The Obama team’s bumbling response to the fatal Benghazi attack is threatening to obscure the president’s lone success in an otherwise dismal Mideast record.
Tuesday’s debate won’t be the last word on Benghazi-gate; the administration’s month-long reaction to the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attack has been so puzzling that the topic is sure to dominate next Monday’s debate on foreign policy.
Too bad.
Libya stood out as a positive exception to Obama’s otherwise-unsteady handling of two-plus years of turmoil in the world’s most volatile region.
It started when Iranians rose up in 2009: Obama was so enamored with the idea of negotiations with the regime that he missed a golden opportunity to help overthrow the ayatollahs, or at least prove that America always sides with democracy-lovers.
Then, when Tunisia erupted in December 2010 and the uprising spread to Egypt and elsewhere, Obama’s wavering managed to lose respect for America among street rebels and supporters of US-allied strongmen.
In Syria, Obama has allowed a bloodbath to fester for 18 months and 33,000 deaths. He’s given us the occasional words, but never a coherent plan of action to help end the human catastrophe and advance America’s regional interests in the process.
But not in Libya.
Nothing is more telling than the way America-loving citizens flooded Libyan streets in the aftermath of the Benghazi assault.
Our ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, returned from a Libya trip shortly before the Sept. 11attack, proudly telling diplomats and reporters of advances in Libya’s democratization process and describing the warmth with which she was welcomed there.
She’d been an architect of Obama’s successful involvement in the overthrow of Moammar Khadafy. Watching one Libyan diplomat after another turn on the Libyan dictator, she saw an opening.
Yes, European and Arab diplomats mostly wrote the UN resolutions that authorized NATO to intervene, but Rice helped by twisting an arm here, coaxing a fence-sitter there.
More important, she prevailed over other Obama advisers, helping convince the president to engage in the Libyan battle.
The strategy Obama settled on was designed to involve America just enough to help push the dictator out (and gain the sympathy of the rebels in the process), while making sure that no American returned home in a body bag.
In hindsight, it was a slam dunk for the global consensus-seeking Obama: Unlike, say, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, who’s backed by strong allies (Russia, Iran), friendless Khadafy was universally hated in the region and beyond, making it easy to “unite the world” behind his overthrow.
And it worked. A year later, Libyans are by and large grateful to America, as Rice witnessed.
But all this success earned Rice the dubious privilege of representing the administration on five Sunday morning TV shows on Sept. 16, five days after the Benghazi attack.
Oops.
Yesterday, much of the post-debate analysis focused on Rice’s contention on those shows that the attack stemmed from a “spontaneous” reaction to that anti-Islam video. Her TV interviews served as Exhibit A in refuting Obama’s contention that he’d told the nation right from the start thatthe Sept. 11 attack was a terrorist act.
Too bad for Rice. She’s now at risk of being forever remembered, unfairly, as just the one who spread the “it was the video” myth.
AndBenghaziwasbungled,regardless of Obama’s escape on the issue Tuesday.
Washington had bizarrely ignored calls for added protection of the US consulate even after all other Westerners left Benghazi for fear of terrorism. And the administration’s story about how the attack unfolded has changed much too often.
But then, Obama’s Benghazi reaction was more of a piece with his largely failed Mideast policy than was his successful approach to Libya’s uprising.
Let’s pray Benghazi won’t embolden advocates, in both parties, of a wholesale US retreat from the region.
Twitter: @bennyavni