(NOTE: This installment is one in a series of comments on the Benghazi affair. I refer to the killing of several Americans in September 2012.
SOMETIMES in attempting to analyze a situation or policy it helps to reduce things to their most basic elements. Let me attempt to do this. The important aspect of the event is the number of dead Americans. The official death toll is four. The Mass Media reports, as almost always, are not very clear on details. Apparently the US compound had a significant number of Americans in it. Other than the dead four the rest escaped, some with injuries. It seems that several of the four died the deaths of heroes defending their comrades and enabling them to live.
In combat situations such as this, there are times when deaths are inevitable. In other words, once the attack became serious and sustained a minimum number of Americans were doomed. The goal then became keeping this number to that minimum. One way to increase the number is to increase the number of combatants. This means that introducing a rescue force of regular military, which probably could have been done, would have led to more dead Americans. To put this bluntly: bringing troops in at this point would have increased the number of targets for the terrorists to shoot. It would have been counter productive. How could they have entered the compound except by walking into it, and through “enemy” lines?
I offer the following image. Consider the actions taken on ships in times of danger. The sailors, when taking battle stations, close watertight doors. This will minimize outside water from sinking a ship by isolating it in one compartment and not another. What this means, also, is that the sailors on the “wrong” side are going to drown, as a result of official policy. The action is intended to save the maximum number of lives by judging some to be already lost. It is all a matter of economics. The value of one human life is exactly one half of two.
It is my opinion that the situation in Benghazi was such that the lives lost were going to be lost. Any escalation of the combat would have only made things worse in terms of more dead Americans. It might also have led to an over reaction by the native population, if more of their people had been killed by an “invasion” force from America. That is, instead of one incident it might have become a sustained campaign. Does the US really want another one of these?
This is a hard and (literally) coldblooded calculation. Sometimes national interests require such an attitude. And it may be the reason why the administration is so “confused” in its explanation of its actions. Maybe it did the right thing, but lacks the “moral”(?) courage to offer this defense.
P.S. The blog will be “on vacation” for approximately one week. I hope to see you here again when I return. Thank you and God bless.