General Carter Ham, Commander of US Africa Command at the time, is who you’re speaking of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Ham
General Ham became a general just before OIF 1. He had a respectable peacetime resume prior to that. Lots of admin and schoolhouse time, a couple commands of instructional units. Some Bosnia time under xlinton as commander in chief. All indicators of a suck up. His division command with 1st ID was unusually short. Less than a year, I think. Who the heck is a two-star infantry division commander for less than a year? That’s hardly enough time to change the stationary and signage. And suddenly when hussein got in he got another star, and then another. Very quickly. Four stars. Bang.
He was the USAFRICOM Combatant Commander (CC) on September 11, 2012, during the Benghazi attacks. Every CC has at their disposal an “in extremis” force of special operators that can be deployed anywhere in their theater on short notice. [ https://www.americanspecialops.com/special-forces/cif/ ]
In the case of Benghazi, this force and others tried to get in the air. Gen Ham later claimed that he didn’t have enough intel to deploy them. Always a good excuse.
Several officers lower in the chain, who were loaded on runways with engines hot ready to go, claimed that they were denied air clearance (State Dept) and told there were no rules of engagement (Pentagon/White House) that would accommodate a rescue mission in Libya. Essentially the stand-down order.
They were relieved or cashiered for speaking about it publicly.
General Ham retired in summer ‘13. He insists that he gave no stand-down order, which is true. He did not tell his forces to stand down. He simply ensured that they had no air clearances, and made sure his lawyers put a stop to any rescue mission.
The teams that were ready to go hot? All they knew is that there were Americans in trouble and they were told they couldn’t go help them for legal reasons and politics. The in extremis teams could have been there between 2-3 hours, with significant reinforcements between 6-10 hours. Would that have saved the ambassador Stevens and the others? Maybe not. But it sure as hell would have been better than the alternative.
I’ve been in some footsteps of Ham, but never worked around him directly so I can’t say anything against him personally. I’ll just say those footprints he left did not glow with patriotic sacrifice.
Military resources are tightly controlled but one would think that some high level military commander that knew what was going on would have given the order to help save lives knowing and not caring that his career would be over
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Well, some people still believe the story that General Ham was all set to do just that, but was relieved of command on the spot...No proof of it that I have seen:
Tiger Droppings reported:
The information I heard today was that General [Carter] Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.
General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.
The story continues that now General Rodiguez would take General Ham’s place as the head of Africom.
Sure enough Obama nominated Gen. David Rodriguez to replace Gen. Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command.