mitigating arguments on each of the two failures identified above. Yes, security in Benghazi was inadequate. But Republican attempts to capitalize on this, and to cast Stevens as the victim of administration incompetence on this score, overlook a) the fact that the unfulfilled request for added security was for the embassy in Tripoli, not the Benghazi consulate and b) the inconvenient reality that Stevens was among those diplomats who believed in erring on the side of openness and risk, rather than on the side of fortress-like security.
...
I haven't really heard everyone talking about Benghazi the past few days (have you?) Such echo-chamber spin may convince Romney that he should take one more swing at this. But Saturday also brought the news, from Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin, that the document dump by Darrell Issa, the House Republican who oversaw a committee hearing on the attacks last week, had compromised the identities of Libyans working with the U.S. That is, that Republican opportunism has come at a real cost for people far beyond the realm of campaign trail gamesmanship.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/108951/has-the-b...its-course