A history lesson for those obsessed with Benghazi

Now that the right-wingers obsessed with the deadly attack in Benghazi are organizing a march on Washington on Inauguration Day, perhaps these potential protesters need to take a step back.

The United States, unfortunately, is a frequent target of hatred and frustration in the Middle East and, for decades, that has led to attacks by militants at our embassies and consulates.

Rice

In Pakistan, where it’s practically a sport among jihadis to attack U.S. installations, political observers are mystified by the Republicans’ all-encompassing focus on Benghazi. One of the top newspapers there, The International News, did some research and came up with this: 44 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities or personnel in the past 52 years.

So, partisan references that equate Benghazi to Watergate and impeachment are ignorant attempts at Obama-bashing by tea party types whose historical/political knowledge dates back to, well, probably about 2006 or 2008.

Certainly, someone in the Obama administration must provide a full timeline of what happened in Benghazi on Sept. 11 and in the weeks before and after. The White House also must explain why, after two previous violent incidents outside the consulate in prior months, more  -- not less -- security was not embedded at the compound.

But to turn the killing of an American ambassador into a political circus aimed at cutting down an anticipated Susan Rice nomination for Secretary of State is not a respectful way to handle an inquiry into the deaths of four Americans. (A discussion this morningbetween GOP senators and Rice, the UN ambassador, apparently did more harm than good.)

The American people deserve answers from an administration that was obviously in hyper-election mode in September when this story broke. Yet, to suggest that Rice should have ignored the intelligence community's talking points and spilled out details, on national TV, in defiance of the CIA is nonsensical.

At some point, the average voter who knows the election is over will realize that the election-time attack in Benghazi was one of several against U.S. sites in September – and probably not the worst in Obama’s first term. At that moment, the Republicans will back off.

Those on the right who keep pushing this issue should give more credence to criticism that similar mistakes and misdeeds by Colin Powell and Susan Rice and Dick Cheney led to the deaths of not just four Americans but 4,486 deaths – in Iraq.

Perhaps the worst attack on a State Department installation during the Obama presidency came in April 2010 when the Pakistani Taliban launched an audacious, early afternoon assault on the U.S. consulate in Peshawar that resulted in seven deaths. The assault consisted of successive car bombs that rocked the heavily secured zone near the consulate, spewing thick plumes of smoke over the area, followed by attacks with rockets, grenades and weapons fire on Pakistani roadblocks. Six heavily armed assailants dressed in military fatigues and traveling in two vehicles attempted to storm the consulate.

The Republican response to that incident?  Nearly nothing.

One particular attack on America’s diplomatic facilities, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in December 2004 demonstrates that assaults on U.S. outposts are not only common, their significance is often down-played or covered up by the State Department and other agencies.

The consulate was supposed to be on high alert due to the U.S. wars being waged against Muslim nations but information obtained by ABC News showed that it took al-Qaida militants about five seconds to break into the facility.

Documents and video obtained by ABC revealed that the attackers took control of the compound, took down the American flag, took five people hostage, including four consulate employees, and killed them all. 

ABC's Brian Ross reported that mere moments after the attack was quelled, the cover-up of that day’s events began.

To this day, the State Department claims that the defense of the Jeddah facility was a success because no American citizens were killed.

"The State Department should have been on alert, should have been on high security standards in Jeddah," former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke said at the time. "The fact that they weren't means that someone wasn't doing their job."

A secret State Department review of the incident, obtained by ABC, found that while security measures met standards, they were "inadequate" to stop the terrorists.

"The implications of that are pretty serious because it means the worldwide standards being used to secure our hundreds of diplomatic installations aren't good enough," Clarke said.

That ABC report aired in December 2005, one year later -- after the ’04 elections were over and long after the media and the public and the Congress had moved on to other topics of interest.