The Panetta Doctrine

National Review ^ | October 28, 2012 | Jonah Goldberg

[Snuph]

The secretary of defense in his best grown-up voice says:

“(The) basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on; without having some real-time information about what’s taking place,” Panetta told Pentagon reporters. “And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.”

It seems obvious that Panetta is trying protect Obama from responsibility for the administration’s Benghazi response. I don’t think that works. The decision to outsource the call is still a presidential decision.

But there are two problems bigger problems with the Panetta doctrine. First, Panetta says they didn’t have real-time information. Uh, if having a live video feed and real-time reports from assets on the ground for hours doesn’t count as real-time information, what does? And if, as rumors suggest, the drones monitoring the situation were armed, the idea that the administration was trying to avoid some kind of “black hawk down” situation seems incomprehensible.

Which brings us to the second, I think bigger, problem with the Panetta doctrine. If the circumstances in Libya didn’t meet the “enough information” threshold for a rescue attempt or some other form of intervention, then what does? And, note, Panetta & Co. make it sound as if the decision to let the Americans on the scene twist in the wind was sort of a no-brainer, not a difficult decision. So what happened in Libya didn’t even come close to the threshold for intervention.

[Just mythoughts]

I think the reason why Obama would not call in the military is he did not want his weapons stash destroyed. Everything I have read to date sounds like Benghazi was a weapons depot and Obama got double crossed by the so called spontaneous mob angered over a well planned/plotted so called offensive video. I would not be the least bit surprised that video was commissioned out of the bowels of Obama’s conscripts. Although I think the purpose of that video was a call across the Muslim world for different reason than to rip off Obama’s weapons stash. The film maker claiming to the AP he was an Israeli Jew was not done out of innocent motives.

[TigersEye]

The Panetta Doctrine

Real-time onsite video. Secured e-mail. Speaking live over two lines of radio transmissions with personnel onsite from both compounds. Two drones overhead. All of it live-streaming to the entire mil-DC network of sit-rooms.

Did Panetta expect al Qaeda to call in with GPS-camera phones and explain their plans and positions to him? Maybe we can air drop laser sighting tags throughout the Muslim world and ask them to all kindly affix one to the tops of their heads?