On the subject of Benghazi, Jennifer Rubin has really gone a bit manic:
This is a full-blown scandal.... The scandal has now enveloped the Oval Office and will define his second term, if not resolved satisfactorily.She really believes that. Budget battles, the full implementation of Obamacare, other ongoing and unfolding conflicts in the Middle East, the avoidance of a second recession, the struggles of Europe, the rise of China -- none of that is going to define Obama's second term. Rubin actually believes that a couple of weeks' worth of less-than-accurate messaging, in response to four U.S. deaths -- after thousands of Americans have died overseas for the lies of the Bush administration -- is going to define this Obama term. She's nuts.
And here's the irony: she and her ideological soul mates are trying (vainly) to turn this into a scandal by doing the exact opposite of what their side did throughout the Bush years.
Do you remember? Back then, American targets were attacked by Al Qaeda -- and the Bush administration responded, with the unwavering support of wingers like Rubin, by going after Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11 and wasn't working with Al Qaeda.
At that time, right-wing propagandists struggled to make sure that Americans didn't distinguish between one set of Muslim enemies and another. Saddam? Osama? What's the difference? Throughout his presidency, George W. Bush gave one speech after another in which all the Muslims who'd ever looked at America crosswise were described with one singular noun: "the enemy."
As a result, Americans who weren't well versed in the group distinctions in the Muslim world were kept ignorant. They were all alike! They all hate us!
And now we've had an attack in Benghazi that was first characterized as the work of religious zealots angry at a video they thought was blasphemous, but that was actually the work of Al Qaeda-sympathizing terrorists -- and the right wants the American public to be upset at the notion that the administration initially advanced the former story when the latter was true. Righties, you helped make the American people incapable of distinguishing between one group of Muslim opponents and another. Now you want outrage based on the kinds of categorical distinctions you didn't want Americans to be able to make a decade ago?
Well, that's too bad. You relied on ignorance, and you can't expect to reverse it when it suits you.
