The attempt to make Libya an issue is embarrassing Romney supporters
As noted earlier, there are several legitimate criticisms to be made about how the Obama administration responded to requests for security at the Benghazi consulate and how it responded to the aftermath of the attack. It's perfectly fair - indeed, responsible - to question the administration's competence on Libya and indeed, to question the wisdom of the U.S. intervention in the country in the first place.
Yet Romney partisans appear eager to draw a broader lesson. Here's K.T. McFarland:
'But the real problem isnâ??t the intelligence failures, or security lapses or even the cover up. Itâ??s the policy. Al Qaeda is NOT â??on its heels,â? as President Obama claimed at the Democratic Convention just five days before the Benghazi attack. Al Qaeda is larger and stronger than ever, and has moved into whole new regions in North Africa and the Middle East. The Benghazi attack was only the beginning.Al Qaedaâ??s trademark is to have an escalating series of attacks until they are stopped in their tracks. They watch to see our reaction after each attack and, if we fail to retaliate, they do something even bolder the next time.
'
This is demonstrably untrue. Al-Qaeda's "trademark" is to strike at targets when the opportunities and their capabilities allow. Following the 9/11 attack, the U.S. struck back about as hard as possible against the group in Afghanistan and yet attacks followed in Madrid, Bali and the UK, not to mention the stream of al-Qaeda linked violence in Iraq and the various foiled plots ever since the U.S. war began in Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda doesn't voluntarily stop in its tracks for fear of American reprisals - it is stopped in its tracks by good counter-terrorism (be it drones or police work).
McFarland then digs a deeper hole:
'Compare that to Ronald Reaganâ??s reaction when Col. Qaddafi bombed a Berlin nightclub frequented by American servicemen in 1986. American soldiers were died and injured as a result. Reaganâ??s reaction? He bombed Qaddafiâ??s compound a week later. Qaddafi escaped injury, but he got the point. Donâ??t mess with America.'
The big difference here is that al-Qaeda is not a state or ruling regime with fixed assets to defend. Qaddafi "got the message" because he had an interest in living and retaining power. He had, as they say, "a return address." The same message cannot be delivered to a transnational terrorist organization that rules only tiny patches of territory in lawless states.
This is pretty obvious stuff.
The relative strength of al-Qaeda is hard to judge: groups sympathetic to them may be operating in more countries now, but do they have the capacity to pull of another 9/11? Maybe they do - and that would certainly be a damning failure of Obama's counter-terrorism policy - but McFarland hasn't come close to making that case.
UPDATE: Jeffrey Goldberg is making sense:
'The embarrassment of the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi is not that it happened. America has its victories against terrorism, and its defeats, and the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American security personnel represents one defeat in a long war. The embarrassment is that political culture in America is such that we can't have an adult conversation about the lessons of Benghazi, a conversation that would focus more on understanding al Qaeda affiliates in North Africa, on the limitations and imperfections of security, and on shortfalls in our intelligence gathering, than on who said what when in the Rose Garden. '
Seriously.