"... which should have led to a quicker military response, it was revealed yesterday."
“They stood, and they watched, and our people died,” former CIA commander Gary Berntsen told CBS News.
The attack went on for hours. Why didn't/couldn't our military go in? Was it for the same reason that no military was there to protect them in the first place, that the Obama administration did not want the appearance of a military presence? Were they watching, thinking the attack should quickly succeed, allowing them to say it all happened so fast... and then it wasn't fast?
Even as the administration continues to vow that the perpetrators will be brought to justice, the man identified by witnesses as a ringleader in the attack continues to walk the streets of Libya without fear of arrest. Ahmad Abu Khattala has admitted being at the consulate during the horrific attack but has yet to be questioned by any Libyan authorities.
Abu Khattala spoke to a New York Times reporter Thursday from a hotel patio as he sipped a strawberry frappe and mocked the US and Libyan governments. “These reports say that no one knows where I am and that I am hiding,” he boasted. “But here I am in the open, sitting in a hotel with you. I’m even going to pick up my sister’s kids from school soon.”
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 239 of 239As Ed sings along with McCain, "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. Edutcher is too old to be drafted, that's why he wants to send all our young people to war. No skin in the game, it's easy to be an armchair general.
Oh no, Inga just slapped down the "Absolute Moral Authority" card. LOL.
Short version with small words:
1. We can't know the future.
2. Someone has to decide if a threat is important enough to act or not, but the best they can do is guess, see point #1.
3. Coalition deaths in Afghanistan now outpace those during the "hot war" years by 300-400%. We have no goal there, no stated mission, only promises to leave.
4. At this point the reality of #2 becomes acute. A decision was made without the ability to know the future. That point is long past and irretrievable. The nature of the war itself is defined by how Obama defines it NOW and the future he creates NOW.
If Obama wasn't going to fight that war with some notion of the future he intended, which he clearly has not the first notion of, he should have brought our people HOME.
I wonder what Bush's notion was as to how he would fight a war in Iraq?
I think, pretty clearly, Inga, Bush intended to "nation build" in Iraq in order to create a stability that would deny future enemies a situation to exploit against us (another memory hole was the supposed 650,000 children killed by the evil US because we wouldn't let Saddam have the sort of chlorine that weapons are made out of, which was one of Bin Laden's specific complaints against us) once Saddam was deposed as well as giving us a very important strategic foothold in that part of the world.
How well that worked or not, we'd have been leaving Iraq more or less as we have.
What are we doing in Afghanistan?
“They stood, and they watched, and our people died,”
As it is, immediate military intervention would probably not have prevented the deaths of Stevens and Smith. But that's no excuse for the lack of intervention. Only luck and a daring escape in an armored vehicle prevented more deaths from occurring at the consulate.
Inga is the military expert so she can explain to us how to solve the problems Bush faced at 9/11.
The troll gets more hysterical.
Today, the Iranians let us know how Obama plans to deal with them. He sent a message through the Swiss that they can have their atomic bomb.
The troll is having an orgasm.
Oh goody ! Now we can see if New York City can survive a nuclear weapon. Troll, I hope you live in the zone of destruction.
It's not so much is the plan a good plan or not, but if there's a plan at all.
And it's not if the plan never changes, because it ought to, but that the people on the ground understand that there is a plan, even if it's a bad one, and there is a goal, even if it's a hard one.
Deny a safe haven for terrorists.
That might be a good idea or a bad idea or impossible or possible, but at least it's something to aim for.
What are we doing in Afghanistan? Could you say? I can't. Are we nation building?
I have a friend over there, too. Mostly he seems to be trying to avoid mortars that the military where he is (he's a civilian) aren't *allowed* to shoot back at, even when they watch them setting up.
Could Romney possibly do worse? I don't know how.
I mean, what does Obama think? That they're military and the risk is part of their jobs? So playing target for mortars is okay or waiting to get ambushed in a hallway by someone in an Afghan military uniform is something that just "happens" and doesn't need to be responded to decisively or even at all?
So President Dronekiller had a drone above the consulate and did NOTHING.
He makes Jimmy Carter look like a warrior. Oh, yea, he killed Bin Laden.
2012 is almost here, time to give him a exit-visa.
Michael, sheesh, don't get so excited.
God only knows Synova, we need to get the hell out of Afghanistan, sooner than later.
Synova,
1)I agree, and have said as much, that Obama's prosecution of Afghanistan has been as stupid as his predecessor. Well, Almost as stupid--because it is always easier to get in than it is to get out, in most fields of human endeavor. They are claiming that they have been trying to get out "as carefully as we got in carelessly." To an extent, I suppose that's passable logic. But I do not support what they have been doing and do agree with you that the death tolls are obscene. We were ignorant to ever get in. I wish they'd just get the hell out.
2)I loathe the whole situation in Libya. But Christ, not a lotta choices. based on past precedence, we seem to have a choice between kicking in the front door of countries and loading them with ground troops and Vativan sized embassies and obscenely large "Green Zones," or simply bombing the shit out of countries with drones. Well, I guess I'll take the latter if those are my only two options.
3)In the end you still are maintaining Nobody who starts a war (the implication of course is, at least if it's an American who starts it! that's important!) can never be accused of being wrong because we don't know the future.
I think that is backwards logic. I think that if a President wants to start a war the public should greet him with harsh skepticism, and his feet should be held to the fire, and we damned sure better know what he is doing, and if there is even the slightest sense that he fucked up, or started the war for light and transient reasons, it Ought to be His Ass. Period. But we will never have that world so long as all you chatterers keep nodding along as though "24" was a documentary.
That Romney has surrounded himself with many of the Bush people on foreign policy, and that all the same sycophants are chattering away the same chatter in support of him, diminishes your argument that there is no pressing reason to think a Romney presidency=war with Iran.
That people still have columns and advisory positions and really, any credibility at all, who promoted Iraq runup, is inexcusable.
Meanwhile, Michael K. and edutcher really are fighting for their countries on their keyboards. The fate of the country depends on the battles they wage, the truths they tell.
Really! Can't you hear the Epic soundtrack every time you read their sage saber rattling bullshit?
Troll, would mind telling me what your DD 214 says ? Mine says honorably discharged. Keyboard commandoes are usually among the pacifists if there is fighting to be done.
Inga, I'm not excited. I would just like to hear from the grand strategists.
" Inga said...
As Ed sings along with McCain, "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. Edutcher is too old to be drafted, that's why he wants to send all our young people to war. No skin in the game, it's easy to be an armchair general."
Please, enlighten us. I'm sure you know better then we do.
"3)In the end you still are maintaining Nobody who starts a war (the implication of course is, at least if it's an American who starts it! that's important!) can never be accused of being wrong because we don't know the future."
No more than I'm claiming that the opposite is also true; that everyone all the time can be accused of being wrong because we don't know the future.
Pick a conflict, any conflict, that you think was right and I can explain why it was wrong.
In fact, that's far easier than explaining why a conflict was right because once we've entered into it we have facts and data and History to point to of deaths and hardship and no way to prove what the alternative would have been.
And if we point at a situation and try to argue "should have" we have the same problem.
You can point to me and say that I've presented a case where going to war is always right, but it's equally true that the same case can be used to prove that going to war is always wrong.
In other words, your argument is weak simply because it is such an easy argument to present, and it's easy to present because the nature of reality means we can not compare consequences to the alternative. Not ever.
We can, however, dig up some data to compare the proclivities for Democrat and Republican presidents to go "adventuring" and easily find that there is no basis whatsoever, not based in reality, to believe that Democrats dislike war.
"I loathe the whole situation in Libya. But Christ, not a lotta choices."
How so? We ignore governments warring on their own people All The Time. There were no end to "choices" in Libya.
"...we seem to have a choice between kicking in the front door of countries and loading them with ground troops and Vativan sized embassies and obscenely large "Green Zones," or simply bombing the shit out of countries with drones. Well, I guess I'll take the latter if those are my only two options."
I'm partial to the Air Force but I recognize a significant moral hazard involved in bombing. Clinton knew that Americans wouldn't tolerate American deaths when we began our involvement in Bosnia, but he was entirely willing to have our pilots kill people.
Drones and bombers, if they're flown by officers or by 19 year olds just out of high school... kill people.
Sometimes that's the best tool to use, the necessary one. But it's also the easiest one and you should think about that.
Inga said...
As Ed sings along with McCain, "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. Edutcher is too old to be drafted, that's why he wants to send all our young people to war. No skin in the game, it's easy to be an armchair general.
Oop, as always, trots out his/her/its straw men when nothing else works.
Especially since I don't recall advocating invading anyplace. I did discuss why we might not have had the capability to pull those people out, but, to harro and Oop, they're just bumps in the road, suitable only as crying towels.
Oop made his/her/its usual moronic statements in support of Lefty talking points about the draft and "wars on a credit card".
My point was the refutation of harro's blather about Americans being tired of "foreign adventures". Not a whole lot of protest about Labia, what there was came from those Constitutionalist types.
(I guess the Left is in the process of throwing Choom under the bus over Labia, now that it's obvious he's going down, in the hope people will forget the Lefties were all for it)
As for no skin, my brother-in-law is ARNG and has already done a tour in A-stan, unlike Oop's imaginary daughter.
Lord I hate ignorant, and simultaneously, know-it-all reporters. "Unmanned predator drone". Pray tell what would be a manned predator drone!?! I can only think of Slim Pickens at the end of Dr Strangelove.
You know Edutcher, you've been on this theme for the entire time I've been commenting here. I have a theory about you, there is no blond, you are in a nursing home and "the blond" isnt your wife, because who the hell would marry you? She is a nurse, who comes in to give you your nightly suppository, because you are always so full of shit.
harrogate: I think that if a President wants to start a war the public should greet him with harsh skepticism, and his feet should be held to the fire, and we damned sure better know what he is doing, and if there is even the slightest sense that he fucked up, or started the war for light and transient reasons, it Ought to be His Ass. Period.
Bullshit. You don't really believe that, or you'd be screaming for Obama's head on a pike over Libya.
Synova:
What was it that WE needed to do that France could not, that someone else could not? Make Obama look manly?
~~~~
Indeed the same people who got their knockers in a twist from the "war for oil" in Iraq, had no qualms whatsoever, with the US military acting on behalf of [and Obama throwing money he does not have on defending] the French oil interests in Lybia.
Inga said...
You know Edutcher, you've been on this theme for the entire time I've been commenting here. I have a theory about you, there is no blond, you are in a nursing home and "the blond" isnt your wife, because who the hell would marry you? She is a nurse, who comes in to give you your nightly suppository, because you are always so full of shit.
Oop loves to dish it out, but, like all the Lefties, doesn't think he/she/it should have to take it.
"How so? We ignore governments warring on their own people All The Time. There were no end to 'choices' in Libya."
Synova, you miss my point. Of course we had no end to choices with respect to the Libya business. We had no end of choices with respect to Afghanistan and Iraq as well, just as we have with Iran and Saudi Arabia and China and every other country, for that matter.
What I meant by limited choices, of course, is the choices that our political system produces. Seems we get to choose between plenty of bellicose rhetoric and massive ground invasions (GOP), or bombing the snot out of someone while issuing more diplomatic rhetoric (Dem).
If those are our basic template choices, I will sadly take the bombing, I suppose. But the suggestion that "gee, we have no reason to believe that Romney is particularly inclined to go to war with Iran" is ALMOST as disturbing as the righties' caterwauling about ambassador Stevens, as though they truly give a good goddamn about the wasted lives our foreign policy has wrought for so long now. It's not Stevens the Althouse crowd cares about, it's getting Obama.
I love how, somehow, Obama saying he'll follow people to the gates of hell, etc., etc., is viewed as "diplomatic rhetoric," whereas when Bush gave speeches that helped to keep the Middle East from turning into the giant blazing fire that has happened since Obama's diplomatic rhetoric, Bush is bellicose and angry.
Also: The only person who showed no regard for the ambassador is the guy who went to bed after hearing he was MIA and decided that wasn't important enough to get up and do something.
"...is ALMOST as disturbing as the righties' caterwauling about ambassador Stevens, as though they truly give a good goddamn about the wasted lives our foreign policy has wrought for so long now. It's not Stevens the Althouse crowd cares about, it's getting Obama."
This assumption of bad faith... are you deluded enough to think it's not profoundly insulting?
I'm accustomed to people not getting it. I'm accustomed to being told how I'm supposed to feel and when I'm supposed to be outraged over military deaths. But just because you don't understand or agree with what other people see as important differences doesn't mean you can simply decide that other people are lying about them.
Everything harrogate said regarding war in this thread is either:
1) A lie
2) Projection
3) Hypocrisy
4) Dead wrong
5) some combination of the above.
He didn't say one single true, honest, accurate thing.
He doesn't understand national security, and so heavily politicized for Democrats/progressives and so twisted by Bush Derangement Syndrome that he can't even reason coherently about Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Libya.
"He doesn't understand national security, and so heavily politicized for Democrats/progressives and so twisted by Bush Derangement Syndrome that he can't even reason coherently about Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Libya."
When, o When?!! When will the necocon vision finally be recognized as the nuanced necessary vision that it truly is? When will all come to see the clear endgames, the met goals, the spreading of freedom root and branch? Only those affected by BDS fail to see! Before Bush, you see, there were NO voices, there was no alternate way of imagining US foreign policy, cautioning against the sort of behavior that has lately so defined us.
harrogate,
I'm not a neocon.
That you jump to that assumption so quickly is revealing.
You clearly have no notion of why we invaded Iraq or Afghanistan.
There is no honest or logical way to criticize those wars but then say we had no good choice in Libya.
Because the main reason we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan is they were State sponsors of terrorism.
Period. Full Stop.
Those weren't the only reasons.
In fact, multiple reasons were given for Iraq. Those reasons are so easily found with a Google search, despite the progressive attempt to obfuscate and deny, that one can only conclude that your apparent ignorance of those reasons is yet another attempt to obfuscate and deny.
You certainly have the right to continue to lie, obfuscate, project, and deny.
But I have the right to keep pointing it out. And I will.
Because people like you cause unnecessary deaths of military people.
Your fecklessness, mirroring President Obama's fecklessness, make a mockery of honorable military service, cheapens our deaths, encourages our enemies, and makes the US less safe.
It is people like you that got Ambassador Stevens killed.
It is attitudes like yours that results in the State Dept not only refuse valid, reasonable requests for increased security, but tell the people making the request to stop even asking.
I'm sorry you are so committed to a misunderstanding of the way the world works.
Inga said...How about this? Any more wars, we have to pay a war tax and reinstate the draft. Fair?
you first granny. some of us have already served. you know what else they had in WW2 besides a draft and war tax? internment camps for foreign born individuals of questionable loyalty.
I have written about this at my blog since day one. As a former Foreign Service Officer I have some strong views on how the administration handled the crisis in Libya.
Ann,
Why didn't the Pentagon mobilize assets from Italy, Spain and the UK. POTUS also had agreements with France, Italy, Germany and the UK to alow their troops and military assets to be mobilized as quick response teams. I am sure that the French had FFL troops available to intervene. One paratroop unit company size or battalion size would have bee4n enough to hold the Bengazi consulate until larger forces arrived.
This was a clusterfark from the get-go because we have incompetent leadership that refuses to make tough and unpopular decisions.
I hope that Obama loses to Romney and that the Democratic party suffers the greatest electoral loss in US history. The Democratic party needs a true ass-whupping so that the 1968 generation is driven from its positions of influence. Otherwise the dmeocrates are going to linger around as a party of outdated ideas, a party too weak to lead but strong enough to complicate governing this republic. The American people deserve better.
One paratroop company?
Put that shit out of your head. You're in fantasy land.
It was a compound in Benghazi, Libya. Not Fayettville, NC.
Nathan you write:
"There is no honest or logical way to criticize those wars but then say we had no good choice in Libya."
Which fucking proves you read me maliciously or lightly. The first time I wrote it was MAYBE vague, but then I explained it in subsequent posts. My point was and is that we as voters do not seem to have much choice on questions of war and peace, beyond choosing between politicos that are hankering to launch full-out wars and those who chose the simply bomb the shit out of people.
What is "interesting" about this is how disconnected these bullshit choices are from the wishes of voters. You ask some voters after all the shit we have been through--ask ALL the voters by stating your intentions, whether they want to entangle somewhere else and see what they say.
We citizens are not controlling our political process when it comes to foreign policy. We got fucked over during the Ush years and realized that we're only shades different on the "starting some shit" front with the other prty in power. That was my point and if you would read you will see that.
As for the "multiple reasons" that were given for the invasion of Iraq, there was ONLY ONE reason that got leaned on so goddamned much that people actually thought it might be reasonable to do it, to sacrifice blood and treasure for it.
Leaned on so much that in the very leaning, a chicken-necked acronym was birthed in the leaning. Ahhh, how wondrous it was that Weapons of Mass Destruction became "WMD's" in every single household with a television in it. There was massive saturation, massive propaganda on the "WMD" issue--that's what sold the war to the people and any effort to say anything otherwise is simply bullshit.
But the fact that you are invested, Nathan, in justifying that clusterfuck even now, making it seem so "reasonable," shows who *really* has acocunting to do in terms of the massive deaths that we continue to incur. But not a wink of sleep lost on the selling of that war. And now you want to raise your fists and shake them at the sky in Stevens' name and act as though you are not partisan in the doing. Jesus and you are calling others "hypocrites" to boot. What a waste of rhetoric and human life your posts reveal themselves to be when looked at by something other than the same old Althouse cracked and dingy lens.
The supporters of our foreign policy model, like yourself, just march ever onwards, ready to be taken seriously as "concerned, serious voters" or even "experts" (Charles Krauthammer and Bill kristol and Dick Cheney are "experts"!!) when it comes to pimping the next one.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Pentagon reporters that U.S. forces were on a heightened state of alert already because of the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington by al Qaeda New York City Tax Preparation
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