Tag Archives: defense policy

Obama’s Benghazi

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Here’s a chronology of the Obama administration’s…conflicting…statements about the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi that included the murders of our ambassador and three other Americans.

11 Sep:

  • the terrorist attack went in, resulting in the murders of an American Ambassador and three other Americans
  • real-time com is established between the defenders and the State Department, during which the defenders clearly identify both the lack of any disturbance at all prior to the attack and the presence and use of weapons consistent with an organized terror attack
  • surveillance drones (in sequence) arrive on scene, also returning real-time data to the US government which confirm the defenders’ information

12 Sep:

White House:

  • President Barack Obama makes a statement in the Rose Garden:

Yesterday, four of these extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi.

  • subsequently, Obama, in response to a CBS interview question about whether he thought the attack was terrorism, Obama said “it’s too early to tell exactly how this came about.”

State Department: Secretary Hillary Clinton said the US was “working to determine the precise motivations and methods” of the attackers, while citing the protest in Cairo over the anti-Islam film.

13 Sep: State Department: Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the department was “very cautious about drawing any conclusions” about who was behind the attack and what the motivations were.

14 Sep:

White House:

  • Press Secretary Jay Carney said “we have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack,” continuing, instead, to link the attack to protests over an anti-Islam film.

Intelligence:

  • CIA Director General David Petraeus briefed lawmakers, stressing a link between the anti-Islam film and the Libya attack.

16 Sep: State Department:  US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice went on five Sunday talk shows to claim the Benghazi Consulate attack was a spontaneous response to a video.

17 Sep: State Department: Nuland, asked if State regarded the strike as terrorism, insisted “I don’t think we know enough.”

19 Sep:  White House: National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen, in sworn testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, testified that the strike was a “terrorist attack.”

20 Sep: White House:

  • in an interview with Univision, Obama refused to label the attack terrorism. “I don’t want to speak to something until we have all the information.”
  • Carney, during the usual noon press conference, said of the Benghazi attack that it was “self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”
  • Obama then claimed he had labeled it as a terrorist attack all along, including as he claimed in an October debate, in his Rose Garden statement.

21 Sep: State Department: Clinton described the attack as a terrorist attack.

28 Sep: Intelligence:

  • Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s said initial information led the office “to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day” in Cairo, and that information was provided to members of the Executive Branch and Congress.
  • but, “As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.”

19 Oct: Intelligence: An intelligence official circulated a revised version: “extremist” elements were likely involved, but “the bulk of available information supports the early assessment that the attackers launched their assault opportunistically after they learned about the violence at the US Embassy in Cairo.”

16 Nov: Intelligence: Petraeus, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee,  said that he suspected from the start that the attack was terrorism.  Congressman Peter King (R, NY) said Petreaus told the committee that the CIA’s original assessment pointed to “Al Qaeda involvement,” but that the line was removed after it left the Intelligence community’s hands.

Hmm….

Europe and Terrorism

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In preparation for the upcoming meeting between the European Union’s various foreign ministers and their Arab League counterparts, Spiegel International Online interviewed Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn on, among other things, Israeli settlement building.  This exchange, in particular, was interesting [emphasis added]:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Violence is also escalating in the Gaza Strip.

Asselborn: No one can or should justify violence—not even if it originates with Palestinians in Gaza.

Not even if it originates with terrorists.

And this exchange:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered to meet the Palestinian president immediately in Ramallah or Jerusalem for peace talks.  Why are the Palestinians rejecting this offer?

Asselborn: Because it is just lip service. The Israeli settlement policy is an affront to every Palestinian because it is a constant provocation.

But, of course, the constant rocket attacks and the steady drumbeat of suicide bombing attempts from Gaza aren’t at all provocative.

No, if it’s an Israeli move, it’s just lip service; if it’s a PLO or Hamas move, it’s entirely innocent and sincere.

Hmm….

What’s Next?

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Yesterday I wrote about compromise.  Today, from Marc Thiessen at AEIDeas, here’s what we can expect given that compromise, over the next four years.  This comes against the backdrop of our—as usual—conflicted view of what we want (resolution of which puts a premium on two things: an honest press establishment and the conservatives among us doing a better job of getting our message out.  The lack of the former is no excuse for our not doing the latter, however).

Exit polls show that by a margin of 52-43, Americans want less government, not more.  By a margin of 63-33 they do not want to raise taxes to balance the budget.   And by a margin of 49-45, they want Obamacare either partially or entirely repealed.

With those clearly expressed requirements, which we’ve been expressing for the last two years, we re-elected President Obama and a Democrat-controlled Senate—while reelecting a Republican-controlled House.

Now those expectations:

  1. Obamacare will now become a permanent feature of the American political landscape.  It will never be repealed.
  2. The unprecedented levels of spending in Obama’s first four years will become the new floor, as America sets new records for fiscal profligacy and debt.
  3. Job creators will face massive tax increases, and more Americans will come off the tax rolls—resulting in fewer citizens with a stake in keeping taxes low and more with a stake in protecting benefits.
  4. Government dependency, already at record levels, will continue to grow.
  5. Four lost years in dealing with the entitlement crisis will become eight—digging us into a hole from which we may not be able to emerge.
  6. Obama, unworried about the impact of gas and electricity prices on his reelection, will finally wage the regulatory war on fossil fuels the Left demands.
  7. He will unleash the Environmental Protection Agency to impose crushing new burdens on US business.
  8. His administration’s assault on religious freedom will go on and expand to new areas.
  9. The Defense Department will be gutted, with cuts so deep that America will no longer be a superpower.
  10. Obama will almost certainly have the opportunity to appoint more liberal Supreme Court justices, possibly replacing conservatives on the high court—ending the Roberts court in all but name for a generation.

Incompetence

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Fox News had this little tidbit buried in an article about a related matter—the fact that we knew who one of the Benghazi terrorists was in time to have him detained in mid-escape at a Turkish airport, and we let him get away.  The tidbit is this:

[T]he two Predator drones deployed over Benghazi the night of the attack were both unarmed. The first Predator was redirected from Darnah in eastern Libya, where Al Qaeda has active training camps that the US military has been watching for some time….  It arrived in Benghazi about an hour after the attack began, suggesting the first hour of the attack was not fed back to officials in Washington.

That drone was running low on fuel, so a second Predator, also unarmed, was deployed from Sigonella, Italy, to provide back-up.  It is not clear why the second drone left Sigonella unarmed after the attack had begun.

“While some may think that armed drones could have made a difference in Benghazi, that’s altogether unclear,” a senior defense official tells Fox News.  “You need good intelligence to drive the use of armed drones.  It’s not like you can just send hellfire missiles into a relatively crowded area when you don’t know precisely where the enemy is.”

First, keep in mind that real-time and near real-time data were flowing to State and to the White House via telephone from the consulate’s TOC and via email.

The “senior defense official” ‘s explanation for launching the second (weapons capable) drone into a combat zone unarmed is…inadequate.  The purpose of the drones was not to bore holes in the sky, but to observe the doings and to identify targets.  Perhaps even to launch on one that was being lased from the Annex rooftop later in that fight.  The claim of not knowing “precisely where the enemy is” is a reason for holding fire, not for launching unarmed.

This is really beginning to smack of an appalling paralysis under pressure by the small-time amateurs in the White House and Defense, if not of outright incompetence.

Economics

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We’re well aware of the role of economics in our daily affairs and in the aggregated domestic affairs of our country.  The quality of our economy directly relates to our and to our nation’s prosperity.  But what is the role of economics in our foreign and defense policies?  Our economy is no less critical there.

General George Marshall once said

The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.

A successful economy plays a role in this prevention through a number of pathways.

The role of economics in foreign policy

Included among the paths is the ability to aid our allies, our friends, and those who wish to leave their current orbit and if not align with us, at least to begin to chart their own independent course.  A strong economy makes this possible.  The surplus from that can fund support for those nations struggling to get free of their current restraints—both their own and those from foreign domination.  Our strong economy, through the trade relationships our businesses create, can aid other economies as they struggle through their own recessions—and their resulting stronger economies can, through those same trade relationships, then aid our own in similar circumstance.

Another path is through the capacity to support the economic development (and through that, the social and political development) of less fortunate nations, both those in the developing world and those whose development has been stunted by being trapped under foreign domination—the follow-on condition of those nations just broken free.  Our economic strength here is especially useful in guiding the political and social development of these nations as well as their economic evolution.  By aiding these nations to develop as democracies with free market economies, we not only help them to find their own strength and prosperity, we deny the nations of tyranny the resources they need for their aggression, and we push those tyrannies back from our own shores.  This also is facilitated by our very success at home, which demonstrates the superiority of our economic methods.  As above, this is possible only from our own economic surplus.

A third path is to work with nations that are committed to the principles of free enterprise, and of freedom generally (which collection will overlap greatly, but are not coincident with, the group comprising our friends and allies), to strengthen all of us economically and politically and thereby to build, further, a bulwark against those tyrannies, who otherwise would become tempted to test us in battle, and perhaps win.

A fourth path is as a magnet for immigrants who want to come here share in our success—economically, to be sure—that’s the proximate magnet—but also our success politically and culturally.  These immigrants are a prime source constant renewal for us, in energy and in problem-solving.

The role of economics in defense policy

A strong economy creates the ability to fund, conduct R&D for, and equip our national defense system.  Without a successful national defense system, we very quickly will have no economy to defend, no nation to defend.

A strong economy enables the next step—the ability to fund the actual use of our national defense system, which usage is by its nature destructive of that system and which destruction must be replaced during the conflicts and after them.  Yes, we will be tested in battle, even though the means of testing will evolve, as the events of 11 Sep 2001 and after have demonstrated.

A strong economy gives us the wherewithal to preposition equipment and supplies near flash points.  These are, to be sure, targets, but they’re useful in the power projection phase of conflicts, and they can be useful in delivering quick reaction forces to the flash location(s) when they start to ignite.

A strong economy creates the ability to help other nations develop their own defense capacity: arms support, arms development support, and so on.  Such defense arrangements also can support economic success in the recipient nations: a common constituent of arms sales agreements is the assembly of purchased weapons in the buying nation’s factories, which represents employment for the citizens of those nations.

Related to the above, a strong economy facilitates reciprocal R&D agreements with our allies and friends.  This leads to greater commonality of key supply items, which simplifies the logistic problems inherent in coalition war.

A strong economy facilitates our maintaining a force with the technology and the numbers to enable us to hold open the world’s sea lanes.  This, by itself, creates a virtuous circle: free and easy transport of trade goods over the world’s waterways facilitates free trade, which leads to greater prosperity and stronger economies for all concerned, which leads to increased free trade and an easier time maintaining and improving those forces guarding the sea lanes.

Notice, too, that all of this adds up to a forward defense of our nation so as to minimize the likelihood that the initial, critical blows of a conflict land in our homeland.

In the end, the very success of our economy—our evident prosperity and freedom—serves as an empirical example of the rightness of our way of life.  It becomes a magnet drawing other nations to our methods, or at least to try them, it draws other nations to send their sons and daughters to our universities, where they not only will learn the academics of our institutions (whether economics, or science, or engineering, or philosophy, or…), but simply by being here through much of their formative years, these students also will learn the American way of life through immersion in it.

Moreover, our free market, capitalist economy, founded on individual liberty, individual responsibility, and individual ownership of property—our bodies and our real and our intellectual property—is what gives us the moral strength and the prosperity to constantly grow, to steadfastly maintain our freedom, to aid others, whether our neighbors or those wanting out from under.