Benghazi, Mali, and the Need for a Defensive American Strategy

Benghazi, Mali, and the Need for a Defensive American Strategy

by Jon Basil Utley, January 28, 2013

http://original.antiwar.com/utley/2013/01/27/benghazi-mali-and-the-need-for-a-defensive-american-strategy/

The greatest threat to America is not what foreigners do to us; rather it is what we do to ourselves. The greatest recent example is 9/11, Bin Laden’s attack. Our response was to virtually bankrupt ourselves
, lose the goodwill of much of the world, and make ourselves hated in most Muslim nations. Our trillion dollar “victory” in Iraq is followed by American businessmen and tourists fearing for their lives if they ever set foot there for the next 20 years, while business opportunities are taken up by foreign companies and other nations. Now comes Benghazi. The end result of the American response will be to further isolate our diplomats and intelligence officers in even more nations, confining them to their castle-like compounds. American diplomats and CIA staffs are already isolated in fortress embassies far away from downtown in traffic-dense 3rd world cities. It can take half a day to have a lunch appointment. I have seen some of these new embassies. They are designed to withstand military attacks and even further isolate our diplomats from local citizens. Our wars have already put American diplomats at risk in many nations, isolating us just as was Bin Laden’s objective. The recent dismissal of top security administrators will make their replacements even more fearful of allowing diplomats to circulate freely among native populations. In Iraq U.S. diplomats now have MRAPs at their disposal.
Our widespread predator drone killings of “terrorists” and their families in assorted nations have also changed the rules of war. Benghazi shows that American diplomats are now considered fair targets in any Muslim nation and possibly others. Diplomats may not be combatants, but they are targets of our enemies. In addition, CIA officials who were safe in communist times now represent an armed force managing attack drones. Thus they become targets too. Washington uses the CIA because it is not bound by military law, but a consequence of that is all its agents can now be considered combatants.