Letter: Republican hyper-partisanship harmful to US

In 1983, while Ronald Reagan was president and George Schulz was Secretary of State, radical Islamic terrorists exploded a car bomb that destroyed the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans.

The political fallout in the United States from that attack is instructive.

Although Democrats controlled the Congress back then, they did not instigate three years of congressional hearings on the disaster at Beirut. Democratic leaders did not make Beirut their main talking point for three years after the tragedy.

And unlike this year’s Republicans, who invited a grieving parent to their convention to accuse Clinton of murdering the victims at Benghazi, Democrats did not make Beirut a partisan issue in their 1984 national convention.

Terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts are distressingly frequent. According to Politifact, between 2001 and 2008 under George W. Bush, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, there were more than three dozen such attacks with a death toll of 89.

Instead of stoking partisan fires, Republicans should be devising measures for better protection of our diplomatic facilities and personnel abroad.

Clinton’s emails have provoked more Republican hyper-partisanship. In an unprecedented public pronouncement, the director of the FBI conceded no competent prosecutor would seek an indictment in Clinton’s case, but he then proceeded to denounce her for being extremely careless in using a private email server. He did not mention that her predecessor, Colin Powell, had done the same thing. If the director had indicted Clinton, he would have had to indict Powell too.

This story was originally published July 21, 2016 at 8:03 PM with the headline "Letter: Republican hyper-partisanship harmful to US."