In a bold and daring move that suggested Churchillian backbone,
the British military on Saturday flew military aircraft into Libya
to rescue oil workers and others stranded in desert locations amid
the escalating violence of Moammar Gaddafi’s reign of terror.
The secret mission reportedly plucked 150 or more British
citizens and other nationals from the chaos and flew them to safety
in Malta Saturday, U.K. Defense Secretary Liam Fox confirmed to
Associated Press.
The bravado of the British in acting to rescue its
citizens from a madman’s mayhem stands in such stark contrast to
the inept and weak-kneed response of the United States to the
Libyan crisis that is raises these questions: What good is the
world’s greatest military machine if our leaders won’t use it? And
why pretend to be a world leader if we won’t act like
one?
Those were questions that I had been asking myself all
last week because of a personal connection to the tragedy unfolding
in Libya. My nephew is a Foreign Service Officer who was working at
his job in the United States embassy in Tripoli when the
revolutionary winds of democracy blew in from Egypt after the fall
of Hosni Mubarak.
Despite the obvious warning signs of turmoil across North
Africa and the Middle East, the State Department was caught
completely unprepared for unrest in Libya, where Gaddafi has ruled
by brutal tyranny for four decades. How it could not have dawned on
the Obama Administration that American citizens and embassy
officials would be in grave danger is beyond comprehension. Yet it
seems there were no contingency plans for getting Americans out if
violence reached Tripoli.
I was astounded to learn this week that the U.S. Embassy
in Tripoli had no U.S. Marine security guard. I had always believed
that Marines protected every U.S. embassy, even in the most secure
and friendly nations. But in Tripoli — of all places — it turns
out that the only security for the small embassy staff was provided
by hired Libyan nationals.
As the Washington Post reported Sunday: “The U.S.
Embassy and other diplomatic posts in Tripoli, reopened only five
years ago, comprise a series of lightly protected compounds and
trailers. The guards there were Libyan, not the U.S. Marines posted
outside most embassies. And an armed and angry Libyan opposition
was approaching the city from the east, as hundreds of Americans
awaited evacuation across rough seas.”
In other words, the embassy officials and staff were
sitting ducks for a delusional dictator who had vowed to fight to
the death to stay in power. We had known for decades that Gaddafi
was capable of unspeakable atrocity — does anyone at the State
Department remember the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103? — and yet
our citizens and diplomats were unprotected.
During a week of terror in which it was nearly impossible
to communicate with my nephew or virtually any American trapped in
Tripoli, I had watched a feckless response by President Obama and
his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the unfolding slaughter
in Tripoli ordered by Gaddafi.
After days of silence, Obama finally went on television to
deplore the violence and to promise that his beloved “international
community” would begin debating responses, but he timidly would not
even name the source of that violence — Col. Gaddafi. The
President’s rhetoric tiptoed along a tightrope stretched between
restraint and gutless appeasement, as if not offending a terrorist
murderer was his first priority.
All the week, I kept asking myself: Where in God’s name is
the U.S. Navy? Is the Navy’s Sixth Fleet not deployed in the
Mediterranean with ships and aircraft available to rescue trapped
Americans in Libya? Why not use it? In my mind’s eye, I envisioned
a daring nighttime rescue by U.S. Navy Seals, dropping into the
embassy compound via helicopters and pulling U.S. officials and
American citizens to safety.
But no. Instead, the Obama Administration’s response was
to hire a commercial ferry from Malta. The Maltese Ferry was no
falcon (apologies to Humphrey Bogart), swooping in to swiftly fly
our endangered Americans to safety. Once it reached Tripoli harbor,
it sat there for three days because the seas were too rough for it
to sail. (I bet an American destroyer would not have delayed
sailing because of weather.) So once our embattled Americans
escaped from our unsafe embassy, they had to endure three days on a
ferryboat unsuited to the venture — all the while wondering if or
when Gaddafi’s planes or tanks might blow it and them out of the
water.
The story ended happily when the ferry finally docked in
Malta on Saturday, but that was thanks to pure luck rather than to
our government’s ability to manage crisis. It was left to the
British to give us a lesson in bold action. Under Obama’s
leadership, America has become expert at apologizing, temporizing
and speaking in mealy-mouthed, multicultural ambivalence, while
remaining unwilling to act boldly or speak clearly as if it were
still a leader of the free world.
Gaddafi may fall, not because the United Nations imposes
sanctions, and not because President Obama has given hope to those
yearning to be free, but because the people of Libya will risk
torture and death to topple him. Theirs is the admirable patriotism
of honor. Ours is the embarrassment of dithering in the crisis, and
watching — with poignant memory of past leaders like Roosevelt,
Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan who knew when to speak clearly and
act boldly — while the Brits show grit and guts reminiscent of
Churchill.
