Benghazi

I grew up in a U.S. Foreign Service family. My step-father was a career “FSO” (Foreign Service Officer) and a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force Reserve (having served in WWII with the CIA-precursor, the OSS). My mother was a translator/analyst (Eastern Europe) with the Foreign Service’s umbrella agency, the Department of State. While I spent four and a half years as an FSO-brat in Beirut, my parents were stationed all over the world (then-Bombay, Saigon during the Vietnam War, Antwerp, Beirut, etc.). We all knew the rules. We all knew the risks, even little me as teenaged boy. Serve your country or even just be a dependent of a serving U.S. Foreign Services Officers and know that there are those dedicated to inflict harm on you for political reasons. Keep your eyes and ears open.

I hate that four of our embassy personnel were killed in a disastrous attack last September at our diplomatic installation Benghazi, Libya: Ambassador Chris Stevens, computer specialist Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs hired to help protect them, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.  I was most certainly not happy that the administration officials who reported the attack were muddled, misinformed and inconsistent. The situation could most certainly have been handled better. The confusion was not intentional as the recent release of the relevant emails illustrated. “The 100 pages of e-mails showed a disagreement between David H. Petraeus, then the director of the C.I.A., and his deputy, Michael J. Morell, over how much to disclose in the talking points, which were used by Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, in television appearances days after the attack.

“Mr. Morell, administration officials said, deleted a reference in the draft version of the talking points to C.I.A. warnings of extremist threats in Libya, which State Department officials objected to because they feared it would reflect badly on them… Mr. Morell, officials said, acted on his own and not in response to pressure from the State Department. But when the final draft of the talking points was sent to Mr. Petraeus, he dismissed them, saying ‘Frankly, I’d just as soon not use this,’ adding that the heavily scrubbed account would not satisfy the House Democrat who had requested it.” New York Times, May 15^th.

That Congress was in budget-cutting mode, which had a clear impact on maintaining top security at our diplomatic facilities around the world, that in recent times America has increasingly adopted policies that have generated serious opposition from nations and factions everywhere and that the Libya situation was a focal point for armed insurrection during the Arab Spring are issues that all seem to have fallen by the wayside as partisanship has replaced genuine concern among too many members of our Senate and House of Representatives. A thorough review of the above mass of emails failed to produce the anti-Obama/Hillary Clinton linkage that partisan politics seemed to demand. Mishandled, but no smoking gun.

Look at the chart above, prepared and released by Mother Jones on October 3, 2012, shortly after the attack. According to the Global Terrorism Database compiled by the University of Maryland National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, there were “64 attacks on American diplomatic targets during the George W. Bush administration, including car bombs at the US embassy in Yemen and armed attackers assaulting a US consulate in Saudi Arabia.” A lot higher than attacks during the Obama years. So what?! To try and link such attacks to President Bush’s individual failures is as stupid as trying to pin the four deaths on the carelessness of Barrack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

We should deplore efforts to use governmental agencies to abuse their powers. The IRS scandal is deeply troublesome, and I certainly agree that severe punishment is appropriate for all those involved in approving this assault on conservative political non-profits. I am worried about any attempts to muzzle a free press by compelling revealing underlying sources. But any attempt to find deep “impeachable” fault concerning the Benghazi deaths is a slap in the face to those who died nobly in the service of their nation. People like my mom and dad.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the constant need to politicize when we should be joining forces augurs very badly for the sustainability of the American democracy.