For those put off by the posts today about Obama, Benghazi, and the fallout, I should explain.
I’m former military, Navy. (Senior Service!) It gave me a direction that I never had growing up (through no fault of my parents). My Master Corporal in Basic likened it to, “We do in 10 weeks, what your parents wouldn’t do in 20 years.” You know what? He was right.
The aforementioned folks saved my week four letter that basically whines, “I wish I hadn’t done this! I want to be back working at McDonalds!”
I went in at 156lbs and came out 175. I swear I grew 2 inches. Friends who knew me less than six months earlier asked, “When did you get shoulders?”
After graduation, I was all, “Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am.” when talking to civilians. It was a discovery of respect. Respect for myself. Respect for others. Respect for the chain of command.
I knew I didn’t know as much as my superiors, therefore I learned to trust them because the training gave me no other option. I had to depend on them to know what the heck they were doing or the whole thing broke down. A military outfit does not want the “whole thing broke down”.
The revelations today about Benghazi are devastating to people like me because it means that the whole thing broke down. It means that those in command didn’t know what to do. It means that they lost control, or worse, deemed the lives of those people less important than the political ramifications.
This is not and can not be acceptable. There is no justification for ambivalence or inaction when the capabilities to respond are at hand. There is no intelligence valuable enough to sacrifice people involuntarily.
President Obama failed his SecStates 3am test and people died.
I hope that Americans don’t fail in their duty. They need to send a message to their gov’t, their military and the world that this day of self-inflicted infamy won’t happen again.
The Western World the Greeks gave us requires a strong US.
