I had a girlfriend once who told me that when she was a little girl, about seven or eight years old, she and her older brother would sometimes get into an argument, and he would hit her, typically on her arm. If it happened during the day, she would beat on the spot with her fist to keep it red until their mother got home. Then she would run crying to her mother, show her the bruise, and say, “Mommy! Danny hit me.” Then Danny would get a whipping. Now, there are some people who don’t approve of hitting children, but it must be all right if Oprah Winfrey did it in The Butler.
At any rate, the recent revival of Benghazi reminded me of that story, because just as my girlfriend would beat on her arm to keep the evidence fresh, and even make it appear worse than it was, so too do the Republicans keep beating on the Benghazi story, for fear that it will be forgotten by the time Hillary runs for president. Well, I don’t think it will do them much good, even if they beat on the story until it is black and blue. They may get themselves whipped into a frenzy on right-wing radio, but as far as the rest of us are concerned, the Benghazi story is boring.
“Four people died!” they keep saying. And it does make me feel a little bit bad to say that I really don’t care. But 150,000 people die every day, and if the death of each one of them bothered me, I would be a mess. Of course, these were four Americans, who died violently, and so that makes us care more than if they were just foreigners, or if they died from natural causes. After all, we care more about the few thousand American soldiers who died in Iraq than we do about the vastly larger number of Iraqis who died because of that war.
At this point, it might be argued that we should be far more indignant about the thousands of Americans who died in Iraq, owing to malfeasance in the Bush administration, than the four Americans who died in Benghazi, owing to possible negligence in the Obama administration. But the difference here is that whereas the thousands who died in Iraq were soldiers, the four who died in Benghazi were civilians. And as we all know, people value the life of a civilian more highly than the life of a soldier.
Some would say this is because the soldier chose his way of life, but even in the past, when men were drafted against their will, their lives still counted for less once they put on a uniform. Back in those days, it was said that serving was a man’s duty, but that argument can scarcely be used today, for it would be a duty that falls only on a few. In the end, all that talk about choice and duty are just so much rationalization on the part of civilians. The real reason that we care more about civilians than soldiers is that we are the former and not the latter.
This is why terrorism bothers us more than war. War is something soldiers fight in a foreign country; terrorism is something that happens to us civilians here at home. And thus we would gladly sacrifice many soldiers to save a much smaller number of civilians. Moreover, while we proudly send our soldiers to war, possibly to their death, to defend our rights and freedoms, we at home are all too willing to shamelessly sacrifice those same rights and freedoms when we think our own lives might be in peril.
And thus it is that the Republicans suppose that the death of four civilians in Benghazi will inflame the American people in a way that combat deaths in a pointless war did not. But it won’t work, because Benghazi to most us is more like a battlefield than an American city, and the diplomatic personnel more like soldiers than civilians. Just as we know we are not going to enlist, we know we are not going to work for the State Department. We feel safe either way, so we don’t care.
I feel sorry for the Republicans. My girlfriend only had to beat on her arm for a few hours until her mother got home. The Republicans are going to keep pounding away for two more years, and it’s not going to do them any good whatsoever.