"Some reports have suggested that additional security assets were available, including Special Forces teams. The deputy chief of mission in Libya at the time, Gregory Hicks, told a congressional hearing that one such team in Tripoli was ready to fly to Benghazi on the C-130 sent for the evacuation, but its commander received a last-minute phone call from Special Operations Command Africa ordering the team not to go. Hicks also noted that there was no display of airpower over Benghazi despite the proximity of the Souda Bay naval base in Greece, about an hour away (though AFRICOM did dispatch an unarmed drone to monitor the scene). Hicks said that “if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them.” Other reports of available undeployed resources have surfaced but remain unconfirmed. Whether Hicks is right that a show of airpower would have prevented the mortar attack, sparing two Americans, is unknowable. What is certain is that the response to the attack in real time does not exactly seem to have been to mobilize as broadly as possible. It may be that there were no “undue delays in decision making or denial of support from Washington or from the military combatant commanders.” But neither does there appear to have been a forward-leaning effort on the part of those making decisions to throw major resources at an unfolding crisis despite the potential for loss of American lives before anyone knew how many lives would be lost. Pentagon officials have claimed that it would have taken as long as 20 hours to get available forces in Italy to the scene. Therefore, it was too late. That would be reassuring only if somebody had actually made a decision by 11 p.m. Libyan time on September 11 to send them. Otherwise, the claim it was too late is completely hollow, since no one knew when too late was at that point. And in this light, it’s pretty good luck both for the Americans on the ground and the ones who didn’t make the decision to deploy credible force as quickly as possible that those who perpetrated this remarkably effective surprise attack didn’t have the capacity to continue it through the evacuation of the annex and at the airport."
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 05:42:44 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015