Benghazi Hearings: What difference does it make?

Today partisanship was on full display as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took to the House and Senate floors to defend her department's handling of the attacks on Benghazi in September of last year. Those attacks took the lives of four Americans including the Libyan ambassador and two CIA agents who allegedly disobeyed orders to get Americans out of harms way. For more information, look here. 

The partisanship in the issue was in how this testimony was handled.

Republicans have attacked both Clinton and Obama for mishandling the affair, for knowingly and recklessly putting Americans in harms way, and for lying to the public about it. They claim that the Obama administration and Clinton's State Department covered up the fact that this was a planned attack meant to target the American embassy on the anniversary of September 11th.

The thing is, right after the attack, Obama and various officials including UN Ambassador Susan Rice claimed the attacks were a spontaneous demonstration emerging from a protest over a YouTube video. They claimed this for weeks afterwards and downplayed the idea that this was a planned terror attack. Those claims lead to accusations by the Republicans of lying to the American public when they knew all along that the attack was planned well in advance and executed in accordance with those plans.

If that was true, Republicans say, then it shows either a gaping hole in American intelligence in the area, a failure to act on gathered intelligence, or blatant disregard for the lives that were lost that day.

When new senator Ron Johnson angrily accused Clinton of misleading the public to cover up the fault of the department, save her own job, or protect Obama in an election year, Clinton angrily replied:

"With all due respect, the fact is that we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?"

The Difference It Makes

The thing is, it really does make a difference. Though the Republicans are largely focused on this ridiculous "cover up" angle, the real difference is in determining why these attacks happened.  

I'm not talking about knowing exactly what the motivation was of those who attacked our embassy. We can guess any number of reasons why Libyans would attack Americans on their soil, and most of those reasons would hold some relevance.

The issue is that if we knew there were planned attacks (and it seems the State Department definitely did), and if we failed to respond adequately or in a timely manner (and it seems that there were multiple failures in communication and deployment of assistance as reinforcements took over 7 hours to arrive), and if similar attacks in the future are handled in a similar way, then we will lose more lives while Congress bickers at each other.

There were very real failures in the Benghazi attacks, and it does make a very big difference if the attacks were the result of a planned militant action against multiple US targets or just a bunch of guys deciding to "go kill some Americans." But using this as an opportunity for political posturing, blame throwing, and conspiracy spinning is beneath even the jokers we elect to make our laws.