The orphaned rescue failure
President Kennedy said of the Bay of Pigs “victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan”. That describes the recent failure of a rescue attempt in Afghanistan last month which we wrote about last week recounting the story from our buddy Susan Katz Keating in AMI Newswire. Today she writes that blame for the failure is lost in the finger pointing between the White House and the Pentagon.
The rescue at issue is the attempt to save two English language instructors from the American University of Kabul, American Kevin King and Australian Kevin Weeks, who were captured at gunpoint on August 7th outside of the Afghanistan capital.
A U.S. special operations team was flown into position to mount a rescue on Aug. 10, but President Barack Obama did not give his final approval. Twenty-four hours later, Obama reviewed the “decision documents” and authorized the raid.
Descending via high-altitude parachute drop, the American commandos landed on the night of Aug, 11 near their objective: a makeshift prison compound guarded by armed men. Under the cover of darkness, the commandos breached the outer walls.
“We raised hell in that compound,” one person with direct knowledge of the raid said. “We knocked down walls and killed bad guys.”
As they climbed through the openings in the walls, U.S. forces traded shots with hostile fighters, leaving seven defenders dead and one wounded, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed. Among its many duties, CENTCOM is the Pentagon’s Unified Combatant Command in charge of operations in Afghanistan.
“No civilians were killed or harmed,” said Col. John J. Thomas, the CENTCOM Director of Public Affairs. “No U.S. forces were killed or hurt.”
Nor were the teachers rescued – they were gone just four hours before the operators dropped on the target.
The disagreement comes in the events of August 10th leading up to the cancelled mission – when the teachers were at the target. The Pentagon claims that they gave all of the information that the president would need to approve the mission in a timely manner, but the National Security Council staff disagrees.
“On the first night in question, the decision never reached the President to make a decision,” a senior Pentagon official wrote in an email. “The fact of the matter is the President was never presented with a decision document that day.”
However, U.S. sources with knowledge of the mission said they heard a radio message that contained words to this effect: “The President can’t make time on his schedule to give the go-ahead.”
So when the operators jumped off on the 11th, King and Weeks had been moved from the target compound just four hours earlier. According to Keating, the president’s schedule included a round of golf on the 10th, although it’s not clear what exactly he was doing when the mission briefing arrived at the Martha’s Vineyard compound.
I can’t help but think of Lyndon Johnson picking targets for B-52 strikes in North Vietnam from the basement of the White House. If the President wants to win this war, he’s going to have to get his hands out of the planning.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War
The Preezy never wanted to win, and now he list wants to run out the clock.
I’d bet money there’s a deployment clock in the white house ticking down.
128 days and a wake-up….
Yeah, and hoping he can get a round of golf in every day.
Just, dammit, not list
Great leaders designate authority to those with better knowledge of each facet of the operation.
Narcissistic leaders want to pull strings that they don’t know the connection to.
The Glorious Leader doesn’t know how to make decisions, so nobody else can either.
This president and his administration have shown nothing but blatant disregard and even contempt for any lives, American or otherwise, especially military, for 8 years now. He has always been about glowing PR. If it’s as big as Bin Laden, he’s on the tube taking credit for being “in the loop all the way”. Benghazi, well…meh, who cares. An American and one of our allies held hostage, meh, “I’m having the best back nine I’ve had in months, show this shit to me later”.
Either leave these decisions to the Commanders who know and who in my opinion should be making the calls. Or be the quarterback you want everyone to believe you are and be there to call the audibles when needed. But either way, stop screwing up and screwing around with lives. Those of the hostages and those of the American rescuers sent to free them. But alas, I speak to the wind as it were.
I would say I can’t wait until January 20th but the possibility of Hillary Clinton in office makes me shudder. So I will hope and pray for the best for our nation as always and ask God to please be merciful to this country.
God’s mercy for our country and our children is our best hope, Sparks.
I tremble at the thought of what will happen to my grandchildren if He withdraws His hand of mercy from us.
Such bullshit. That should be a COCOM decision.
Especially if “someone” cannot make herself avaible. Ya, I’m at you Jarrett.
Hey, cut the POTUS some slack. Presidential vacations are important. Approving hostage rescue operations, not so much. And that 10 or 15 min needed to review a short message and give an approval can make a huge difference on how much someone can enjoy a vacation day! Priorities.
“It’s good to be King.” Unfortunately, as this example shows it’s often the common man who pays for the King’s fun – often with their life or freedom.
Another line that fits from History of the World Part 1:
“Fuck the poor!”
Find them! Capture them! Kill them! Wash this!
If the President wants to win….
(snork!)
No, I don’t think President Giveashit cares one way or the other. It has nothing to do with him. It isn’t important enough.
Now those people will be held until another fat ransom is negotiated, and if they make it back at all, I will be surprised.
“fat ransom is negotiated”
How else is he going to empty Gitmo.
5 for 1, this would get rid of 10 more detainees.
Have to wonder what he is going to do next – approve Operation Barbarossa?
What is a ‘decision document’ – that is ‘way above my pay grade. I thought it was more like “well, wtf are you gonna do?”
Since when did the president have to be the approving authority on military operations being conducting during declared hostilities? I mean, I would get it if the hostages were in Pakistan, but if they are being held in Afghanistan, shouldn’t the local theater commander be the approval authority?
It’s within his authority as CINC to require such missions be approved by him personally prior to execution. As Jonn notes, historical precedent in the form of LBJ shows that that kind of micromanagement is a monumentally foolish way to run a war. But it’s within his authority.
Then again: no one ever accused this Administration of having a clue when it came to foreign policy or conducting a war.
Another fine example of “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you ought to do it.”
Yeah, I am quite aware of LBJ and his interference in Vietnam, and that it is within the Presidents authority. I just find it interesting watching a President play General, and don’t get why they seem to feel the need to interfere in these matters.
“Interesting” isn’t the adjective I’d use for such conduct. “Revolting” or “disgusting” would be much higher on my list of appropriate terms.
I was trying to be polite I guess……but yeah “revolting” works.
If he trusted his commanders he would have told them to execute right away.
No trust = “let me think about it. Let me ask one of my golf buddies what their opinion is.”
“Guys, not now, POTUS is in the rough and doesn’t want to take a drop.”
Wouldn’t that be PinC??
And, getting the impression Pentagon is getting a little tired of going under the bus….
Getting real crowded under that bus
The Glorious Leader cant make a decision to save his fucking life. Even with the oft-cited Bin Laden raid, which had no downside for him, he hemmed and hawed and had to be handheld. That is not a failure of leadership, it’s a complete lack thereof. As for the Johnson comparison, I remember Stephen Coonts writing something along the lines of “Four Americans dead, two 20-million-dollar A-6s down, all to drop $80,000 worth of ordnance on a fucking gap between two trees that some asshole said was a ‘suspected truck park.'” Bush, for all his faults, could make a Goddamn decision. A lot of his decisions were wrong, but he shouldered the burden of his office. He could also delegate without micromanaging. I keep thinking back to my Grandma telling me about how she and her family would listen to FDR’s Fireside Chat addresses on the radio in their living room in Queens, NY in the ’30s. He would clearly describe the problem and then say, “Here is what we are going to do about it, starting tomorrow.” FDR was pretty damned liberal, and some of his ideas either didn’t work or made things worse, but enough of them worked to make a difference, and more importantly he was a LEADER. President Roosevelt gave the entire nation a detailed briefing on the situation, a clear plan of action, a realistic timeline, and measurable goals every time. Politician though he was (and he was VERY political, sometimes downright Machiavellian), Franklin Roosevelt was first and foremost a LEADER. My Grandpa was a lifelong conservative Republican his entire life who couldn’t be more opposed to FDR in terms of political views, and he kept a portrait of the man in his dining room until he passed away in 1992 because he was THAT proud to have had Roosevelt as his Commander in Chief, both during the Depression and during his wartime service. The Glorious Leader seems so obsessed with his “legacy,” you’d think he’d want it to be a good one. Oh well, one of the hostages is Australian. Maybe Aussie SAS can… Read more »
Think again. The commander of all allied forces in A’stan is the ISAF chief U.S. Army GEN John Nicholson. Australian forces in theater would fall under the authority of GEN Nicholson, who in turn answers to his boss CENTCOM headshed GEN Joseph Votel, and all the way to the Pentagon, and the White House. If it were an OZ general in command of ISAF, then the Australian Prime Minister & Minister of Defense would call the shots.
Dammit.
I have mixed feelings about this one. oBaMa aside, two knuckleheads who thought it a good idea to take a teaching job in Afghanistan were kidnapped. I’m sorry for that but, you know, if you walk past the signs that read “Mine Field!” to take a stroll and get yourself blown up, I’m not sending anyone in to pick up the pieces.
Counter-point:
You do not go to rescue the selfless heroes / mindless dummies that put themselves in an avoidable situation.
You go to annihilate, up close and bayonet personal, every last one of the assholes that think it might be acceptable to sieze Americans as hostages. Or, our buddies, for that matter.
The rescue, if any, is happy happenstance. The messge is “We can get you, gut you like a fish, anywhere we choose, anytime we want, and all your friends and associates.
I like that approach. I can get with that.
+1
Now if we’d just do that…
Yeah we were talking about The Micromanager In Chief years ago due to his policies hampering our military’s success. Here we are years later talking about the same thing.
And this president, being the first black CinC, had more of a duty and obligation to demonstrate that he could handle the job than any of his predecessors. Instead he let down all those who had placed so much hope in him, particularly all the serving blacks and the millions of black veterans, and through his selfishness and narcissism, reinforced the stereotypes.
It was the greatest example of affirmative action ever and like so many folks promoted above their level of ability to perform, Barack Obama proved yet again the fallacy of that racial construct.
Without really thinking through the truth of what I’ve said here, someone’s going to call Ol’ Poe a racist starting in 3, 2, 1…
Poe, you’re a racist.
See?
More like a realist than a racist. I say ditto. You think a white guy who was a community organizer from wherever could have been elected? He got in b/c of his skin color and then spent coming upon 8 years proving his incompetence. I guess that makes me a racist also. Or a realist. Either way you know I’m right.
I doubt that there is an actual racist among us. If there is, he is a lurker who stays silent. Is there anyone who would not associate with a Veteran who is Black purely because that Veteran is Black? Is there someone here who draws negative conclusions about a person solely because that person is Black? Is there anyone here who voted for McCain or that other idiot four years later just to try to keep a Black fag out of the White House? Seriously, I can’t think of one person here who might have done that. The very visit to this issue is somewhat sick, I’d say. It shows just how ridiculous society has become such that one cannot criticize a person if that person is Black without being labeled a racist. Worse, the pencil necks, the academics, who live in their safe places will tell us that despite protests to the contrary, we really are racists, that we have rationalized our racism, that we merely exchanged our pointy white hoods and burning crosses for more subtle methods of exercising our bigotry. It’s in our DNA remember. That asshole in the White House said so.
The landscape is littered with those who died in service to this country, and they are dead due to the total fucking incompetence of this community organizer.
He is a textbook example of the Peter Principle. He is an absolute waste of space.