opinion

Editorial: Move on from Benghazi hearing

Congressman Trey Gowdy should lead his special House committee on Benghazi into quickly wrapping up an investigation that has run for more than a year into what happened before, during and after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the United States consulate in this diplomatic outpost in Libya. The committee’s work has taken on increasingly partisan overtones despite the 4th District congressman pledging last year to steer the committee away from politics and toward a better understanding of the attack that resulted in the death of four Americans including Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi, with former Upstate prosecutor Gowdy as its chairman, came on the scene in May 2014 and began holding hearings a few months later. Gowdy’s committee followed seven other congressional panels that looked into the events surrounding the attack and how the Obama administration portrayed it in the critical weeks leading up to the 2012 elections.

Most of the questions appeared to have been answered more than a year ago, and indeed, the House Select Committee has produced little new information from its investigation that reportedly has cost about $5 million. The committee’s defining moment came Thursday when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had invested much time into showing Libya had become a success story in a chaotic Middle East, was the only witness in a day-long televised hearing.

All but the most partisan Republicans generally agreed that Clinton answered questions in a professional and reassuring manner while Republican committee members resorted to harsh attacks when it became obvious that their efforts would not find a “smoking gun” that would prove misconduct by Clinton. Indeed, the Democratic Party’s leading contender for the 2016 presidential nomination represented herself so well last week that she dramatically improved her standing within her own party and she won begrudging respect from Republicans open to the idea that further investigation into Benghazi is damaging for the country as well as their own political party.

In undeniably “red” congressional districts, voters likely will continue to believe that the attack on the consulate in Benghazi represented more than a serious miscalculation about the growing risk to the U.S. ambassador. They also will not be moved from their conclusion that the Obama administration, along with its secretary of state, misled the American people by pretending an anti-Islamic video inspired what really was a well-coordinated terrorist attack, and that the true nature of the attack was known hours, instead of weeks, after it had occurred.

Short of that unforgiving partisan view, however, many Americans seem willing to accept that the attack that left four Americans dead occurred in an extremely dangerous part of the world where the United States has made deadly mistakes under presidents for more than three decades. Although belatedly, the Obama administration and its secretary of state at the time have taken responsibility for what occurred in Benghazi and more truthfully portrayed the circumstances during and after the attack.

There are lessons to learn from the deadly attack in Benghazi. This president and the next one should work to better protect vulnerable Americans doing their nation’s business in dangerous areas of the world.

Those not blinded by partisan politics surely remember that few presidents have rushed to the microphone to immediately talk about their mistakes or misjudgments that resulted in foreign policy debacles or Americans deaths. This holds true whether the focus is on the attack on the Marine Barracks in Lebanon, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, or the terrorist attack on American soil on Sept. 11, 2001.

Gowdy’s committee has been forced to defend itself in recent weeks as charges have grown that its work is politically motivated and its purpose is to damage the top Democratic contender for president. The criticism has become sharper after Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, appeared to brag in a television interview about how the committee was hurting Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president.

This editorial page argued in May 2014, when Gowdy’s committee was authorized by a politically divided vote in the House, that most of the questions surrounding the attack in Benghazi had been answered. The only value of the newest committee, we wrote more than a year ago, would be to ensure that significant questions were not left unanswered before the House “finally put to rest the Benghazi issue.” The danger recognized in 2014 was that the committee could turn “into a political sideshow.”

The committee has turned into that political sideshow, and it’s time for it to end its work.