Kerry On Benghazi Scandal: Whatever

Sometimes the partisan split in the US is so deep and vast it seems as if two alternate realities coexist, destined never to commingle. Today’s principal example is the massive political terrain that separates the congressional House from the White House on the issue of the Benghazi scandal, the former moved by a sense of grand exigency and the latter dismissively casual.

Let’s contrast the two positions more articulately. The House just released a damning report of the Obama’s administration’s stewardship of the Benghazi debacle, accusing it of a systemic dearth of leadership and outright mendacity. Also, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is now in private consultation with an undisclosed number of whistleblowers apparently eager to offer up information on the embassy attacks that either contradicts the Obama administration’s narrative or charges it with egregious incompetence.

On the other side of the political divide (or universe), John Kerry recently declared:

“Let’s figure out what it is that’s missing, if it’s legitimate or if it isn’t. I don’t think anybody lied to anybody. And let’s find out exactly, together, what happened, because we need — we got a lot more important things to move on to and get done.”

What could be more important than scrupulously investigating the premeditated murder of American diplomats on what counts on American soil? Or the failure of the State Department to safeguard its diplomats in the face of an obviously gathering threat? Or the jarring possibility that a presidential administration lied about its ineptitude to secure political gain during a contentious election season?

Kerry’s cavalier disinterest is reminiscent of Hilary Clinton’s own incorrigible evasiveness. Her testimony was a messy yarn of half-confession, feigned displays of accountability and transparent misdirection. When Sen. Robert Johnson observed that her office’s steady stream of obfuscation created confusion, she tellingly responded, “What difference does it make?” She insisted, by turns, that all was handled by an internal investigation; that she was responsible but not really responsible; that she always maintained but also sometimes denied it was a terrorist attack; and that she was fully in charge but made very few of the now famously imprudent decisions. She finally resorted to the rhetorical sanctuary of the culpable but unrepentant: Wouldn’t it be more productive if we just moved on?

Patience is a virtue but in this case, and at this stage, only a saint could claim it. The sole report issued by the congressional review board so far managed to cite “systemic failures in leadership”, ‘profoundly weak security”, and “a lack of proactive senior leadership” but also disconnected its criticisms from any specific assignment of blame. There were shameful crimes committed but no real criminals. All that was left was a meandering expression of consternation and a mild guffaw of unconvincing indignation.

Of course, the media has been complicit in the willful suppression of one of the major political scandals of the last generation, treating it like no more than tawdry political gossip. Recall, for a moment, the implacable zeal with which the journalistic class pursued the gauzy rumor, eventually proven to be entirely false, that George Bush may have fudged the record regarding how many test flights he had flown as a military pilot. In that case, no one died. In that case, American national security was not at stake. And that story turned out to be thoroughly false.

Now, we have the stuff that journalistic careers are confected out of, a grand drama so extraordinary it makes sensationalization superfluous. On what objectively non-partisan grounds could a reporter justify not pursuing this drama?

When the day comes when the public can calmly reconsider Bush’s legacy as president, removed from the hostile judgments of a partisan press that disfigured his every move and twisted his every intention, we will likely conclude he was unjustly maligned. Bush made his share of mistakes but the record will probably reflect, at least eventually, his undeniable honorableness.

And one day we may engage in a similar reconsideration of Obama’s tenure, but in reverse, wresting his salient failures away from the adulation of the professionally sycophantic class. Today, at least a fragment of the House, prescient and intrepid, already occupies that future.

For more analysis of the Benghazi scandal from Ivan Kenneally, buy The Benghazi Report: Leading From Behind, Into Decline now available on Amazon.com. This is the first, and still the foremost, statement on the debacle that will define a political generation.

Buy Here!

 

 

 

 

 

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Ivan Kenneally is a writer for Daily Witness.

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