Prior to the attack in Benghazi, Cairo, Egypt was flooded with burning buildings, pillaged streets, and angry mobs responding to the anti-Islamic short film “The innocence of Muslims.” It was later found that the video released possibly could have lead to the eruption of violence in Libya during the time the four U.S. personnel were attacked in Benghazi. On September 18, 2012 the White House released a statement claiming that, “our belief, based on the information we have, is it was the video that caused the unrest in Cairo, and the video and the unrest in Cairo that helped—that precipitated some of the unrest in Benghazi and elsewhere.” However, confusion surrounding the origin of the attack on the U.S. consulate spread rapidly with the absence of conclusive information gathered from these videos. Rising uncertainty among the public fed into the discourse of the events, and subsequently lead to the distrust of key administration officials. This was partly due to the race to give statements on what exactly happened on the night of September 11, 2012.
Vivian Walker from the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy conducted research surrounding the “mismanaged message” of the event. She stated that, “In the immediate aftermath and in the absence of accurate information, White House and State Department statements about the events quickly devolved into a sometimes contradictory series of assertions about the origins of and motivations for the attack. Was it an act of terror?”
The most difficult task in defining terrorism is interpreting the act. To define an attack as an act of terror one must ask if it was premeditated, if there were civilian casualties, if the actors were non-state actors, if it was political in nature of intent, and if it aimed to affect the status quo. These qualifications have surfaced from the many definitions of terrorism. For example, the U.S. Department of State defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically-motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”
Defining an act of terror proved to be one of the biggest hurdles for the Obama Administration at that time, although calling the attack an act of terror was the immediate response from some officials. On September 12th, President Obama implicitly linked the Benghazi attack to terrorism in his statement from the Rose Garden: “The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack…No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation.” In addition, on September 13th, an unnamed senior U.S. official told CNN that the Benghazi violence “was not an innocent mob…this was a clearly planned, military-type attack.”
Though within days following President Obama’s address, U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland shifted the angle of news headlines to indicate that there had been no conclusion stating that the attacks were acts of terror. In an on-the-record press briefing for domestic and foreign journalists she stated that, “We are very cautious about drawing any conclusions with regard to who the perpetrators were, what their motivations were, whether it was premeditated, whether they had any external contacts, whether there was any link, until we have a chance to investigate along with the Libyans.”
And by September 20th, the White House had assured the public once again that the attack was an act of terror. Spokesman Jay Carney stated, “It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Our embassy was attacked violently, and the result was four deaths of American officials” (Walker 17).
The inconsistent responses between the White House and State Department lead the public approval of the Obama administration to drop. A Pew Research poll found that after the May 2013 Congressional hearings on Benghazi, 40% of Americans following the attack in Benghazi felt that the Obama Administration was “dishonest” when providing information (Walker 21).
The mess of media surrounding Benghazi significantly impacted the public’s portrayal of U.S. involvement in foreign affairs. In addition, this incident has lead to the debate on how information should be distributed to the public, or if any information at all should be given depending on the situation. The uncertainty is still present in the U.S. and worldwide as a strong NATO presence penetrated Libya leading up to the attack.
Next time…
Walker, Vivian. (2015). Benghazi: Managing the Message. Retrieved from the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School website: http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/sites/uscpublicdiplomacy.org/files/useruploads/u33041/Benghazi%20-%20FULL%20%281%29.pdf
