Republicans as a class are suddenly in a huge lather (perhaps literally, although I’d rather not find out) over exactly when President Obama designated the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya an act of “terrorism.” Quite apart from the (characteristically Republican) stupidity of nit-picking what any Administration official said about a violent, tumultuous event nearly half the world away the day after it happened, it also seems clear that this is a gargantuan case of pettifogging.
Famously, the issue caused Mitt Romney to walk into a trap during the second presidential debate. Responding to a question about the reported denial of extra security at that consulate, President Obama was at his most Presidential, which Romney apparently failed to notice. Even as he adroitly avoided answering the question, he said, “number three, we are gonna find out who did this, and we are gonna hunt them down….” Romney thought he’d caught the President in a demonstrable lie on national television, and pressed the issue, as above, of when exactly the President first referred to the attack as a “terrorist attack,” but only after dinging the President for going the day after the attack to Las Vegas and Colorado for political events. He then went on to indict the President’s whole Middle East policy, including the “apology tour” lie. Then Candy Crowley intervened and asked Obama about Hillary Clinton’s statement that she took responsibility for the deaths. Obama rightly said, in effect, that the buck stops with him, then turned on Romney and called his remarks from moments before, “offensive.”
Then, Romney eagerly walked into the trap. “Please proceed, Governor…. Get the transcript.” Candy Crowley intervenes with the notorious instant fact check that incurred the titanic wrath of the right wing extremist press. Ultimately, the mole hill on which Romney chose to plant his banner was completely trivial. What matter what words the President used to describe the attack the day after? One may ask much more important questions about the amount of time required to secure the consulate after the attack and to put FBI agents on the scene to investigate, especially when U.S. correspondents notoriously gained access much more quickly.
But, in the long run, accepting arguendo the overly bellicose foreign policy that Obama has regrettably continued from his predecessor, surely the important question is when and if U.S. forces of whatever description will apprehend the perpetrators of the attack and hold them accountable for murder.
And, at the end of the day, whom do we trust more to achieve that goal, the representative of the Party that did pursue and kill Osama bin Laden… or the representative of the Party that did not?