[Infowarrior] - OT: Teflon Decision-Making From Our Military

[Richard Forno]

National Review Online

May 13, 2013

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/348119/teflon-decision-making-our-military

Teflon Decision-Making From Our Military

By Bing West

Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine, has
written seven books about ground combat.

Sunday was quite a day for Benghazi and the U.S. military. At the platoon
level, you are expected to admit errors in firefights in order to correct
mistakes and do better the next time. We all make mistakes. But as we saw on
yesterday¹s talk shows, once you reach the top level, whether retired or
not, you deny any possibility of error and label any question about military
performance idiotic. This is not the behavior of a healthy organization, and
if it persists, we are in for a nasty shock in a future crisis or conflict.

On CBS, former secretary of defense Bob Gates launched an impassioned
defense of the Obama administration, sneering at critics for holding a
³cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces.² He
staunchly defended the administration¹s high-level decision-making
surrounding Benghazi, citing four reasons.

First, he said sending fighter jets ³ignored the number of surface to air
missiles that have disappeared from Qaddafi¹s arsenals. I would not have
approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft, over Benghazi.²

How many aircraft has the U.S. lost in hundreds of thousands of combat
flights since 2001? Zero. The former SecDef is so afraid of an unknown risk
that he would not send an aircraft capable of destroying a mortar site while
Americans died? This is the pinnacle of risk avoidance.

Second, he said, ²To send some small number of special forces or other
troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the
threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually
going on on the ground, would have been very dangerous.²

Let¹s do a quick review: The CIA did send in seven fighters; four
special-forces soldiers in Tripoli were ordered not to pitch in; the Marines
on Sigonella wanted to help; and there was nothing more to face than a mob
inspired by a video (accoridng to the administration). But for the Pentagon,
the risk was just too great.

Message to those who were already fighting on the ground in Benghazi: You
are on your own. SecDef believes it¹s ³very dangerous² to go into combat.

Third, Gates argued, ³We don¹t have a ready force standing by in the Middle
East, and so getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very
difficult, if not impossible. The one thing that our forces are noted for is
planning and preparation before we send people in harm¹s way, and there just
wasn¹t time to do that.²

Message to warfighters: Forget all those who, like Generals Mattis, Patton
and Marshall, claim that in combat the ability to improvise is the mark of a
true leader. The Pentagon will simply refuse to fight if we have not had the
time to plan and prepare as we see fit.

Fourth, Gates explained, ³my decisions would have been just as theirs were.²

Sadly, I believe him.

Meanwhile, over on ABC, George Will and retired general James Cartwright
were excusing the military by saying ten hours was not enough time to react.
The general said it takes up to ³a day or two² to arm an F-16, file flight
plans, arrange for refueling, etc. Therefore the solution is to pre-stage
the right kinds of forces, which requires a much larger military and a
knowledge beforehand about the location and severity of the threat.

By the reasoning of Will, Cartwright, and Gates, we do not have
general-purpose forces; we have special-purpose forces. Do we need more
forces staged around the world, or do we just need senior officers who can
respond to emergencies outside their normal checklists?

Appearing on CBS and NBC, retired ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, who led a
review of Benghazi, said in the process he posed no questions to Secretary
Clinton. ³I don¹t think there was anything there that we didn¹t know,² he
said. ³I don¹t see yet any reason why what we did at the Accountability
Review Board should be reopened.²

It was the review board that asserted the U.S. military could do nothing to
help. The review made no mention of evacuating the embassy at Tripoli
because of the risk of a terrorist attack, presumably because there wasn¹t
³anything there that we didn¹t know.²

In fact, the congressional testimony by Mr. Hicks did include at least three
new revelations.

First, very senior State Department officials reprimanded Hicks for bringing
up the idea of a terrorist attack, rather than a mob enraged by a video.

Second, four special-forces soldiers, en route to Benghazi to help our
wounded, were ordered by an officer in Stuttgart to stand down. Not only did
that suggest unwillingness to take risks for beleaguered comrades, it also
raised the question of misplaced authority in the chain of command during
battle. What authority permits an officer thousands of miles away to
override the commander on the ground?

Third, Mr. Hicks testified that Secretary Clinton approved, at about 8 p.m.
Washington time, the evacuation of the embassy in Tripoli due to terrorist
threats. That was a dramatic, escalatory decision, and it¹s unknown whether
the president or the Secretary of Defense was notified.

In the event, the U.S. military took no new, immediate action, even though
the embassy was being evacuated, as a result of the chaos at Benghazi. That
is big news. The military has justified itself by saying the battle was over
by the next morning, but no human being could predict when the battle would
end. Had the embassy in Tripoli been overrun, the military would not have
rationalized its non-actions by saying, ³well, the battle was over.²

The lack of military action reflects a failure to improvise, a basic test of
leadership in battle.

One question illustrates the inertia of our top generals and staffs: Had it
been President Obama who was missing in Benghazi, would the military still
have done nothing?

Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine, has
written seven books about ground combat.


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