When Appeasement is in Season

Last week was especially bad for the American military, already drained by sequestration and segregated from a society where “affluenza” has become our signature epidemic. A panel of Federal judges in San Francisco – probably none of whom had ever served in uniform – decided that “stolen valor” medals are trumped by “free speech.” Because the “affluenza society” routinely fights our wars by putting Other People’s Kids in harm’s way, medals for gallantry are understood as being mere fashion accessories.

After such a week, I was in no mood to catch the Democratic debate last night or even to watch “Madam Secretary,” – same themes but with better drama and more appealing star-power. Instead, I crowded into a packed movie theater to watch Michael Bay’s new thriller, Thirteen Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. While the movie is far from flawless, it is action-packed and compelling, especially when compared to those tedious congressional hearings. Straight answers in those endless proceedings were as rare as an endangered species, especially Hillary Clinton’s notorious non-answer, “What difference does it make?” While her name is left scrupulously unmentioned, the movie provides a stark eye-witness account of what happened when American fighting men left were left marooned and unreachable even as their enemies massed. The main culprit: A deeply complacent, and even delusional, State Department bureaucracy. Given Hollywood’s usual cheerleading for Democratic leaders and agendas, the wonder is that such cinematic truth-telling was even allowed; but maybe after American Sniper broke box office records last year, studio executives decided that business was, after all, just business.

If so, then they complicated Hillary Clinton’s current efforts to live down her past, trying to substitute her husband’s name and reputation to repair her own. Although her arguments often seem forced and self-serving, watching Thirteen Hours, I saw something else. To me, Benghazi closely resembled Mogadishu, Secretary Clinton’s bungled response in Libya closely rivaling President Clinton’s debacle in Somalia. In case you have forgotten, in Mogadishu on October, 3, 1993, 18 American Rangers were killed and 75 others seriously wounded on what was supposed to be a “peacekeeping operation.”

Shortly thereafter, I led a Joint Chiefs study that analyzed classified after-action reports to determine what had gone wrong. NDU Press published it in 1994 as Somalia Operations: Lessons Learned, a poor man’s version of Mark Bowden’s Blackhawk Down (and, sadly, without his royalties). But in uniformed circles it was considered controversial because I criticized the chain of command for ignoring fundamental principles while embracing the new-normal of peacekeeping. Shortly before the disaster, one of my sources (himself a general) had even witnessed a flash-mob of heavily armed Somalis swarming around - and very nearly overwhelming - an elite US infantry battalion. Yet when the American on-scene commander requested the same tanks and armored vehicles that had recently brought victory in Operation Desert Storm, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin refused. Why risk admitting to the American people that a peacekeeping expedition was rapidly going south?

Substitute “Arab spring” for “peacekeeping expedition” and you have precisely the same arrogance and delusions that, twenty-odd years apart, link Benghazi with Mogadishu. While there are more similarities than differences between Secretary Clinton and President Clinton, at least one of those differences remains important. While the secret soldiers of Benghazi were ignored, short-changed and even pressured into signing non-disclosure statements, the boys of Mogadishu received this well-earned tribute from President Clinton in March, 1994:

“If there are any debates still to be had about our mission in Somalia, let people have those debates with me. But let there be no debate about how you carried out your mission…Your nation is grateful and your president is terribly, terribly proud of you.”  

Sometimes even a little candor from the boss means a whole lot.

A former draftee, Kenneth Allard is a retired Army Colonel who served as Dean of the National War College and NBC News military analyst. Living in San Antonio, TX, he is a regular contributor to the Washington Times, and columnist for Real Clear Defense.