Do we care what Al Qaeda is? And do we care who gets guns from the American government? One can’t avoid those questions when reading the responses to David Kirkpatrick’s excellent piece in the Times on the attack on an American diplomatic installation in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. Four Americans died there. Kirkpatrick managed to use shades of gray in his rendition of what happened, which is rare:

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.

In other words, it was the people the Obama Administration judged to be our allies who turned on us—rather than just, predictably, Al Qaeda. Some belonged to groups led by basketball-playing “moderates.” In a rational political environment, the President’s opponents might see this as damning. Instead, Republicans like Darrell Issa and Mike Rogers came out and called it a whitewash, a favor to Hillary Clinton (even though, again, it underscores the flaws in policy decisions she advocated). They were outraged that anyone would call the attackers by a name other than Al Qaeda.

But the world is allowed to be a more complicated place than a congressional hearing, or a “60 Minutes” segment, might suggest. Kirkpatrick, referring to the Obama Administration’s early suggestions that the attack was a spontaneous response to the video, and to the Republicans charge that the President was covering up an Al Qaeda operation, writes,

The investigation by The Times shows that the reality in Benghazi was different, and murkier, than either of those story lines suggests. Benghazi was not infiltrated by Al Qaeda, but nonetheless contained grave local threats to American interests. The attack does not appear to have been meticulously planned, but neither was it spontaneous or without warning signs.

That passage has a level of complexity to it that, for those deeply invested in various theories about Benghazi, just does not compute. Kirkpatrick, in addition to quoting American officials who have seen the security videos and intercepts and other intelligence documents, talks to so many people who were there that night or saw who was—their friends and neighbors. “They’re purely local people,” Kirkpatrick said on “Meet the Press.” “Their pasts are known, their records are known, when they were in prison, who they hung out with in prison, who their associations are.”

Issa, who was also on the show, simply kept asserting that Al Qaeda was involved. Kirkpatrick offered a generous observation:

There is just no chance that this was an Al Qaeda attack if, by Al Qaeda, you mean the organization founded by Osama bin Laden. Now, I’ve tried to understand some of the statements coming out of United States Congress blaming Al Qaeda for this, and the only way that they make sense to me is if you’re using the term Al Qaeda a little differently. If you’re using the term Al Qaeda to describe even a local group of Islamist militants who may dislike democracy or have a grudge against the United States, if you’re going to call anybody like that Al Qaeda, then O.K.

“If you’re going to call anybody like that Al Qaeda, then O.K.,” except that it is not really O.K., or helpful—not if we want to make sense of the world or be safe in it. Turning “Al Qaeda” into a radically loose term is different from observing, correctly, that Al Qaeda today involves decentralized local affiliates. Not every angry Muslim, not even every angry Sunni Muslim, is part of Al Qaeda. Using the name so generically and broadly is a deliberate decision not to understand who our enemies are, or to care—if they don’t like us, they are Al Qaeda, and we can stop listening.

And how, then, are we supposed to know who our friends are? Insisting that any Muslim who attacks us is Al Qaeda also means that, when we are standing around handing out guns to strangers—something we do a little too often—we’ll assume that those who don’t strike us as Al Qaeda types won’t attack us. (This, indeed, is what seems to have happened in Benghazi, according to Kirkpatrick: American diplomats expected that the friendly men who had benefited from our air support and were open to the West would give them a heads-up before any attack.) Re-labelling them as Al Qaeda afterward is not really helpful.

The other problem with calling anyone and anything Al Qaeda is that the term’s real meaning—the terrorist network behind the 9/11 attacks—is used to justify so much. Don’t worry about drone strikes: those are just directed at Al Qaeda. Same with the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay: Do you really want to let people tied to Al Qaeda go? And why object to what the N.S.A. collects and listens to and reads, when they are trying to stop Al Qaeda? But who are the drones hitting, and who are we spying on? Could it be anyone?

Photograph by Mohammad Hannon/AP.