Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Who Chose Not to Fight?

Now it is coming out that there were American special forces troops in range of Benghazi to intervene in the annex battle.

According to a source who professes to know:

“I know for a fact that C110 was doing a training exercise not in the region of northern Africa but in Europe and they have the ability to react and respond,” the special ops member told FNC.

The C110 is a 40-man special operations commanders and extremists force. They are capable of rapid response and deployment and are specifically trained for Benghazi attack-like incidents. The night of the attack, according to the special op, they were training 3-1/2 hours away in Croatia.

From the beginning, I've wondered why European-based forces weren't sent to Behghazi. I had doubts about a military response, but as time has passed, it seems more likely that we did have a military option. After all, fewer than a dozen para-military security forces did leap into the maelstrom and made a difference.

Yes, the ambassador's location was a goner, but the annex held out much longer. And we had no idea that the crisis wouldn't play out over a much longer time than it did. Yet we refused to send troops as if it was all over and as if we'd written off those on the ground as acceptable losses.

I don't think we needed special forces to intervene. Our regular infantry have spent a decade kicking jihadi butts all over battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our troops could have handled the militias that struck us that day.

I still can't believe we couldn't have quickly put a platoon of Army infantry, military police, or even Air Force base security forces based in Europe on a plane and flown them to Benghazi just in case.

Who decided we would not fight the jihadis in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, and just let our people stuck on the ground fend for themselves that day and night against jihadi attackers?