Republicans can't make hay on Libya
The Obama administration has, as they say, a lot of 'splaining to do over the mounting evidence that they both bungled security at the Benghazi consulate and subsequently played fast-and-loose with the truth of the terrorist attack that killed four Americans there.
One reason, we're told, that the Obama administration has been evasive over the Benghazi attack is that they wished to preserve the image of Libya as a success story - a low cost, bloodless (for America) intervention that deposed a long-despised dictator. If it was revealed that post-war Libya remained chaotic and home to militants sympathetic to al-Qaeda, the entire enterprise would look more dubious. At a minimum, it would be much harder to point to Libya as an unmitigated U.S. success.
But while Republicans have every right to seize on the administration's dissembling, it's very hard for me to find a foreign policy criticism here, outside of banal ones (i.e. that U.S. facilities overseas need better security and that public officials shouldn't lie). Many Republicans - and conservative commentators - supported the intervention in Libya. Moreover, if the GOP platform and Mitt Romney's foreign policy statements are to be believed, Republicans believe Washington needs to be engaged in more direct attacks and subversion of countries in the Mideast.
In other words, if you think the aftermath of the Libyan intervention has been bad for U.S. interests, the Republican answer is to replicate it in more countries.
(AP Photo)
