Denying Islamic Terrorism and the Death of Americans in Benghazi

Obama has a long-standing inability to acknowledge Islamic terrorism and consequently has severe weaknesses in dealing with it.  That he has a wrongheaded determination to refuse to identify it was long ago made clear by the failure to designate the attack on the military recruiting station near Little Rock, Arkansas as a terrorist attack, despite the knowledge that the attacker was trained by jihadists in Somalia and claimed that he performed the attack and murders as a jihadist act.  This was followed by the designation of Major Hassan's terrible attack at Ft. Hood as an instance of workplace violence.  Obama claims that no Islamic terrorism has occurred on American soil under his watch!

Obama's inability to recognize and deal with the reality is a result both of Progressive Elitist political correctness and his own upbringing as a Muslim.  Obama clearly has a strong allegiance to that faith, though his viewpoint is a hybrid of Islam and many western influences, so let me make it clear that I am not saying that he is essentially and at his core a believer in Islam.  There is, however, much about Islam that he does admire and even seems to long for.  I do not share his admiration or his longing, either for Islam or for Progressive Elitism.

Obama refuses to see that violence as a means to spread Islam and to cower those who are unbelievers is central to Islam.  Muhammad made it a central policy of Islam as soon as he and his followers were powerful enough to overcome those around him in the primitive Saudi pennisula of the 7th Century.  Before that time of strength, he often spoke of peaceful coexistence, but that was clearly just a strategy to bide his time until he was strong enough to take what he wanted by force.  Islam is perhaps the religion most compatible with a vision of strong and relatively unlimited government.  One can well imagine how this religious viewpoint meshes with Obama's Progressive Elitism to make him a largely lawless President by the standards of American law and our American Principle of legitimate government limited to the protection of our equal, sovereign individual rights to life, liberty, property, the ownership of our own minds, bodies, and labor, and to the pursuit of our personal happiness.

Despite months of general chaos followed by months of mounting attacks focused on western groups in Benghazi, the Obama administration so badly wanted to pretend that his policies in this Muslim area were a success, that only we Americans officially ignored the reality on the ground.  Other western groups pulled out, including the British after an attack upon their ambassador in Benghazi.  The commander of an American security force asked for reinforcements and was denied them.  The Ambassador to Libya repeatedly noted the lack of sufficient security forces.  The Obama State Department then actually pulled out a large part of the American security force and left the Embassy and Consulate staffs much weaker yet.  A couple of attempts to bomb the Benghazi American Consulate were ignored.  The Ambassador was nearly frantic in his pleas for more security, yet bravely determined to complete his mission, which was apparently largely to get the many weapons left by the fall of Gaddafi under responsible control.

The attack on the American Consulate began about 9:40 PM and fighting continued either there or in a CIA Annex about 1 mile away until at least 4 AM.  [Update 3 Nov:  It is now known they were under attack until 5:26 AM.]  Throughout this time, Americans under attack or nearby were in communication with Washington.  A drone was quickly dispatched to fly overhead and watch the fighting.  The Obama administration will not say whether the drone and its replacement were armed or not.  [Update: The drone was unarmed and arrived at 11:11 PM.]  After a long period in which Obama would say nothing about what he knew, he now claims that he pledged whatever assistance was needed for the defense of the Americans under fire.  Only a small security group at the Embassy at Tripoli was flown into the Benghazi airport and they were kept waiting for Libyan transportation for 45 minutes after arrival.  [Update:  The flight was 45 minutes long.  They arrived at the airport in Benghazi at 11:15 PM and cannot leave the airport there until 4:30 AM.]  A major security force in Sicily, Italy that could have been brought in was never moved in.  They perhaps might not have been able to arrive fast enough to save the American Ambassador Chris Stevens and Sean Smith who died at the Consulate, but they surely could have been brought in to eliminate the mortar that killed Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty at 4 AM.  [Update:  The time of their death was incorrectly reported.  The mortar attack did not begin until 5:15 AM.  The first two mortars missed the target and the next three hit the roof, killing Woods and Doherty.  The attack was over by 5:26 AM.]  They had previously marked the mortar with laser only needed a gunship, aircraft, or maybe an armed drone to take it out.  [This was also an error of earlier reports.  They had marked some groups of attackers earlier, but had not marked the mortar.  Libyan relief forces finally arrived at 6:00 AM.]

Their requests for support were denied, yet CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood claims no requests were denied.  Then Secretary of Defense Leon Panneta told us that the situation on the ground in Benghazi was too unknown to send in help!  Yet, Obama claims to have pledged whatever help was needed.  Indeed.  What were the caveats he attached to that pledge which he is not telling us?  It is clear that neither he nor Panneta nor Clinton will tell us how he pretended to provide the support which he did not provide until after the 6 November election.

The initial Obama plan to cover up his ignoring the security needs of the Ambassador and his American staff in Libya so that he could pass Libya off as a success of his policies and keep evidence of a resurgence of al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist organizations out of the news was to pretend that a spontaneous street protest against a video made in American which was unfavorable to Muhammad was the cause of an attack, which the administration could not have had any warning about.  There was no such demonstration and Washington knew before midnight that an al Qaeda affiliated organization had launched a coordinated and powerful attack against our Consulate and Annex.  The story about the street demonstration and the video protest was entirely a cover-up and an effort to mislead the American People prior to the election.  Obama long kept it hidden that he had even been informed about the attack and had issued some kind of order to have security forces provided for the protection of our Americans at the Consulate and Annex in Benghazi.  We would all like to read that supposed order.

I expect the State Department and the administration had been unhappy with Ambassador Stevens as the nagging messenger that all was not well in Libya and that American security there for the Benghazi Consulate and for the Tripoli Embassy was inadequate.  I would not be surprised given the childish nature of the Obama administration that they wanted to shoot the messenger themselves.  In that light, these childish bureaucrats and politicians may well have made the decision not only to deny the Ambassador more security forces when he had earlier requested them, but to also remove a large part of the force he had had there.

As for the Panetta excuse that the situation was too unknown to send in the highly trained Special Operations forces, that excuse makes sense when you have time available.  If the Ambassador had been captured and was being held for ransom, or some such case, taking more time to understand all you could about the forces holding him and the lay of the land might well make sense.  This however was an active firefight.  Time was not available.  A force had invaded the United States of America by overrunning our Consulate.  They had killed Americans or were clearly trying to, depending upon which moment for decision we are talking about.  The fact that the fighting lasted 6:20 [7:46] hours, says that the forces arrayed against us were not insurmountable.  A gunship alone would have made all the difference.  The two Special Operations Forces that could have been brought in would have made a world of difference.

Obama believes that America should basically turn the other cheek to Islamic terrorists.  Muslims have a huge disdain for such weakness.  They have a macho culture, altough it is a weak macho culture when actually challenged by determined and rational Americans.  The way to control their violent impulses against Americans is to embarrass them when they make their weak pretenses of being manly men with violence.  The few Americans present in Benghazi fought bravely and several died as real men would.  Their President did not prove a worthy Commander-in-Chief however.  Obama was a shrinking violet who let these brave Americans down.  He will do all he can to delay that investigation into what happened that he promised when he seemed not to even know what part he had played in our ineffectual response to this terrorist attack on the United States of America.  We need a firmer man in the position of Commander-in-Chief.  We need someone who can see things as they are, rather than as he wishes they were.