By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com
John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com
INDIANAPOLIS – Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives want to investigate, yet again, September 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
A Hoosier – Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Indiana – will be among those doing the investigating. She’s supposed to bring “fresh eyes†to the work.
Commentary button in JPG – no shadowDemocrats have howled that the investigation, the eighth to be conducted on the Benghazi attacks, is nothing more than a partisan witch hunt designed to embarrass President Barack Obama and hinder former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s likely 2016 presidential candidacy.
There is justice to the Democrats’ complaint, but it’s also beside the point. They should embrace the opportunity to establish a model for the way attacks on U.S. citizens should be studied.
The truth is that the U.S. government, whether in Republican or Democratic hands, often has behaved shamefully when it comes to investigating deadly attacks on Americans.
Sometimes the efforts to suppress scrutiny are harsh.
When Richard Clarke, former U.S. anti-terrorism czar, argued that George W. Bush and his advisors had paid insufficient attention to national security warnings about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in the weeks before Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration and its Republican allies in Congress – including many people now demanding a thorough airing of the facts surrounding the Benghazi attack – responded in savage fashion. They accused Clarke of being a partisan. They questioned his patriotism. And they attacked both his honesty and his sanity.
They cared more about protecting “their†president than they did about getting at the truth about an attack that claimed American lives.
Sometimes the efforts to suppress scrutiny are done to gain a political advantage.
When homegrown terrorists turned a rental truck into a bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995 and killed 168 men, women and children, President Bill Clinton saw an opportunity to discredit House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia, and Republicans in general by linking the GOP-backed shutdown of the federal government and the bombers’ anti-government ranting. It helped Clinton gain the upper hand in his political battle with Gingrich, but also made it more difficult to find out how many people might have helped the bombers plan the attack. Democrats supported Clinton’s efforts because he helped them gain momentum going into the 1996 presidential election.
They, too, cared more about helping “their†president than they did about getting at the truth about an attack that claimed American lives.
And sometimes the efforts to suppress scrutiny are done just to avoid embarrassment.
In 1983, a suicide bomber driving a truck loaded with explosives attacked barracks housing U.S. service personnel in Beirut. The attack claimed the lives of 241 U.S. Marines, sailors and soldiers. President Ronald Reagan sent the Marines to Lebanon as part of a peacekeeping mission but gave them orders to avoid conflict. After the attack, Reagan proclaimed that he accepted sole responsibility. Critics argued that he did so to avoid a thorough investigation of the attack. Preliminary fact-finding indicated that, among other things, the orders to avoid conflict produced security procedures that were so lax that guards didn’t even carry loaded weapons in a war zone. Republicans at the time rallied around Reagan, who was up for re-election in 1984.
Again, they cared more about supporting “their†president than they did about getting at the truth about an attack that claimed American lives.
Maybe the investigation of the attack on the embassy in Benghazi has partisan motivations. Maybe nothing more can be learned by taking another look at what happened with “fresh eyes.â€
But the fact is that American lives were lost. In such cases, we owe a duty to those who died, their loved ones and ourselves to determine what happened and what we might do to avoid such tragedies in the future.
When our fellow citizens get killed, we stop being Republicans and Democrats and we become simply Americans.
Or at least that’s what we should do.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits†WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
