Among American conservatives, “Benghazi” is much more than the name of Libya’s second-largest city. Over the last eight months, the word has come to symbolise a scandal with the power — both to undermine Barack Obama’s presidency and to prevent Hillary Clinton’s.
Let us pause for a moment to consider that last sentence.
Last September’s attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi and the resulting deaths of four Americans, including the US ambassador, was a tragic failure of security. As such, it clearly has implications for US diplomats, military leaders and the intelligence community in terms of how they view, and work, in Libya and other violent, often unstable, countries. It ought to have implications for the Congress as well, since it is congressional budget and appropriations committees that, ultimately, decide how much and what sort of embassy security the US is willing to pay for.
It is a long way, however, from those realities to the fantasy world in which Benghazi is evidence of, at best, criminal negligence and, at worst, political murder. To hear some on the right tell it, the administration let the Americans in the consulate die on purpose, then not only covered up that fact, but actually altered the outcome of last year’s presidential election by fiddling with the talking points UN Ambassador Susan Rice used when she went on TV to discuss the attacks.
If only this perfidy can be exposed, the American people will demand accountability from Obama — perhaps even insist that Congress impeach him — while ensuring that former secretary of state, Hillary, has no chance of following him into the White House in 2016.
Put another way, the really sad thing about Benghazi is what it says about the American political system. First: Campaigns never stop (Americans kind of knew this already, but it is a bit depressing to be reminded of the fact quite so forcefully). Second: Washington’s current take-no-prisoners political climate more-or-less guarantees that the important questions about Benghazi will not be asked.
One of the oddest aspects of the Republican pursuit of “Benghazi” is the degree to which it is focused on the next election. So obsessed has America’s political class become with the permanent presidential campaign that across the ideological spectrum, politicos and pundits often seem more interested in what Benghazi may mean for Hillary in 2016 than in how it will affect Obama today.
Thus was Senator Rand Paul, a Republican, who is widely assumed to harbour presidential ambitions, in Iowa (the state that votes first in the presidential nominating process) last week telling an eager audience of Republicans that “Benghazi” represents “a dereliction of duty and should preclude her [Hillary] from holding higher office”.
This is the same mindset that prompts the (among Republicans) now routine comparisons of Benghazi and Watergate — the wide-ranging political scandal that, four decades ago, forced Richard Nixon to resign from the presidency in disgrace. It has become common to hear Republicans call for a “special committee,” modelled on the 1973 Senate Watergate committee, to investigate Benghazi.
This is where the second big thing comes in. The Senate Watergate Committee was tasked with asking difficult, probing questions that cut to the heart of the Nixon administration’s belief that it was, in effect, above the law. There are questions like that that need to be asked about Benghazi, but in Washington’s current toxically partisan atmosphere it is hard to imagine anyone asking them.
Congress ought to be looking into the security around the Benghazi consulate and similar smaller diplomatic facilities. The attacks raise questions about how the US protects its diplomats in difficult and dangerous places, and even more difficult questions about how one balances the need for protection against the need for those same diplomats to move around and meet people if they are to do their jobs properly.
This, in turn, raises questions about the relationship between the State Department and the Pentagon, particularly in unstable, conflict-prone cities and countries and about how all of these security arrangements are going to be paid for. None of that, however, really factors as part of either party’s “Benghazi” agenda.
The biggest irony of all is that for all the clear, if rarely spoken, focus on 2016 “Benghazi” is likely to have little or no effect on Hillary’s political future. Democrats are collectively smitten with Hillary. For many, she looks like a president-in-waiting. Partisan Congressional hearings are not going to change that. Indeed, on America’s left, the Republican pursuit of Hillary mainly looks like proof of how much her opponents fear the former first lady, senator and secretary of state.
For their part, Republicans are mainly reminding their base that they do not like Hillary, which, if you think about it, really isn’t news. Even if Benghazi is still a real issue in 2016 (highly debatable, that) it has already become so partisan that it is hard to see it changing any voter’s mind.
In the meantime, the real questions raised by last September’s attack will almost certainly remain unanswered.
Gordon Robison, a longtime Middle East journalist and US political analyst, teaches political science at the University of Vermont.
