Benghazi and the Search for Worthy Opponents

The New York Times last week published a new account of the Benghazi attack, based on interviews with Libyan participants and witnesses and U.S. officials, which disputes the now widely accepted assumptions that the attack was planned well in advance by al-Qa’ida or one of its affiliates and that the infamous online video “Innocence of the Muslims” had nothing to do with it. This, of course, has raised a wave of accusations that the article is false and politically motivated. The persistence of this controversy naturally raises the question of why people adhere to it so intensely. I suspect it is a need to find opponents worthy of us.

There are two basic aspects to the Benghazi controversy. One concerns whether security provisions had been adequate and whether more could have been done to save the people under attack. This is a valid line of questioning that has already led to changes in the way security is handled. Many people have manipulated the issue in order to make political attacks, but at least there is an issue here.

The renewed discussion, however, relates to the other part of the controversy, Ambassador Susan Rice’s statements on several TV interview shows based on official talking points. The basic charge is that she manipulated the truth for political purposes in the run-up to an election. Even if this were true, it amounts to no more than what her accusers have been doing ever since. (It’s often called “spinning the news.”) Yet it is not true. The internal emails relating to the development of the talking points show no intent to deceive whatsoever, and she was not involved in writing them in any event. Yet charges continue to be made, with no real discussion as to what would make the charges important if they were true.

The talking points stressed that the attack had started as a spontaneous response to a video considered blasphemous by devout Muslims, and that armed extremists had then joined in the attack. Analysts probably believed this to be the case because there had been about 20 other spontaneous anti-American attacks, riots, and demonstrations around the Muslim world in response to that video and because, according to the Times, the attackers (or someone) spread the rumor that the Americans at the Benghazi compound had shot a demonstrator (a rumor presumably intended to rile up local residents).

The critics also accuse Rice, or the administration, of intentionally removing references to al-Qa’ida from the talking points (even though Rice actually said al-Qa’ida could have been involved, but we don’t know yet). In fact references to al-Qa’ida were removed at the request of the FBI so as not to contaminate its investigation of the incident and because it was not known for sure that al-Qa’ida was involved. The critics also claim that references to CIA reports of earlier incidents in Benghazi were removed in order to hide the fact that the State Department had been warned. However, CIA acting director Mike Morell said that they were removed precisely because they gave a false impression that warnings had been given. The references were merely to reports of what had happened, not to warnings of what might come. The State Department already knew about the incidents because the Benghazi post itself had reported on them, which we know from documents released soon after the attack by the House Oversight Committee.

So now comes the new report from the Times. It depicts a small-scale attack carried out by a number of local extremists, who were then joined by mobs incensed both by the Internet video and by the rumor that the Americans had shot a Libyan demonstrator. So the order of events was the opposite of what was originally assumed: the attack came first and the more spontaneous element, the mob violence, followed and partially coincided. Nevertheless, there was a large element of mob violence, and the report suggests that the mob violence was actually responsible for most of the damage, probably including the fire that killed the ambassador. The individual now sought as the leader, or one of the leaders, of the attack has no known connection to al-Qa’ida, to al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb, or even to Ansar al-Shari’ah; he is basically a freelancer with a couple dozen young followers. Trucks bearing the logo of Ansar al-Shari’ah were present at the attack, but so were trucks with the logos of virtually every other militia in Benghazi. Far from being the last word on the issue, the article really offers no information as to when the attack was planned, how much planning there was, or how many individuals or organizations were involved in the planning. (The one key suspect is a suspect because he was seen giving orders at the site.) Still, although there may have been substantial planning, it appears that nothing happened that would have required it. It is perfectly possible that even the initial attack was motivated by the video or the video-inspired demonstrations that occurred in Cairo earlier that day.

As I said, the article had triggered a new round of accusations. Several people have denounced it as false and politically motivated. More significantly, two members of the House Intelligence Committee, a Republican and a Democrat, have asserted that there is evidence that al-Qa’ida was involved. Given the nature of the issue, naturally, they are not at liberty to discuss that evidence. From what little they and others have said, however, I get the impression that it is little more than the presence of people who had earlier attended training camps sponsored by Ayman al-Zawahiri. While that can be considered a connection, it hardly proves anything about the decision making or planning that led to the attack. Perhaps more on that will come out later.

For the most part, a set of people have convinced themselves of a certain theory of what must have happened—a narrative that never really had any substantial backing—and refuse to back away from it. There is little or no discussion of why the controversy matters other than the assertion that someone lied to the American people, which really is not true. Part of the explanation is surely the search for partisan advantage, and I think you will find that Republicans put much more faith in the al-Qa’ida-based theories than Democrats do. It was with that in mind that I expected the controversy to fade away after the 2012 election, but that did not happen.

An additional support for the conspiracy theories may be the psychological role that they play. Robert Jervis, a political scientist who has specialized in the psychological aspects of decision making, commented years ago that, “people believe that big events must be explained by big underlying causes.” A video on the internet is not a big underlying cause, so how could it possibly be responsible for an attack on an American diplomatic facility on the anniversary of 9/11 during a presidential election campaign? (People who dismiss the significance of the video constantly stress its low quality, as if that reinforces the argument.) This was a highly visible American defeat, and so it must be the result of a devious and well-planned operation by a correspondingly significant villain.

That psychological phenomenon may be reinforced by a sort of Manichaean dichotomy: it must be one thing or the other, it cannot be both. The attack was a big event and it was on the anniversary of 9/11 (never mind that 9/11 is an American obsession, not a Libyan one), so it must have been the work of al-Qa’ida. If it was an act of al-Qa’ida, it must have been planned months in advance because that is what al-Qa’ida does, that is what they did on 9/11. If it was planned months in advance, then the cheap video certainly could not have had anything to do with it. Domestically, any reference to the video or to spontaneity must be some sort of deception by the administration intended to cover up something sinister. Before you know it, even people sympathetic to the administration are saying, “We used to think the video played a role, but now we know it was a terrorist attack.” Yet there is no reason that both cannot be true. A terrorist attack can be opportunistic and can be carried out by “nobodies.” Muslim extremists can be motivated by blasphemy. There has never been any evidence, any “discovery,” that the video did not play a role. (On the contrary, there were eyewitness reports from the beginning that attackers cited the video.) The video just came to appear too frivolous to be the cause of a big event. There is little or no evidence that al-Qa’ida or any of its affiliates played a role, but that is the only sufficiently worthy opponent available.