Where
was the President during Benghazi, and who refused to send help?
I
keep asking this question. So far, no answers.
Now,
if you read Senator Lieberman and Collins' report
Flashing Red, there appears to be an
answer to the last half of the question: no one refused to send help. There was no help
to be sent.
According
to the report, AFRICOM, that puzzling and new combat command which has a few problems of its own, has military responsibility
for Libya. Any assets to be scrambled would come from AFRICOM inventory. The
problem is that AFRICOM did not have any assets in close enough proximity to do
said scrambling:
Finding 8. The Department of Defense and the Department
of State had not jointly assessed the availability of U.S. assets to support
the Temporary Mission Facility in Benghazi in the event of a crisis and
although DOD attempted to quickly mobilize its resources, it did not have
assets or personnel close enough to reach Benghazi in a timely fashion. (page
20 of Flashing Red)...
...AFRICOM’s lack of
operational assets near Benghazi hindered its capacity to evacuate U.S. personnel
during the attacks. The Djibouti base was several thousand miles away. There
was no Marine expeditionary unit, carrier group or a smaller group of U.S.
ships closely located in the Mediterranean Sea that could have provided aerial
or ground support or helped evacuate personnel from Benghazi. AFRICOM also
lacked a dedicated Commander’s In-extremis Force (CIF)—a specially trained
force capable of performing no-notice missions. As a result, General Ham was
forced to call on the European Command’s CIF whose location in Eastern Europe prevented
it from getting to Benghazi before the four Americans were killed and all other
U.S. personnel were evacuated. We note that AFRICOM later received an
independent CIF in October, 2012.89 DOD and
AFRICOM tried to provide effective support on September 11th, but given the
nature of the attack in Benghazi and the distance of their assets from
Benghazi, they were tragically unable to do so. (page 21 of Flashing
Red).
And Leon Panetta did give it the old college try,
at least, according to the report:
From 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
EST, Secretary Panetta met with senior DOD officials to discuss the Benghazi
attack and other violence in the region in reaction to the anti-Muslim video.
The Secretary directed three actions: 1) that one Fleet Antiterrorism Security
Team (FAST) platoon stationed in Rota, Spain, deploy to Benghazi and that a
second FAST platoon in Rota prepare to deploy to Tripoli; 2) that U.S. European
Command’s In-extremis Force, which happened to be training in central Europe, deploy to a staging base in southern Europe;
and 3) that a special operations force based in the United States deploy to a
staging base in southern Europe. The National Command Center transmitted formal
authorization for these actions at 8:39 p.m. A FAST platoon arrived in Tripoli
the evening (local time) of September 12th, and the other forces arrived that
evening at a staging base in Italy, long after the terrorist attack on the U.S.
facilities in Benghazi had ended
and four Americans had been killed. (Flashing Red, page 4)
And well, well, it's just the logistics of the thing.
Rota NAS is 2046 miles from Benghazi,
about four flight hours. By the time you get everybody out of the bars, suited
up and on the plane, it's about six hours. Say Panetta makes his decisions at 6
(I know, I'm being generous); the FAST doesn't get there until midnight. Okay,
good, still time to kick some terrorist butt, but the FAST team didn't go to
Benghazi—they went to Tripoli.
Huh?
The guys from Europe (I'm guessing Ramstein) had 2646
miles to travel but, it's a quicker flight, only 3 hours (prevailing winds, no
doubt). So, give them the two hours to round up the boys and get gear and go, and
they should have been in Benghazi by 11:00 pm,which is even more time to kick some terrorist ass.
But they didn't go to Bengahzi. They went to Italy.
Oops.
All you guys who've ever been in the military understand
this. Things break. Orders are muddled. Things don't work out. Couldn't be
helped. Panetta shrugs his shoulders in the press conference with Dempsey.
Oh well, we tried. Sorry about that. Just another bump in the road.
Except for one thing: Sigonella NAS, Sicily.
Sigonella NAS is 610 flight miles from Benghazi. 610. An
hour and ten minutes.
Now, it is a little difficult trying to find out what
units are stationed at Sigonella. I can understand that; don't want the bad
guys to know what we got. But, the site Global Security reports that Sigonella has airplanes. Lots of big, honking, airplanes.
Why weren't those sent?
Fortunately, Bing West, former Assistant Secretary of
Defense and a man much smarter than Schlub, has already asked this question in
a National Review article called "First, Aid the Living." He says that Sigonella had Special Operations forces and F18s. F18s! Imagine one
of those bad boys roaring in. Craphead terrorists running for their lives.
Yes. Imagine.
But, they didn't. And you gotta ask why.
Mr. West thinks it's due to "...passive groupthink..., with the assumption
being that a spontaneous mob would quickly run out of steam." But I don't.
I think there's other things to blame.
First,
chains of command. Panetta and Ham and all the other high falutin' commanders
and administrative generals really, really believe in chains of command and
assigned responsibilities and jurisdiction and territories and who gets to do
what with what assets and its AFRICOM and Sigonella is not AFRICOM so, no,
don't call them. Bing West got that part right because groupthink excludes the
ability to consider other options.
But
there is something far worse: zeitgeist.
Look
who you have here: Panetta, Clinton, and Obama. All of them, each damned one
of them, hold the US military in complete and utter contempt. Sneering
contempt. The first thing you cavemen want to do is blow stuff up and kill
babies so no, NO! We're not sending any damned F18s or forces to save those two
stupid ex-SEALS who disobeyed orders in the first place and deserve everything
that happens to them.
And
Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty called for help. And called. And called. Frantic. Desperate. Wondering why a major tenet
of US military doctrine—never abandon your troops—was being ignored. Why a
second tenet—by God, send everything!—wasn't happening. And they fought and
called and fought and called and died. Alone. Abandoned.
And
where were you, Barack Obama, while this was happening?
Where
were you?
