Cohen: 'Do something, anything!' in Syria

"Don't just sit there, do something!  Anything!"

Do something... even if it means America's tripping on its own over-sized brass balls and landing face-first in another Mideastern civil war?

Richard Cohen cites the number of Syrians killed, displaced Syrians and refugees... but there were more deaths in Iraq, and just as many refugees flooded out -- and that was when thousands of U.S. boots were on the ground.  So U.S. troops are no guarantee of stopping any of that. And U.S. missiles? U.S. weapons transfers?  Even less likely. 

I give Cohen credit for not giving up, not changing his emotional tack.  But he's just plain wrong. Doing something, anything without a clear plan and exit strategy is usually worse than doing nothing, especially where U.S. lives and vital interests are not at stake. 

Unfortunately, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is a brutal dictator. However, it is not America's job to remove all the world's brutal dictators.  

Finally, it's a dishonest cheap shot to blame U.S. inaction entirely on Obama, because there is no support in Congress for another war, or more support for Sunni jihadi-linked groups. Cohen should blame the entire U.S. government -- and by extension, the American public, which opposes intervention -- for America's prudence.

Sorry, Rick. The U.S. answer remains the same: not this time; not our problem.

UPDATE (19.02.2014): Here's more support, from McClatchy, for what I've been saying: even if we wanted to help somebody in Syria, there's nobody the U.S. can in good conscience support: "State Dept still struggling to identify Syrian partner."

Obama’s failure to act on Syria

By Richard Cohen

February 18, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1eKpyEU

FOX tries its best to spin Senate BENGHAZI! report

Check out the GOP Spin Zone over at Fox News: 

• 
  COMPREHENSIVE REPORT BY the Senate Intelligence Committee definitively declares that individuals tied to 
• Al Qaeda groups were involved in the Benghazi attack, and that the attack could have been prevented.

Yet further down in the article it says:

The Senate committee report stressed that the intelligence still suggests the attack was not “highly coordinated,” but rather “opportunistic” – possibly put in place in “short order” after protests over an anti-Islam film elsewhere in the region.

“It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attacks,” the report said. 

So those conclusions from the Senate committee's own biased, partisan report refutes two of the Republicans' four main accusations against the Obama Administration: that al Qaeda was behind the attacks (and not just al Qaeda-affiliate groups being "involved"); and that the anti-Islam film had nothing to do with the timing of the attack. 

The third main accusation by the GOP is that the State Department and the White House ignored security threats inside Libya. This I won't go into now. It suffices to say that Amb. Stevens alone made the decision to visit Benghazi that day, not Hillary Clinton or President Obama. He was quite aware of the risky post-conflict security situation in Libya. Rep. Grayson made this amply clear in a House hearing on Benghazi, see it here:

The fourth main accusation by the GOP is that Obama and his generals did not come to the rescue of Amb. Stevens and other U.S. personnel in time, for reasons unclear or speculative. I won't respond to this accusation now either, since I've written about it before, and no credible analysts have been able to dispute the actual events or timing.

So there you go.  BENGHAZI! has been reduced to plain old Benghazi, a political tempest in a teapot, where brave Americans' lives and memories have been used cynically as political ammunition by the GOP.  Moving on.

Post-Benghazi, GOP hurts Libyan diplomacy

This is basically what I said earlier: U.S. diplomats understand that they must sometimes work in dangerous places, and they're willing to take some risks to do their jobs:

Thousands of U.S. diplomats do their jobs every day, conscious of the dangers they face but accepting of the risks that come with the job. Excessive security that interferes with their jobs doesn't serve our interests abroad or make us safer at home. The politicians who play political football with Benghazi should be ashamed of themselves.

In other words, our foreign service officers can't do public diplomacy when they are ridiculously outnumbered by armed guards, or holed up in a fortress embassy.  

FSOs also receive extra compensation (danger pay) for working in posts like Libya. 

(Mieczyslaw Boduszynski was a Foreign Service officer with the State Department from 2004 to 2013.)

The Benghazi syndrome

By Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski 

December 3, 2013 | Los Angeles Times

URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/12/03/210354/the-benghazi-syndrome.html

Letter to Uncle T. on BENGHAZI!

Uncle T.,
How can a lawyer say that incompetence (not negligence) is a crime?  Mind you, I'm not accusing anybody of incompetence.  Hindsight is 20/20.

Another good test of whether it's a kooky conspiracy theory or a real scandal is try to avoid using the pronoun "they."  Can you do that when you explain Benghazi?  

The GOP Congress slashed the State Department's diplomatic security budget by $500 million, i.e. Congress appropriated less money than Obama asked for. Hillary warned Boehner back in 2011 that such cuts would hurt national security.  If you want to find fault, start there.

Regarding threats -- duh!  There's a reason DOS personnel in Libya get danger pay... because it's dangerous!  U.S. personnel were in a conflict zone where al Qaeda affiliates were known to operate.  Then again, why did Congress cut DOS's budget?  We also got threats before 9/11 that Rice and Bush apparently ignored. Criminal incompetence... or nothing concrete enough to act on?  Be fair.

Next, the military commanders on the ground -- you know, those guys that politicians are never supposed to question -- decided not to scramble jets or send in FAST commandos from Spain during those 2 days. Was that the right decision? I don't know. But it was their decision. It wasn't a political decision.  Are you saying that SecDef Panetta, General Ham and General Dempsey at AFRICOM should be held accountable for "criminal" incompetence?  Remember Panetta's words: "the basic principle here… is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on; without having some real-time information about what's taking place."  They didn't know so they didn't send in commandos.  

Here's the Benghazi timeline sent by Panetta to the House Armed Services Committee.

Next, what happened after.  Talking points for a Sunday talk show one week after. OMG, that's important.  I mean, that's like testifying under oath.  And that was when we still didn't know who carried out the attack.  We STILL DON'T KNOW.  Yet it was terribly important for the Right to call it a "terrorist" attack by al-Qaeda.  Why?  I don't know.  What difference does it make?  Apparently it makes all the difference, even though those people will still be dead.  (By the way, how many times did Cheney and Rice go on Sunday talk shows saying Saddam had WMD, ignoring all the evidence that he didn't have any? No crime, no incompetence there? Remind yourself here.)  

Next, there was no cover-up about security. The State Dept. did its own investigation.  Congress has read the partly classified report and has not disputed its findings.  The report did not say the video was the cause of the attack; they said most likely some planning had gone into it, but it was an opportunistic strike.  No cover-up there.

Next, this deputy mission chief Hicks says he is being mistreated for "blowing the whistle," although he still has a job at the same level of pay.  The State Dept. is not allowed to comment on his employment status since it's a personal matter.  So the lawyer in you should wonder what the other side of the story is.  By law, we cannot hear it.  

So, in all the above, tell me who did what wrong and how it rises to the level of a cover-up or even a criminal act. Be specific, counselor!

Here is a liberal take on what the State Dept. & White House did wrong.  

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[ I have cleaned up Uncle T's spelling and grammar a bit. - J ] 

My how you play word games. Since when is it not a cover up if only incompetence is involved and not a crime. (The little Democratic soldier marches on, with blinders always in place, no matter what the facts are).

The facts are that there was a specific warning given to the State Dept. (and possibly Secy. of State Hillary Clinton) of increased activity indicating the real possibility of a planned terrorist attack. The State Dept./ Clinton's response was to ignore the warning.

The Benghazi embassy then specifically requested increased security due to the known warnings and known increased terrorist activity.  The State Dept./ Clinton's response was to deny same.

It is overwhelming evidence that you NEVER let the facts get in the way of your opinion when you declare the you "don't get it" because the State Dept. sure "got it " and realized that it's incompetence costs American lives. The Dept's response was to  just plain lie and declare that the attack was an isolated unplanned uprising due to a video. That's a cover up by anyone's but your definition.

Obama sure "got it" as he tried to protect Clinton and his administration and continued the unplanned isolated uprising lie.

Lying about the warning and lying about the denial of requested additional security and then making up non-existent facts in an attempt to deny culpability are facts for which you should be outraged.


UPDATE (05.16.2013): McClatchy is doing some tough reporting on Benghazi that gives the lie to the GOP's insistence on some kind of scandal or cover-up.  Check out these two articles:  "Benghazi emails show CIA deputy did most of editing on talking points," and "Ambassador Stevens twice said no to military offers for more security, U.S. officials say."  

Bergen: Missed warning signs of terror attacks?

CNN's Peter Bergen analyzed why the Boston bombings -- and 9/11, for that matter -- weren't prevented, but it's the very end of his story that caught my eye:

The problem is that, as Roberta Wohlstetter pointed out half a century ago in her study of Pearl Harbor, separating out the really important signals from all the "noise" in the system is only easy to do after the fact, particularly when the U.S. government has now assembled a database of an astonishing number of 700,000 individuals it suspects of ties to terrorism.

Bergen is trying to compare the Pearl Harbor surprise attack to terrorist attacks. But there's a big difference: there weren't 700,000 Japans to keep track of in 1941. Presumably, any one of these suspects could carry out an terror attack today... or somebody who is not on the list at all.

Still, it's hard to believe there are 700,000 people in the world with ties to terrorism. Shouldn't there be way more terrorist attacks if there are so many of them?

More likely, this data base of suspects is another out-of-control government program.  Maybe we missed the Boston bombers because we were too busy following around 700,000 other people, many of whom didn't deserve to be on that list?

UPDATE (05.06.2013): Here's another article about America's bloated terrorist data bases: "Terror database too unwieldy to flag Boston suspect, critics say." The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) list, with 875,000 records, is the big daddy from which all other government data bases draw, such as the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database, which in turn feeds the State Department's watch list, which is supposed to prevent terrorist suspects from getting U.S. visas.

Agencies often miss warning signs of attacks

By Peter Bergen

April 27, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/27/opinion/bergen-warning-signs-terrorism/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

DOS 'whistleblower': Nation-building FAIL

More than a few State Dept. officers disagree with Van Buren, and personally distrust his motivations (write a provocative book at/near retirement and get rich and famous) instead of blowing the whistle internally and trying to change the system from within.

Myself, I have a problem with his "greedy contractors"/"corrupt bureaucrats" line.  First, contractors don't write the contracts, the government does.  They just bid on the work and then implement it.  Secondly, Van Buren presents no evidence of U.S. government corruption.  

If Van Buren meant corruption within the Iraqi and Afghan governments, then, well, duh.  We never should have expected to funnel $ billions through these nascent institutions and trust all the money to be well-spent or even accounted for.  But in fact, trying to spend a lot of money fast -- and this was a hell of a lot to spend on development, more than any nation had ever tried to spend before in such a short time -- no matter who was managing it, was bound to lead to waste, poor accounting, missed and moving targets, sloppy work, etc.  

Those disagreements aside, Van Buren's central points are true and bear repeating: 1) using development aid as a counter-insurgency tactic almost never works; and 2) in our arrogance and cultural blindness we have failed to understand that they don't want to be like us, they don't even want most of our stuff.  This is especially true in Afghanistan.

How not to reconstruct Iraq, Afghanistan - or the US

Why has the US spent so much money and time "so disastrously trying to rebuild occupied nations abroad"?

By Peter Van Buren

August 28, 2012 | Al Jazeera

URL:  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201282312156520461.html