Tyrone Woods is said to have been painting an enemy mortar team near the Benghazi annex. that eye witness claim is being denied by the CIA. This is part of the mysteries of what happened at Benghazi.
Critics of the administration have used this to suggest we had assets that could have struck but refused to use them.
Defenders of the administration can now say there were no gunships or armed drones that could have intervened, and now say that Woods wasn't identifying a target that could have been destroyed by those aircraft.
My criticism of the administration's response doesn't require armed drones or gunships nearby.
And I don't need Woods to have been painting a target hoping for a smart bomb or burst of cannon or automatic weapons fire from above to destroy the mortar.
The laser painting simply says that the defenders of the annex were holding on and willing to fight. Woods might have been painting the mortar team so somebody else at the annex could shoot at the mortar team.
Or maybe Woods was just buying time for help to arrive by trying to make the jihadis think that an American armed craft was overhead or coming soon. Perhaps the unarmed drone overhead could be heard. Perhaps, if we had sent fighter planes in to make low-speed passes to scare away the jihadis (at least for a while until ground forces could be sent in) as I think we could have done, the knowledge that the annex defenders had the means to designate targets would have made the aircraft presence more frightening to the jihadis.
But we didn't even try to use military assets. Oh, we moved some closer, to be sure:
“The secretary ordered appropriate forces to respond,” he said. “Those forces included FAST (Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team) platoons from Europe, a special operations unit in Central Europe, and another contingent of U.S. troops from the United States.”
It takes time to notify troops, organize them and then transport them, Little said. It also takes time to develop an intelligence picture of what they might face on the ground.
“The fact of the matter is these forces were not in place until after the attacks were over,” he said. “Let me be clear. This department took swift action. We did respond. The secretary ordered forces to move. They simply were not able to arrive in time.”
In the entire European theater we couldn't put a platoon of soldiers in the air to get them to Benghazi fast to link up with the CIA reaction force, with the rest of the company drawing equipment and ammo to follow? With the knowledge that FAST platoons and special ops troops weren't far behind and another contingent from the United States was on the move? Knowing air power in Sicily could establish a continuous presence for strike and reconnaissance?
I don't buy that we were unable to respond. We chose not to respond. As I've said before, I think the consulate was a goner. We had too little time to respond once the fighting started. But the annex could have been held and the jihadis repelled, allowing our forces to hold the ground and give the jihadis a visible defeat despite the initial loss of the consulate and our ambassador.
We abandoned at least several dozen people on the ground, and only the willingness of CIA assets to march to the sound of the guns (and two military personnel from Tripoli who volunteered to go into harm's way despite lack of real-time knowledge) prevented more than 4 Americans from dying that day.
The Germans learned on the eastern front during World War II that when the Russians attacked and gained ground, it was best to counter-attack immediately with what you had rather than wait for reinforcements while the Russians used that time to dig in. Hit them while they are still in a state of confusion after an advance.
If we lacked enough information with our communications with people on the ground and overhead imagery, how much worse would the tactical picture have been for the jihadis?
From their perspective, they managed to overrun the consulate and burn it, yet still American reinforcements arrived on the ground with Libyan militia. An American aircraft was in the air over the battle. Armed Americans gathered at the annex and put up a tremendous resistance that suggested more defenders than the jihadis expected. And the defenders had the ability to call in aerial firepower (the laser designator that Woods seems to have had). Even if the jihadis did not see any laser, they'd likely worry we had that capability after a decade of war using aerial firepower. And the jihadis likely knew that American reinforcements had flown into Benghazi already (the CIA team and 2 military volunteers). What more could be on the way?
We can't know what little bit of extra demonstration of our intentions to fight on that ground would have tipped the balance and frightened the attackers at the annex off on the theory that they'd best live to jihad another day.
Nothing might have altered the outcome. That's war. But we didn't even try.
Our leadership is relying on the bullshit argument that we didn't have enough real-time information to act. You never have all the information you'd like. But you always have the responsibility to act on what information you have, with the forces you have available, in the time you have left. Waiting for more information so you can appreciate how the situation is developing just gives the initiative to the enemy.
We didn't try to fight a battle in Benghazi that day when our enemy initiated a battle. Only the heart and skill of the few who did try to fight that battle kept the day from being far worse.
