Republicans who pushed multiple investigations for years into the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi have nothing to say on the deaths of four soldiers in Niger.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC)(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Republicans who obsessively probed the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi have been silent on the raid authorized by Donald Trump, against military warnings, where four American soldiers were killed in an ambush thought to be led by ISIS.
Of the seven Republicans who were on the Select Committee on Benghazi, five remain: Reps. Susan Brooks of Indiana; Trey Gowdy of South Carolina; Jim Jordan of Ohio; Martha Roby of Alabama; and Peter Roskam of Illinois. Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland has retired, while former Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo now serves as Trump’s duplicitous head of the CIA.
Shareblue Media reviewed media reports, press releases, and tweets from the group, and none of them has spoken about the Niger raid overall, or specifically the deaths of the four soldiers.
Gowdy has not posted a press release since the attack occurred, while his most recent tweet is about race car driver Richard Petty. Jordan praised Trump’s executive order to raise health care costs, while tweeting an opinion piece attacking Democrats on abortion.
Brooks has no mention of Niger in her press releases, and most recently tweeted about opioids. Roby makes no mention of the Niger 4, instead tweeting about “Manufacturing Month.”
Meanwhile, some of their fellow members of Congress have been raising the alarm over the attack.
Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, a family friend of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in the raid, is requesting an investigation into the attack, and told CNN, “This could turn out to be another Benghazi.”
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain has complained that the Trump administration is not being forthcoming with details and has threatened to subpoena them over information that is being blocked.
When the Benghazi committee began in 2014, Gowdy, who served as chairman, laid out four reasons why he said the hearings were necessary:
Our fellow citizens have legitimate and high expectations: (1) They expect us to protect and defend those we send to represent us, (2) They expect us to move heaven and earth to help those representing us who are in harm’s way; (3) They expect government to tell the truth in the aftermath of a tragedy; (4) They expect we will not continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.
The Niger attack is no different as far as what the men who died are owed from America and their elected representatives.
The Benghazi committee was largely an exercise in Republicans attempting to use tax dollars as a way to hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The final report issued by the group showed that many of the thunderous declarations by the right, along with leaks authorized by Gowdy and company, were nonsense, and that the conditions that caused multiple failures on the night of the attack were not neglect and malice by the Obama administration.
But based on their own criteria for why such an investigation should take place, the silence of the Benghazi Republicans has been notable.
There are many open questions and unresolved issues surrounding the attack, including
Why was the mission sent in if the military knew they lacked resources to respond to danger?
Why was Sgt. La David Johnson’s body left behind after the attack?
Why did the patrol receive no warning from intelligence about a possible attack?
Why did the patrol lack air cover?
Why were the bodies evacuated by a private contractor and not the military?
Why did Donald Trump take so long to mention the attack?
Why did Trump scrap the plans for a sympathy statement to the families?
Were he and other members of his administration covering up the attack?
The Benghazi Republicans were very eager to push for a committee when they thought it would hurt Clinton.
But now, when serious questions are being asked about a botched military operation under a Republican president, their silence is deafening, and grossly unpatriotic.