NOW LET ME DO A PIVOT HERE AND TALK ABOUT AN operation that didn’t happen but should have.
Benghazi.
Maybe you’re tired of hearing about the deadly attack on our embassy and its personnel—the hearings, more hearings, the allegations of partisanship against the Obama administration, the e-mails that confirm lies were told for political gain—for example, knowing that Al-Qaeda was behind the planned attack, yet insisting it was a spontaneous reaction against an irreverent YouTube film that wasn’t kind to Islam. (And let me digress here to say that I saw that film and I didn’t like it, but my not liking it does not mean it is unprotected by the First Amendment—the right to free speech. The notion that a filmmaker should have been interrogated and arrested for exercising that right is more than reprehensible. It goes against the very thing that every SEAL who ever lived has fought to defend: our Constitution and our freedom. So you are not going to find a sympathetic voice in the discussion that follows.)
But I will tell you why I will never tire of making sure this country does not forget what actually took place there. It is because we did nothing to attempt to assist Americans once we knew they were in trouble. This is the core of our being. One might also ask: Isn’t this the same thing we have done to all of our allies in the Middle East, as well as in the rest of the world?
As we now know, our ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, made repeated requests for additional security at an extremely vulnerable compound. It was not provided, apparently, because the narrative promulgated by the Obama administration was that the overthrow of the Libyan tyrant Muammar Gaddafi had not only been a success, it had resulted in a free and more stable Libya. A security posture that showed strength and demonstrated superior firepower would not support the new narrative of Islamic peace and understanding.
My eye. That was right up there with the fantasy about Yemen being a model state and not the new home of Al-Qaeda.
Benghazi did not have to end the way it did. It should not have ended the way it did. The embassy did not have local air assets for evacuation. Fine and understandable. But when you’ve got between 125 and 150 masked gunmen converging on your position, you don’t sit on your damn hands. You simply do not. We had a GPS position, and the United States had a whole arsenal in the region. I mean, pick one. You can put a fast mover on it, everything up. It’s not as though we didn’t have an array of choices. It’s not like we didn’t even have time to deploy them. We did. The raid was actually multiple attacks that took place over the course of thirteen hours! Here’s what the asset map looked like at the time. A team of “operators” was shifted from central Europe to a US naval base in Sigonella, Italy. Guys who could have turned the battle were an hour’s flying time from Libya. For support, they had fueled fighter jets. Even a low flyover would have been something. I have also been informed that diplomatic and military channels were being worked so that the United States would have permission from Libya to enter their air space. Permission from whom? Our ambassador was dead, and we were asking permission? Outrageous.
Nothing.
The frustration to any professional fighting man or woman involved in that had to be intense. The reality is, however well trained you are, however ready to go you are, that command must come from someone else. You may have service to country tattooed on your soul, but without the launch order, it is not an actionable concept. I present, without comment, the famous quote from General Douglas MacArthur: “It is a dangerous concept that men of the armed forces must owe their primary allegiance to these temporary occupants of the White House, instead of to the country and the Constitution to which they have sworn to defend.”1
I’m not advocating reckless behavior. Of course not. That was discredited in 1876 when George Armstrong Custer led his 7th Cavalry blindly into a vastly superior force of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho in my home state. (By the way, that hasty action is not the same as 185 heroes electing to face thousands of the enemy at the Alamo forty years prior. There’s a difference between knowing heroism and ignorant vainglory.)
Just reading about Benghazi, or even hearing about it, makes me cringe. In Congress, I am forced to do both. Know this, though: I would have given anything to be leading a team to that site. I was personally involved in the training that went into the creation of two of the warriors lost there, Glen Doherty and Ty Woods, both former SEALs.
We are set up to fight wars within moments anywhere. Shipboard ordnance can reach targets that personnel cannot. Special operators are currently on the ground in places that would surprise you. And there, in Benghazi, we had an immediate and accessible target, we had the exact location on it, we had powerful assets available … and we did nothing.
While I’m on this subject of things we can’t or won’t do, look at what is still happening in Afghanistan with our troops. The rules of engagement are so ridiculously restrictive that we are no longer on the offense. And with terrorism, being on the defense is not just a disadvantage, it’s flat out stupid. You’ve got to keep them on the run, keep them disorganized, and you’ve got to pursue them with all vigor. When we’re hunkered down and can’t engage targets—or the only way we can engage is by bringing in a group through operational security that is either undermanned or nonexistent—there’s a lot of frustration. Even assuming the best course is to leave the country—and I am not advocating that—while you are still there, you push the enemy as hard as you can, as often as you can, and then you leave. But you don’t do what we were doing: hash out all kinds of crap politically and leave the enemy in an advantageous position as you make your way to the exit door.
This hearts and minds stuff? Winning over the population? That’s good in theory. But we can all agree, I think, that you are not going to change the mind of fanatics like the Taliban. You are not going to change the Taliban’s philosophy and you are not going to change the way they operate. The only way you eliminate the threat to the population is to hunt the enemy down individually and destroy them. That is what creates positive change. You want hearts and minds? As soon as villagers see what we’re doing, see where we’re going, know that we will be there to help and protect them, they will start sending their daughters to school, which is forbidden by the Taliban. They will start using the roads we built for commerce, not flight. They will help us.
These people only want to survive. Turning tail does not accomplish that.
Many politicians say that the United States cannot be the world’s police force. I don’t think those people understand this: if we don’t fight these monsters there, we fight them here. That’s more than policing. That’s common sense.
Now we have a situation in Iraq, and arguably the entirety of the Middle East, where the United States has simply given up on leading the war against radical Islam. We left Iraq, and the result was the collapse of the local forces and the loss of the entire northern region to a new set of Islamic terrorists who call themselves ISIS.
Arguably, the destabilization we have seen from our lack of leadership has caused and/or contributed to the collapse of Libya and the civil war in Syria. Either way, the lack of leadership (by this administration and Europe) has led to a refugee crisis, the likes of which we have never historically witnessed in the past—ever. Does this crisis ultimately lead to the collapse of the European Union as we know it? One could make an argument it is a very real possibility. Personally, I think it’s inevitable, particularly after what we recently witnessed in the Paris attack in which more than 130 unarmed people were slaughtered by Islamic terrorist elements, including “refugees.” The recent attacks in Brussels are more evidence of the same.
While the ultimate outcome of recent world events, and the collapse of “states” as we have known them, is yet to be written, one thing is certain. When the United States is weak in its leadership role, the world suffers. That is a fact. Unless and until the United States is replaced by some new “shining light” on the world stage, it is our job, if not our “manifest responsibility” to operate as the leader of the free world. I am here to tell you that I am in wholehearted agreement with Ronald Regan that there is no other “shining light” in the world, and if we do not make our stand here for freedom, there will be nothing left to stand for.
I believe this to the core of my soul.