Charles Krauthammer writing in the Boston herald on the Benghazi attack: “An epic collapse of foreign policy.” Oh dear.

In the week following 9/11/12 something big happened: the collapse of the Cairo Doctrine, the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. It was to reset the very course of post-9/11 America, creating, after the (allegedly) brutal depredations of the Bush years, a profound rapprochement with the Islamic world.

Chuck looked at all this and sneered that the “President must live in a world of his own.” That’s a funny charge coming from a crank who wholly invented the “Cairo Doctrine” at his darkened desk. And made it up it solely for the purpose of ripping his perceived enemy, the President. Feel free to criticize him for your haircut too, Chuck. And good luck getting a decent view of China or France through the lens of Egypt.

Chuck is an angry man with an agenda. Like many other wingnuts this election season, he’s got a plan. He’d like to wipe the President off the political map using this Benghazi tragedy.

The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaeda is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan.

The administration, staggered and confused, blames it all on a 14-minute trailer for a film no one has seen and may not even exist.

But he’s an idiot. Look at this picture of people in Lebanon protesting that non-existent scapegoat film:

Half a million citizens, buddy. Much as it hurts the Chucks to admit it, regular old peace-loving Muslims across the world have been insulted by the “Innocence of Muslims” clip. And one Muslim-bashing American is to blame for it all.

Why point this out? Because yesterday the wingnuts sought to turn the same Islamophobia to their own larger aims. Republicans held a congressional grandstander for the purposes of scoring cheap political points during an election. They sought to call the reaction to Benghazi a cover-up, as if the administration’s original thinking that the attack resulted from the protests was corrupt politics. It couldn’t be a mistake, they swore to themselves, and everyone else. Obama loves the Muslims too dangerously much.

So they gaveled a snipe hunt. They sought to tie Obama to Al Qaeda through an appeasement foreign policy. The President compromised national security by being nice to Muslims, they’d say, and now people are dead. But look what happened:

Through their outbursts, cryptic language and boneheaded questioning of State Department officials, the committee members left little doubt that one of the two compounds at which the Americans were killed, described by the administration as a “consulate” and a nearby “annex,” was a CIA base.

They exposed a CIA installation.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was the first to unmask the spooks. “Point of order! Point of order!” he called out as a State Department security official, seated in front of an aerial photo of the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, described the chaotic night of the attack. “We’re getting into classified issues that deal with sources and methods that would be totally inappropriate in an open forum such as this.”

Thank you Rep. Chaffetz.

A State Department official assured him that the material was “entirely unclassified” and that the photo was from a commercial satellite. “I totally object to the use of that photo,” Chaffetz continued. He went on to say that “I was told specifically while I was in Libya I could not and should not ever talk about what you’re showing here today.”

When you freak out over a routine photo of an American installation, you give up the game. The hanging party so worried about national security compromised the country’s national security.