Matt Bracken 5 hours ago · I just posted this comment after the CBS 60-Minutes story on Benghazi. >>>I was writing about this within days of the attack. This is the start of my piece published in PJ Media. The Benghazi debacle boils down to a single key factor; the granting or withholding of cross-border authority. This opinion is informed by my experience as a Navy SEAL officer who took a NavSpecWar Detachment to Beirut. Once the alarm is sent--in this case, from the consulate in Benghazi; dozens of HQs are notified and are in the planning loop in real time, including AFRICOM and EUCOM, both located in Germany. Without waiting for specific orders from Washington, they begin planning and executing rescue operations, including moving personnel, ships, and aircraft forward toward the location of the crisis. However, there is one thing they cant do without explicit orders from the president: cross an international border on a hostile mission. That is the clear red line in this type of a crisis situation. No administration wants to stumble into a war because a jet jockey in hot pursuit (or a mixed-up SEAL squad in a rubber boat) strays into hostile territory. Because of this, only the president can give the order for our military to cross a nations border without that nations permission. For the Osama bin Laden mission, President Obama granted CBA for our forces to enter Pakistani airspace. On the other side of the CBA coin: in order to prevent a military rescue in Benghazi, all the POTUS has to do is not grant cross-border authority. If he does not, the entire rescue mission (already in progress) must stop in its tracks. Ships can loiter on station, but airplanes fall out of the sky, so they must be redirected to an air base (Sigonella, in Sicily) to await the POTUS decision on granting CBA. If the decision to grant CBA never comes, the besieged diplomatic outpost in Benghazi can rely only on assets already in country in Libya; such as the Tripoli quick reaction force and the Predator drones. These assets can be put into action on the independent authority of the acting ambassador or CIA station chief in Tripoli. They are already in country, so CBA rules do not apply to them. How might this process have played out in the White House? If, at the 5:00 p.m. Oval Office meeting with Defense Secretary Panetta and Vice President Biden, President Obama said about Benghazi: I think we should not go the military action route, meaning that no CBA will be granted, then that is it. Case closed. Another possibility is that the president might have said: We should do what we can to help them ... but no military intervention from outside of Libya. Those words then constitute standing orders all the way down the chain of command, via Panetta and General Dempsey to General Ham and the subordinate commanders who are already gearing up to rescue the besieged outpost. When that meeting took place, it may have seemed as if the consulate attack was over, so President Obama might have thought the situation would stabilize on its own from that point forward. If he then goes upstairs to the family quarters, or otherwise makes himself unavailable, then his last standing orders will continue to stand until he changes them, even if he goes to sleep until the morning of September 12. Nobody in the chain of command below President Obama can countermand his standing orders not to send outside military forces into Libyan air space. Nobody. Not Leon Panetta, not Hillary Clinton, not General Dempsey, and not General Ham in Stuttgart, Germany, who is in charge of the forces staging in Sigonella. Perhaps the president left no outside military intervention, no cross-border authority standing orders, and then made himself scarce to those below him seeking further guidance, clarification, or modified orders. Or perhaps he was in the Situation Room watching the Predator videos in live time for all seven hours. We dont yet know where the president was hour by hour. But this is 100 percent sure: Panetta and Dempsey would have executed a rescue mission order if the president had given those orders. And like the former SEALs in Benghazi, General Ham and all of the troops under him would have been straining forward in their harnesses, ready to go into battle to save American lives. The execute orders would be given verbally to General Ham at AFRICOM in Stuttgart, but they would immediately be backed up in official message traffic for the official record. That is why cross-border authority is the King Arthurs Sword for understanding Benghazi. The POTUS and only the POTUS can pull out that sword. cbsnews/8601-18560_162-57609479.html?assetTypeId=41&blogId
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 06:29:18 +0000
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