Terrorism as Therapy

[Geee]

National Review:

One common theme emerges from the hearings over the Benghazi disaster: The Obama administration is intent on downplaying the Islamic roots of terrorists who harbor an existential hatred of the West.

The killing of Osama bin Laden was supposed to have cut the hideous head off a mutant snake. His death officially destroyed the “core” of the aberrant al-Qaeda. The removal from power of the outlier Qaddafi was likewise to have put an end to the artificial obstacle to the natural evolution toward democracy in Libya. In those regards, an al-Qaeda–inspired, pre-planned hit on the American consulate, resulting perhaps in a full-fledged Mogadishu-like shootout, just was not in the administration’s pre-election cards. No one was disposed either to beef up security in the face of escalating threats, or to send in teams in extremis to save the besieged Americans, or to give an honest appraisal afterward of what had transpired.

Meanwhile, the opportunity to blame the entire mess on an easily caricatured right-wing Christian Islamophobe crackpot was too tempting — as Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, and the president himself found as they serially damned the suddenly-to-be-imprisoned Mr. Nakoula. He was a con artist, but not the provocateur of the Benghazi violence — and yet he proved a perfect vehicle for showcasing the administration’s multicultural bona fides. In terms of explaining away the lapses in Benghazi, the challenge arose of how many ways top officials could damn the unfortunate Mr. Nakoula — as if each denunciation made it unnecessary to utter the word “terrorism” or “al-Qaeda.”

[Valin]

National Review:

One common theme emerges from the hearings over the Benghazi disaster: The Obama administration is intent on downplaying the Islamic roots of terrorists who harbor an existential hatred of the West.