Anything that can’t fit into a neat mission category is the appropriate mission for the SAS. A mission of putting diplos into contact with rebel leaders in a chaotic and fluid situation is just such a messy, undefined mission. So you give it to your best, smartest and most flexible troops: the SAS.
If it was blowing a hole in a wall, use Rangers. This was not blowing a hole in a wall. So you use guys that are a lot smarter. Don’t worry, when they come out, they’ll have met what passes for rebel leadership.
They’ll have accomplished their mission.
And the simpletons who think the SAS troops were cowards for not shooting their way out of a roadblock while surrounded by 100s of twitchy Libyans rebels WHO THEY ARE TRYING TO MEET, NOT KILL, can go back to their child-like comic-book view of the world.
Cheers mate. I have no military experience whatsover, but I understand some of the people who made those kinds of comments about the SAS and this situation have.
Pretty sorry state of affairs if people who should know better don’t...
“And the simpletons who think the SAS troops were cowards for not shooting their way out of a roadblock while surrounded by 100s of twitchy Libyans rebels WHO THEY ARE TRYING TO MEET, NOT KILL, can go back to their child-like comic-book view of the world.”
Not cowards just dumb. Walk right into an ambush? Unless
of course Maxwell Smart is running this OP, then it all
makes sense. Getting caught with the “elite” SAS may give
the diplomat some cred and stir the curiosity of the rebel
leaders. Or they just plain screwed up.
It always amazed me how easy it is for someone on the other side of the world with zero experience in the field to tell you how you should have done things better or differently. Quite frankly, I like my skin and everything contained within it, so when someone else was willing to sacrifice it at their whim because of some idea they had gotten from a movie, I politely told them what they could go do to themselves... A couple of times I even keyed the mic when I said it and told them they had just misunderstood the transmission when I got back. Of course no one was willing to file a charge when the objective had been accomplished... They would have looked like an idiot.
I decided I was better suited to private contractor work... Never looked back.
Regards,
Raven6