MEADVILLE — Just how scandalous is the Benghazi attack? On Sept. 11, U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Republicans claim that President Barack Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, in the midst of the president’s re-election fight, tried to cover up terrorist complicity in the attack. Democrats say the GOP is trying to take tragedy and create an overblown scandal with it.

What’s at stake in the debate over Benghazi? Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, debate the issue.



MATHIS:

What happened in Benghazi was a tragedy. But it’s not a scandal, despite GOP attempts to hype it as such.

Remember: While the consulate was still burning, Mitt Romney’s campaign sent out a statement suggesting that the Obama administration’s first instinct was “to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

It was an execrable lie, and Romney, it was reported after the election, soon realized he’d made a mistake. “We screwed up, guys,” Romney told his staff that day. “This is not good.”

So the criticism evolved. Remember Romney’s charge that Obama had refused to call the Benghazi attack an act of terrorism?

Except that the president had described the attack in just those terms, during his first public White House appearance to discuss the situation. Romney was corrected on the matter during the second presidential debate by moderator Candy Crowley, and never really got his mojo back after that.

So the criticism has evolved, again. Now Republicans say the real problem is that Rice went on TV the weekend after the attacks and described them as a response to an anti-Islam video that had been produced in America.

Turns out, the story was more complicated than that: terrorists were targeting the consulate before the video came into play. But Rice didn’t know that: She was working off “talking points” provided by the CIA, which thought, at the time, that they were correct. When the known facts changed, so did the administration’s story.

If there’s a scandal here, it’s that Republicans have been so eager to gin up a scandal that they’ve been unwilling to let the facts emerge -- instead, cynically waving Ambassador Stevens’ bloody shirt from the start to raise outrage against a president they believe should’ve lost the election.

Benghazi was a tragedy. The GOP’s response? More like farce.



BOYCHUK:

Benghazi wasn’t a tragedy. It was a crime and an act of terrorism against the United States that Obama and his surrogates originally tried to blame on a YouTube video. Understanding what happened and why is important.

Four State Department employees are dead, including the first U.S. ambassador to be killed on the job since the Jimmy Carter era, and all the Obama administration and most of the media can do is scold Republicans for asking too many questions.

How best to explain the remarkable lack of curiosity from Democrats over the Benghazi attacks? It’s certainly odd to hear people such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sound so adamant in his opposition to a congressional investigation.

Reid struck a much different tone over an arguably far less significant Washington “scandal” that captured the national media’s imaginations for months in 2007: the Bush administration’s dismissal of seven U.S. attorneys.

Never mind that U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president.

The firings were “political.” The ensuing chorus of outrage from Congress and the press led Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign on Aug. 27, 2007.

Reid wasn’t satisfied. “This resignation is not the end of the story,” he said. “Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House.”

The facts led nowhere in particular in 2007. The entire congressional investigation was a political dog and pony show intended only to embarrass the White House. And double standards are nothing new in Washington.

Would an investigation of the Obama administration’s response to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi be different? Maybe not. Is the question of whether the White House shaped its talking points to fit a campaign agenda beyond the pale simply because the election is over? Will the CIA and the State Department ever get their stories straight? Who gave that “stand down” order anyway? We may never know.

Will the media ever rediscover their curiosity? Definitely -- just as soon as another Republican is elected president. What a pity.



(Ben Boychuk is associate editor of the Manhattan Institute’ s City Journal. Joel Mathis is a writer in Philadelphia. Email bboychuk@city-journal.org or joelmmathis@gmail.com.