Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve changed my mind. Benghazi was not a terrorist attack.<\/p>\n
Terrorism is a tactic. The purpose of terrorism is to create terror in a population. The intended result is the population capitulates to the aggressor rather than continue to suffer terrifying attacks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
More below the jump.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0In modern times, we think of terrorists as IRA pub bombers, Palestinians lobbing shells at Israeli schools, Japanese subway poisoners and Muslim suicide bombers. But terrorism isn\u2019t limited to guerrilla or asymmetrical warfare. Genghis Khan\u2019s military tactics were over-the-top vicious because he intended to terrify his enemies into surrendering without a fight. The tactics worked, as did those of the secret police in WW II Germany and later the Soviet Union, because people were more afraid of the consequences of continued resistance than the consequences of capitulation.<\/p>\n
Osama Bin Laden\u2019s 9\/11 simultaneous and coordinated attack on the World Trade Center, Pentagon and White House was a terrorist attack and initially it succeeded, brilliantly. The President was flown to a secure location because nobody knew what was happening or what to do about it. Airplanes were grounded, the military recalled from leave, the stock market suspended, the economy paralyzed. For a day or two, at least, the nation was terrified. And the immediate response from many Democrats was all the terrorists hoped for: \u201cWe should give them what they want so they leave us alone. Abandon Israel. Pull troops out of the Middle East. Make them stop hating us.\u201d Genghis Kahn would have grinned ear to ear.<\/p>\n
Long-term, 9\/11 didn\u2019t accomplish the complete result desired and I suspect that\u2019s because Bin Laden misjudged Bush, thinking he\u2019d respond as Clinton would have done \u2013 bomb an aspirin factory in the middle of the night and quietly distance himself from Israel. It\u2019s a forgivable mistake \u2013 Bush was new on the job and the media\u2019s image was uniformly one of the dim-witted frat boy who cheated his way into office. Bush\u2019s core resolve was never shown before 9\/11 so I suspect it came as a surprise. \u201cWoken the sleeping dragon\u201d indeed.<\/p>\n
The Benghazi attack was entirely different. It did not provoke wide-spread terror in the United States because it wasn\u2019t intended to. The nation wasn\u2019t moved to insist we capitulate to Muslim demands. Nobody panicked: as our ambassador was dragged through the streets and administration officials scape-goated YouTube, the President flew to Las Vegas for golf and a fundraiser.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The Benghazi attack was not designed to inspire terror in the public, it was a small-unit military action against a poorly fortified enemy installation. The attack was intended to send a pointed message to American Command and Control: \u201cWe know where your people are in-country and we can get to them.\u201d That\u2019s psych ops – a demoralizing action aimed at making diplomatic personnel less effective. With the administration even now dithering over whether to treat this as a military matter or a law enforcement matter, you can bet the diplomatic corps is wondering how vigorously they want to work for American interests versus taking a position in academia stateside. President Obama routinely snubs Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel. He has ordered no military strikes on Al Qaeda targets. Al Qaeda judged his reaction would be even milder than Clinton\u2019s and they were right.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s more to it than that. The consulate is the locus of any CIA operation for that area so any CIA information is now in the hands of the enemy, courtesy of Hillary Clinton\u2019s rent-a-cop security. A CNN reporter was able to walk right into the consulate days later to physically pick up and take with him the personal diary of the Ambassador, filled with the personal impressions and fears that the embassy and he and his staff were in danger and no help was forthcoming. What intel did the attackers\u2019 accomplices get before CNN arrived? How badly have our assets been compromised?<\/p>\n
The more I think about it, the more obvious it becomes that the attack on the consulate in Benghazi was an excellent small-force military operation and not a rag-tag bunch of film critics upset about a YouTube video. If it\u2019s obvious to me \u2013 an unschooled armchair general \u2013 it should have been instantly obvious to our military. If it was obvious to them, they surely would have relayed it upward. That our Commander in Chief chose to spend weeks lying about it and even now is considering sending the FBI to investigate this as a law enforcement matter, is bewildering. The facts are damning:<\/p>\n
The attackers made probing attacks on the consulate earlier this Spring to test our defenses and response times. Libyan officials say these attackers were infiltrated into the country months in advance of the attack. This indicates the attackers engaged in careful long-term planning.<\/p>\n
They knew the ambassador was at the Benghazi consulate, not the Tripoli embassy where he normally would have been. This indicates good intelligence about a moving target.<\/p>\n
They knew the level of protection at the consulate and brought enough firepower to force diplomats to evacuate. This indicates tactical competence.<\/p>\n
They knew the location of the safe house with sufficient precision to accurately drop mortar rounds on it, and brought enough guns to overwhelm the reinforced defenders. As far as we know, the attackers didn\u2019t lose a man and all have vanished back into the woodwork again. This indicates all of the above factors.<\/p>\n
It was a well-planned, well-sourced, well-timed, well-coordinated and well-executed operation, the kind of thing we\u2019d expect of Navy SEALs.<\/p>\n
Give credit where due. Somebody over there did a damned good job on this one. The fact they did it on 9\/11 \u2013 the anniversary of another brilliant attack on America when we should have been prepared but were caught napping again \u2013 only adds to the impressiveness of the accomplishment. And adds to our national embarrassment.<\/p>\n
A victorious General Patton supposedly exclaimed \u201cRommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!\u201d Americans had better find a copy of the attackers\u2019 book damned soon. They have ours down pat.<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p>\n
Como Park<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He’s right. \u00a0Sorry to say.<\/p>\n
And whether you’re a bloodthirsty neo-con, a craven America-laster, or a isolationist Paul supporter, it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve got a movement floating about the world that is engaged in a military compaign against us, and was long before Iraq, Afghanistan or 9\/11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: I\u2019ve changed my mind. Benghazi was not a terrorist attack. Terrorism is a tactic. The purpose of terrorism is to create terror in a population. The intended result is the population capitulates to the aggressor rather than continue to suffer terrifying attacks. More below the jump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31004,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31002\/revisions\/31004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}