The Ghost of Benghazi Past

Benghazi should be over by now but it isn’t.  I see that a lot of people are still angry even if they don’t understand it very well – or at all.  I probably won’t convince any of those with Clinton Derangement Syndrome; they’re going to hate her no matter what, truth be damned, and I can’t get involved with that lunacy.  But if you still have questions or just don’t understand it at all, maybe, just maybe, I can at least tell you what I think.   I wasn’t there, of course, and am not privy to many of the sordid details, but I did do a few years in and out of embassies and over four years in one particular embassy.  I worked closely with the regional security office, whose members provide security in various ways, but their prime directive is to protect the ambassador.  I also organized and participated in a number of security details, tasked with protecting visiting dignitaries – admirals, Secretary of the Navy, USMC Commandant, and other (supposedly) important people.   I have a pretty decent understanding of how that shit works.

I tried as best I could to not say what I really thought during the first few days after the event because I didn’t want to be accused of blaming the victim.  Chris Stevens was, by all accounts, a good man, a good diplomat, committed to the bettering of Libya – and of course, he was considered a friend by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  They were colleagues.  From what I’ve read and heard about Stevens, I would have liked him and agreed with many of his views on politics.  But his presence on that September day in Benghazi was the problem.  I’m not going to say “Blame Stevens!” but I will say that it was his responsibility.  He made bad decisions. 

There is a difference, of course, between ‘guilt’ and ‘responsibility’.   When I was in the military, I had X number of people working for me.  If one of them drank too much, got in a car, maybe got a DUI or, god forbid, killed an innocent person on the road, I would be called in to the commanding officer’s office and grilled.  Because I was responsible for my people.  But I would not be judged guilty of the DUI or any other crime committed by this person; I would not be facing punishment.  That would be wholly and entirely on the person who made the bad decisions.  So let’s clear this question up.  Hillary Clinton, being the Secretary of State at the time, was responsible for ALL actions taken by her ambassadors all over the globe.  But she wasn’t guilty of anything.  She didn’t order Stevens and crew to Benghazi on 11 September.  She didn’t put those fighters/terrorists in the street to attack our people.   Hillary Clinton, as she said in her appearance before Congressional committee, was responsible.  But she wasn’t guilty of anything at all.  If you want to assign guilt, then you can go one of two ways.  First, blame the fighters who perpetrated the attack.  This is the most sensible thing, after all.  Isn’t it?  Or if you want to go further, blame Chris Stevens for making the obviously fatal decision to be in an unsecure zone on a significant date. 

I’m not big on tossing it all on Stevens, but according to my experience, here’s how it works.  The ambassador is the senior representative of the US government in his assigned country.   He is the Big Cheese.  He has a country team to advise him on certain interests – political, economic, drugs if those are an issue there, military concerns, and so forth, but he makes the decisions.  This also includes where he will go on any given day.  The Regional Security Officer will talk to the ambassador about any security concerns.  He and his team may even advise the ambassador to not go, but that’s it – they advise him.  If he decides to saddle up anyway, their job is then to go with him and protect him as best they can, and believe me, they do that very, very efficiently.   Having worked with quite a few of these regional security guys, I’d guess (just a guess) that they advised Stevens to NOT go anywhere on 11 September.  Stay home, sir, the embassy has hardened defences, let’s picnic in Benghazi later this month.  Words to that effect.  No one in government service would miss the significance of the date.

But apparently Stevens decided he was going to Benghazi.  He was a friend of the Libyan people, he felt he had a special bond with them, it would be fine.  My term for this is ‘mission blindness’.  I’m sure other people have other terms, but this is when your dedication to the work at hand blinds you to overt/covert threats to your physical safety.  Being the Head Cheese, everyone else saddled up and saluted crisply and said shit like, “Yes, Mister Ambassador” and off they went.   It’s what we do, or what I used to do when I was a military guy.  We go where we’re told to go and, using whatever tools are at hand, we accomplish the mission without bitching (overtly).   That’s what his team did.   Or tried to do.  But let’s be clear: the only reason Stevens and his team were in Benghazi on the 11^th of September was because Stevens himself wanted to be there.

The genesis of the attack was unclear during the first few days.  Tensions had been high all over the Middle East and there had been unrest in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries.  The streets were full of people who were incensed over the youtube video that they considered blasphemous.  This was very clear.  No one had questions about it.   It was logical – to a point – to think, initially, that the violence in Libya was more of the same.  The people on the ground there had no idea about the motivations behind the attack.  They were too busy trying to stay alive and return fire and all the things one does when shit goes south in a big way.  

The lack of response is often cited as proof that the US government, especially the President and the Secretary of State, somehow and for some reason ‘abandoned’ the crew in Benghazi.  This is crazy talk.  This is not what we do, and it isn’t what they did.  Everyone was working hard to try to figure out how to respond, but the tactical situation was simply out of control.   Think about it this way: you’re assigned to keep peace between two large groups of people who are armed to the teeth.  Let’s say they’re in a gym.  You’re thousands of miles away but you start to get phone calls telling you things have gone bad.  But it’s dark, the lights are out and no one can tell you where the good guys are.  Or where the bad guys are.  But you have to put a team in, don’t you?  SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.   But if your team rushes in to that darkened gym where rounds are flying back and forth and explosions are everywhere and maybe there’s a fire and smoke and no one speaks the same language to boot – what happens to your team?   I can tell you: they are added to the list the dead.  Real-life combat is not like a Rambo movie.  Before you put even more people at risk, you must understand the situation.  You must have a plan.  Sending even more people into the streets of Benghazi would have not guaranteed any success at all, but it would have increased the number of flag-draped coffins coming back to Andrews AFB.   That much was certain.   We could talk about how far away help was (it was far away.  We could talk about how willing certain units were to go in anyway (very willing).  But that last bit just tells you how brave our military SF is.  You cannot simply send them in to die.  In any case, no one issued an order to “stand down”.  That is a fucking fairy tale.  People were doing their best to understand how to respond without getting a lot more Americans killed in the streets.  You’d think we would respect that. 

The other issue with Benghazi is whether or not the Obama team thought it was motivated by the youtube video and was a quickly-mobilized mob or whether it was an orchestrated, planned attack by an organized terror group.  I saw a lot of arguments about this.  It seemed to me that they simply didn’t know at first and believed – logically – it was connected to the violence that had flared up around the Middle East.  It seemed to be that the government was playing it close to the vest until they figured out who was responsible, which is, again, sensible.  The police don’t broadcast who they think may have perpetrated a crime until they have some pretty good ideas – evidence – that tells them who to look for.  Conservatives wanted everyone to believe that Obama and Clinton were being coy in order to keep the attack from negatively influencing the upcoming election.  It was a confusing period, the first few days after the attack, and if you’re inclined to believe such things, nothing I can say will stop you.  But I don’t buy it.  There was too much risk and too little return and Obama is just not that dumb.

Maybe it’s worth mentioning that two of the people who died in Benghazi were former Navy.  I am former (retired) Navy.  Ask anyone who is or was Navy:  we take this seriously.   Those were my shipmates, our comrades, and I would be the first to point fingers at anyone in the government who knowingly contributed to their deaths.  But no one in the government did.  Terrorists and hoodlums and thugs on the streets of Benghazi killed them, and that’s who I blame.   If any of this seems like bullshit to you, that’s fine with me.  I do the best I can to see things clearly.  With Benghazi, you’re on your own now, because I am officially done.