Recently, there has been much hoopla over the September 11th, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya which resulted in the death of four people, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. As hearings after hearings on Capitol Hill continue to provide ample evidence that the Obama Administration did not take the security of the embassy seriously and did not allow the embassy to protect itself, more and more Americans are becoming angry over the Benghazi incident. The group of Americans most angry over the Benghazi attack are the Neoconservatives. They continually criticize the Obama Administration's actions during the attack on Benghazi, which they perceive to be proof that President Obama is not willing to defend "American interests" (which is a Neoconservative code-word for the interests of the U.S. government) and that he is a "Neo-Isolationist" (if only!!).
The Neoconservatives continue to beat this horse because it seems that the Neoconservatives are dissatisfied that President Obama is not warmongering enough for them. It appears that the Neoconservatives will continue to harp about the Benghazi attack until the American people get angry enough to throw President Obama out and put a much more "suitable" candidate in his place.
Unfortunately, the real issue at hand that should be discussed in relation to the Benghazi attack will not be discuss because the implications would be too politically harmful to the Washington elite: blowback. The attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi was the unintended consequences of American interventionism into Libya when the U.S. government launched an air war against that country. Ron Paul summarizes the point succinctly as follows:
Neither side wants to talk about the real lesson of Benghazi: interventionism always carries with it unintended consequences. The US attack on Libya led to the unleashing of Islamist radicals in Libya. These radicals have destroyed the country, murdered thousands, and killed the US ambassador. Some of these then turned their attention to Mali which required another intervention by the US and France.
Previously secure weapons in Libya flooded the region after the US attack, with many of them going to Islamist radicals who make up the majority of those fighting to overthrow the government in Syria. The US government has intervened in the Syrian conflict on behalf of the same rebels it assisted in the Libya conflict, likely helping with the weapons transfers. With word out that these rebels are mostly affiliated with al Qaeda, the US is now intervening to persuade some factions of the Syrian rebels to kill other factions before completing the task of ousting the Syrian government. It is the dizzying cycle of interventionism.
The real lesson of Benghazi will not be learned because neither Republicans nor Democrats want to hear it. But it is our interventionist foreign policy and its unintended consequences that have created these problems, including the attack and murder of Ambassador Stevens. The disputed talking points and White House whitewashing are just a sideshow.
