What is Important about the Benghazi Attack?

I previously asserted that structured opposition (organizing and condensing a limitless variety of viewpoints into two ostensibly antagonistic factions) serves to create an illusion of free speech and a "free marketplace of ideas," when, in fact, anything outside of that dichotomous scheme is actively suppressed. Obviously, as a Marxist, my first example is the way in which Marxist arguments are routinely stigmatized and undermined. They are not legitimate in the public sphere.

But this phenomenon has even deeper significance, particularly for the way in which information is transmitted. Each side of the opposition has their own ideological framework, commitments, and a set of talking points, all of which completely determines the treatment of any new information. It reminds me of Mad Libs. The narrative is already set, but new adjectives and nouns can fill in the blanks as the circumstances require.

So, let's look at the Benghazi attack (obviously my ultimate goal with this post). From the beginning, the military intervention in Libya was framed as a humanitarian undertaking, designed to aid an independently thriving grassroots opposition movement. When Gaddafi was captured, the Obama Administration quickly proclaimed that the operation was done - quick and clean. So easy.

Then there's this attack on an embassy in Benghazi, which we are initially told was a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim film. When information gets out that it was actually a planned attack and there is a large CIA base nearby, there is now the potential for probing questions. What is the CIA doing there? What kind of presence have they had in Libya? Why was the embassy attacked? There is, of course, plenty of evidence that the CIA was quite involved, from the beginning, in the Libyan civil war. There is also plenty of evidence that it is currently using this base to transfer weapons to militant groups (particularly to Syrian rebels) and that the embassy was just providing a cover for the operation. The group that coordinated the attack was upset that the CIA merely used them to serve broader geopolitical goals.

All of this information had the potential to explode into the public sphere. This would have initiated discussions about the role of the CIA in organizing rebel groups and fomenting revolution for the ultimate purpose of regime change. Maybe we could have linked all of this information to the current situation in Mali and then voiced our opposition to military incursions in this region.

But what happened was this. The Republican Party wanted to use the cover up to their benefit, without exposing the CIA. No one wants to mess with the CIA. (Plus, the Republican Party has an ideological loyalty to the military-intelligence complex.) So, in their messaging, they decided to bracket all the information about the CIA, still treat the Benghazi embassy as a legitimate embassy under the control of the State Department, and direct all of their criticism toward the way the State Department secured the embassy and responded to the attack. In other words, they framed it as another case of government incompetence (which is a primary Republican ideological narrative). Of course, the Democrats have the same loyalties to the military-intelligence complex, and simply formed their talking points in reaction to the Republican argument.

The result? A debate about security, and honesty, and the State Department, and very little about the CIA. Since both political parties share a key commitment (and are probably completely subservient to the military and intelligence communities) the public conversation about a potentially illuminating event has elided everything that is important for the public to know, instead focusing on the most trivial details.