The GOP’s Benghazi hangup is baffling
By Richard Cohen, WashPost, Published: May 12
Tuning the car radio some weeks back, I heard the president denounced as a moron. I was shocked. I had reached some right-wing talker and he was carrying on about something Barack Obama had recently said — that he worries more about a nuclear attack on New York than he does about Russia. The radio guy declared that the president had given terrorists an idea. He apparently forgot that the notion of attacking New York had already occurred to them.
I live in a media bubble, I suppose, and this might account for my otherwise inexplicable innocence. But this is the way the president’s opponents talk. It is rude. It is crude. It is disrespectful and it is downright nuts — but it is not limited to radio talkers. It is the lingua franca of the Republican Party.
I feel about the GOP as I do about the religion of others: I don’t get it. I know feelings can be strong and reason plays little part in it — faith is faith, after all — and this is the way I see the GOP snits about the Internal Revenue Service and, more pertinent, Benghazi. What are these people talking about?
Four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, died in the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya — two from mortar fire and Stevens and another man from smoke inhalation. These deaths are a serious matter, for which bureaucratic blame already has been assessed. No one can possibly think the Obama administration knew the attack was coming and let it happen. There is no proof of that. Similarly, no one can still think the White House put the brakes on a rescue attempt by the U.S. military. Again, there is no proof of that.
(More here.)
Tuning the car radio some weeks back, I heard the president denounced as a moron. I was shocked. I had reached some right-wing talker and he was carrying on about something Barack Obama had recently said — that he worries more about a nuclear attack on New York than he does about Russia. The radio guy declared that the president had given terrorists an idea. He apparently forgot that the notion of attacking New York had already occurred to them.
I live in a media bubble, I suppose, and this might account for my otherwise inexplicable innocence. But this is the way the president’s opponents talk. It is rude. It is crude. It is disrespectful and it is downright nuts — but it is not limited to radio talkers. It is the lingua franca of the Republican Party.
I feel about the GOP as I do about the religion of others: I don’t get it. I know feelings can be strong and reason plays little part in it — faith is faith, after all — and this is the way I see the GOP snits about the Internal Revenue Service and, more pertinent, Benghazi. What are these people talking about?
Four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, died in the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya — two from mortar fire and Stevens and another man from smoke inhalation. These deaths are a serious matter, for which bureaucratic blame already has been assessed. No one can possibly think the Obama administration knew the attack was coming and let it happen. There is no proof of that. Similarly, no one can still think the White House put the brakes on a rescue attempt by the U.S. military. Again, there is no proof of that.
(More here.)
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