Thread by @MollyMcKew

A short thread on perspective on Trey Gowdy:

Keep hearing phrase "let's remember that Gowdy is a skilled litigator."

In fact, Gowdy hopelessly bungled a sure victory against the Obama administration in the Benghazi hearings.

Let me explain. It's important in context of now /1

The Benghazi hearings were ridiculous farce because they focused on a tactical political objective (maligning a longtime opponent/bogeyman) instead of evaluating the real failures in Benghazi.

The Rs totally fell down on this.

What do I mean? /2

There was one real issue we needed to publicly address on Benghazi.

We have a deal with our guys -- with every man and woman who puts on a US uniform or volunteers for service in defense of American interests abroad in civilian or other capacity. /3

It's a very simple deal:

We're coming to get you. Even if sh*t goes totally sideways, we'll come and get you. You might be lost or a prisoner or injured or dead, and it might be a totally disproportionate use of resources. But we're going to bring you home. /4

That's it.

This applies to soldiers and diplomats and intelligence officers -- but especially to combat/conflict environments.

This is the most fundamental deal that allows those who choose to serve to act as they need to in impossible situations. Someone will come. /5

In Benghazi -- nobody came.

Americans returned fire for 5 hours believing someone was coming for them -- and we never even put a plane in the air.

The depth of this failure is so hard to describe. That it was never addressed by either party meant the damage remains. /6

There was a special forces team sitting on a plane in Italy waiting for orders. The orders never came. Every special operator knows this story. They could have done something. The orders never came.

There were other assets waiting for orders that never came. Those stories too./7

I am not minimizing the complexity and opacity of events in Benghazi as they unfolded.

But if you're one of the people who counts on the deal, you knew it was broken that day.

Returned fire for 5 hours. Nobody was coming. Nobody was ever coming. /8

The administration never admitted to this deficit. And certainly the "what does it matter anyway" clip that came out of the testimony and ran on an endless loop didn't make that any better. /9

The perception was they didn't get the deal -- an offshoot of the perception that they didn't get what it meant to fight.

You can argue this is based on right or wrong information, or was totally partisan. But the perspective was real. They broke the deal. /10

Similarly, the investigation didn't care about that at all. Gowdy didn't know about, or care about, the deal -- he only cared about a political agenda.

This was an appalling failure. Because it didn't expose the real failures of the day. /11

It didn't repair any of the rift that had formed. The distrust that had formed. The sense that this deal was broken.

To me, this was the most important issue. Repair.

Gowdy inflamed. This weakened us and what we need to be confidently in the world doing impossible things. /12

The Benghazi hearings achieved the opposite of what was needed. No reassurance. No repair. No rebuilding of confidence. No renewal of the deal.

Keep this in mind with off-hand praise statements about Gowdy. He didn't get it. Because he couldn't see it. He still can't. /13

The damage done from the hearings -
- in terms of divisiveness & the cartoonization of devastatingly important issues for political newsreels
- in terms of the disruption of foreign policy
- in terms of deepening a quiet crisis most people never see

- that's on Gowdy /14

Regardless the origins of that crisis -- it was the Republican-led hearings that totally, completely failed to address any of the underlying concerns and issues that the guys waiting on the plane and all the guys who know the guys waiting on the plane still talk about. /15

Benghazi was a devastating event, and impacted the mentality of all who serve the United States, civilian and soldier. The hearings did nothing to dig out of it. They made it all worse. /16

So that's the context. Just keep it in mind. /17