Three weeks after the terrorist attack that killed U.S.
Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, the FBI finally
was permitted to bring its formidable forensic investigative
capabilities to the burned-out husk of a building.
The FBI’s efforts won’t be entirely futile. Their expertise and
methodical approach will certainly yield some evidence of what
happened and perhaps who committed it, but there are a number of
facts that compel us to conclude that their effort will be
pointless.
Much of the information about the attack is already known. From
a former Navy weapons expert, I learned that the attack was both
well-planned and conducted by very highly trained terrorists.
Examining the photographs of the scene — and talking to his own
contacts — this man told me that the terrorist attack apparently
began with a mortar bombardment. Most important, he told me, was
the fact that the first rounds fired actually hit the building. A
mortar is an imprecise weapon. Unless the terrorists had carefully
picked their firing points and “registered” the target — measuring
carefully the distance and relative heights — they wouldn’t have
been able to do so.
This proves that the terrorists were not only careful planners,
they were highly skilled with their weapons of choice. Untrained
“demonstrators” simply couldn’t have hit the target with such
immediacy and precision. Mortar fire would have fallen all around
the area, missing the target as much as hitting it.
We don’t know, but the FBI must, the results of the autopsies on
the bodies of the four men killed. The ambassador apparently died
of asphyxiation in the fires started by the bombardment and other
parts of the attack. The other three may have died from gunfire or
other causes.
But most forensic evidence of the perpetrators — bodily fluids,
finger prints, hair and such — were probably destroyed in the fire
or were not ever in the building, as the mortar crew was not. And
whatever there may have remained would have been contaminated by
news crews and others tramping through the ruins for three weeks.
(CNN, in its own search before the FBI arrived, found a journal
kept by the ambassador in which he recorded his fears of an
attack.) Most importantly, in the absence of witness interviews and
the ability to pursue freely and question both witnesses and
suspects, what the FBI finds will be useless.
Identifying the perpetrators and — as Obama promised —
bringing them “to justice” will be impossible. The FBI spent about
three hours on the scene and wasn’t able to stay to pursue
witnesses and suspects. There is no civil order in Libya, no courts
to issue search warrants and no police to serve them. No Libyan
court exists to try the cases. In short, the whole exercise was
pointless. If we really wanted to catch and punish the terrorists
who committed this attack, it would be a job for the CIA and U.S.
Special Operations Command to find and then capture or kill
them.
President Obama and Attorney General Holder still — despite
four years’ experience — believe that terrorist attacks are
criminal acts for the criminal courts, not acts of war to be
responded to in kind.
It’s a milestone of sorts that we have to rely on a Clinton for
the truth. But it was Hillary Clinton who first admitted that there
was a probable link between the al-Qaeda offshoot in Libya and the
attack, as the New York Times reported. Further, Clinton
admitted that Obama’s military intervention in Libya had backfired.
Speaking to the usual suspects at the UN on September 25, Clinton
said: “Now with a larger safe haven and increased freedom to
maneuver, terrorists are seeking to extend their reach and their
networks in multiple directions.”
Our military intervention in Libya, which followed an admonition
by then-defense secretary Bob Gates that America had no national
security interest in that nation, has made things worse, creating
— in Clinton’s words — a larger safe haven for terrorists.
To paraphrase Joe Biden, al Qaeda is still alive and GM is still
dying. The danger created by Obama’s cavalier approach to the
threat has been demonstrated redundantly in Benghazi, costing the
deaths of four Americans including the first dead ambassador in 33
years.
The danger Obama has created is magnified by America’s
inattention to the war. Whether we like it or not, Islamists are
engaged in a global war, working like Stakhanovites to best employ
their kinetic and ideological weapons against us. As they did in
Libya, they manufacture opportunities to do so whenever we leave
ourselves open to attack.
Both President Obama — who has worked hard to keep the war out
of voters’ minds — and Republican candidate Mitt Romney — who
hasn’t focused on these issues at any point in the campaign — are
apparently happy with this inattention to the war.
But wars do not proceed on the schedules or according to
strategies candidates establish. Our enemies aren’t taking a few
months off to let us sort ourselves out. As my father always said,
the world has a lot of moving parts and just because we’re focused
on one doesn’t mean we can ignore the rest.
We can’t know how the war will intrude on the remaining thirty
days of the campaign, or even if it will. The third presidential
debate, to be held on October 22, will focus on foreign policy. It
will take Romney far beyond the issues he has spent his life
thinking about. Will he — can he — be as prepared on those topics
as he was in the first debate?
Romney’s positions on Afghanistan, Egypt, Israel, Libya and much
more will have to be developed and focused between now and that
debate. After omitting mention of Afghanistan in his convention
speech, Romney said, “Our goal should be to complete a successful
transition to Afghan security forces by the end of 2014. We should
evaluate conditions on the ground and solicit the best advice of
our military commanders.” That’s internally inconsistent. If we
can’t complete a “successful transition” in 2014 — and we can’t —
does he believe we need to stay until we can? Is that all he has to
say about a war in which 2,000 Americans have died to no apparent
purpose?
A week ago Paul Ryan said of Libya, “It’s part of a bigger
picture of the fact that the Obama foreign policy is unraveling
literally before our eyes on our TV screens.” In the October 22
debate, Romney will have to adopt that theme and tell the world —
in detail — how he would better manage our national security
interests and defeat the enemies who we face. Americans and our
enemies will be watching.
