Fact One:
1) Only the POTUS can authorize a CBA (cross border authority) command for a rescue mission in a foreign nation.
Plus Fact Two:
2) No rescue mission was attempted.
Equals Fact Three:
3) 0bama turned his back on 41 State Dept. and CIA employees refusing to issue a CBA command and went to bed so he could go to Las Vegas the next day.
I would make this observation. If you’ve spent most of your life in jobs that have no real connection to the people in your office, your division, or your company....acting more as a professor than a leader....and more focused on an agenda than actual events going on around you, then you’d be disengaged.
I suspect leadership within the State Department, CIA, and Pentagon are sitting there and now grasp that if they ever get into such a life-threatening bind, it won’t be the President acting in your best interest to defend you or save you.
In this case, the ambassador would have been better off to turn and ask for help from the local French embassy. And that says tons about who you trust.