The furnace surrounding Benghazi needs to be hotter on the players involved here, and we are seeing this becoming an indictment of not only the Administration and its leaders, but an indictment of the Media as well (as Crush has pointed out). I have been watching the hearings and the press regarding Benghazi and I have no doubt that a scandal of this magnitude would have ended the Bush Presidency (hell, it would have ended the Coolidge presidency). Benghazi taking place in 2006 for instance; would have seen the Lamestream Media running nothing but breathless reports and "breaking news" and endless coverage of the hearings about how the evil Bushitler left brave Americans to die and that Vice President *** Cheney personally approved the "stand down" order and 6 weeks prior to that he had personally signed the supply requisition that provided the matches and mortar rounds to the terrorists so they could kill those men. That tripe, thankfully, to those of us who have a brain, is old and busted. New and Hot is "What Difference Does It Make?" I could go into chapter and verse about what difference it makes Madame Secretary, but my guess is that you know exactly what difference it makes and you were counting on all of this to go away as you lied to the faces of the families of these men about what happened there. Jonah Goldberg does a great job with Shrill Hill here, but that ain't what I want to talk about. I want answers about this: Later, Hicks testified, he asked military commanders to send a Special Forces attachment led by one Lieutenant Colonel Gibson back to Benghazi, but was denied by the brass at U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM): "People in Benghazi had been fighting all night. They were tired. They were exhausted. We wanted to make sure the airport was secure for their withdrawal. As he and his three personnel were getting in the cars, he stopped, they called them off. He said that he had not been authorized to go." "Lieutenant Colonel Gibson was furious. I had told him to bring our people home. That is what he wanted to do." "Hicks quoted Gibson as saying then that it was the only time in his career he saw a diplomat have “more balls” than the United States military." I have never been an officer, so I can't speak to this; I have one question to ask: What is the price of disobedience to your career? This question is the most pertinent to me. Those of us who have been in any positions of command have been forced, at one time or another, to decide whether following an order or following it "in a different direction" were prudent courses of action. But I want the answers that I may never get. I want to know why Lt. Col. Gibson didn't just go anyway? I want the names of the souless careerists at AFRICOM who left those men to die. I want to know what happened to putting your career aspirations secondary to saving lives. As to the first, there are those that are going to tell me "you weren't there" and call me "monday morning quarterback" and point out how wrong I am and how the foundation of our system is civilian control and obedience to orders, even when we don't agree with them; and BTW how dare I question this man who was only doing his duty. I know all of that, and you are entitled to your opinion, just as I; but it is pertinent here to talk about disobedience because disobedience would have put more guns in the fight. Disobedience may have turned this into something other than a blood bath. In my opinion, disobedience in this case, and of this magnitude would have been something absolutely justifiable in the face of any UCMJ action. I would like to use an example from Jonah's work to illustrate my point: If you see a child struggling in the ocean, you have no idea how long she will flail and paddle before she goes under for the last time. The moral response is to swim for her in the hope that you get there in time. If you fail and she dies, you can console yourself that you did your best to rescue her. But if you just stand on the beach and do nothing as the child struggles for life, saying, “Well, there’s just no way I can get to her in time,” it doesn’t really matter whether you guessed right or not. You didn’t try. How about some "I never got that message" as you board your plane to get into the fight. Maybe some crinkling cellophane over the radio as your higher headquarters orders you to turn around. I can imagine no variant in which my career would be more important than doing what was right and doing my duty. We have no duty to follow immoral orders, and it is immoral to leave men to die because someone at National Command Authority says that is your mission. That is the plot of action movies, not a way of doing business. Not the President, SoS, Chief of Staff, or AFRICOM 6 Actual could have stopped me from getting on that aircraft and flying to Benghazi short of actually shooting me. My career wouldn't mean a big stack of excrement to me at that point. I wouldn't care if you busted me to low-ass scum sucking private and sent me to Leavenworth to make little rocks out of big rocks in the hot sun; me, my men, and that aircraft would be headed into battle. How's about you court-martial me if I live? But as I type those words, maybe I should issue a caveat here; maybe I don't know the whole story. Maybe 26 of the largest CID agents from the AFRICOM protective detail tackled Col. Gibson right there on the tarmac because he...
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Posted
May 13 2013, 04:03 AM
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BLACKFIVE