For the past eight months, there has been constant outcry coupled with prolonged media attention surrounding the talking points Ambassador Susan Rice used to explain the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Just over the mere talking points.
Well, actually, it isn’t so much the talking points so much as the interpretations therein — polar partisan interpretations, that is. And both parties are ultimately at fault for the massive confusion and political power plays that erupted from the Benghazi scandal.
Republicans are calling the talking points a clear representation of a deliberate and conniving cover-up springing from the very top of the government—perhaps from President Barack Obama himself. Democrats counter that instead the hysteria surrounding the talking points is politically motivated and has no basis in reality.
“The whole issue of talking points, frankly, throughout this process has been a sideshow,” said Obama, clearly irritated. He later went on to proclaim the attention as “politically motivated” and that we dishonor American diplomats “when we turn things like this into a political circus.”
So we have two very different accounts of the story, both on the extreme ends of the spectrum. The erroneous talking points that flowed from the White House after the Benghazi attacks were of either absolutely no importance at all, or of the utmost importance akin to the Watergate scandal.
And as is most often the case with extreme positions, both sides are wrong.
The issue at the heart of this talking points scandal is that for 15 days after the U.S. consulate was attacked and Americans died, the president and his staff misled the American people on who attacked us and what motivated them to do so.
They claimed that it was a spontaneous attack from protestors upset over a video. In reality, the attack on our Benghazi consulate was a premeditated, terrorist attack planned and executed by members of al-Qaeda.
The Obama administration misled us — and this is not up to dispute. However, it does not follow that they knowingly misled us.
Two weeks ago, the White House released a chain of emails that detailed the correspondence between the state department and the CIA regarding the talking points Rice used to inform the American people on exactly what happened in Benghazi.
The emails show that the talking points went through a series of revisions — some quite drastic — before they were finally used. But, crucially, what the emails show is that from the very beginning, the CIA believed the attack was spontaneous and from the result of protests, not terrorism.
The misinformation came through incompetence in the CIA investigation. It was not, unsurprisingly, a result of a massive cover-up by the Obama administration.
But what the president, his administration, and many Democrats have overlooked is that even though it is clear the White House did not knowingly mislead the American people, misleading people through ignorance is still a big problem.
After our nation was attacked by terrorists, our government — from what we can now clearly discern as utter incompetence — continuously gave us wrong information. They told us the attack was spontaneous, a crime of passion, a one-time thing. We had nothing to worry about.
The truth is, we did have something to worry about. We were attacked by terrorists. And the fact that our government took so long to figure this out is not only disgraceful, it’s worrisome.
Obama has taken no responsibility for the misinformation that flowed from his officials after the attack. He has not apologized for the dangerous confusion displayed from our military intelligence. And he has remained vocally apathetic when it comes to figuring out how we can prevent this sort of incident from happening again.
Just as the Republicans have been playing politics as they continuously point fingers in the White House, Obama has been playing politics by refusing to admit that the attention surrounding the Benghazi talking points is a serious matter.
Obama was right to call the Benghazi hysteria a “political circus.” But he fails to understand that he, too, is a major player in this circus of politics, and that both parties are responsible.
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