Failure: Hillary Clinton and The Benghazi Incident

I recently read an article on RallyPoint saying that “hell [is] a special place” for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her part in the Benghazi disaster. That she lied to the families of the deceased about her role in that awful episode betrays the fact that this individual, citing psychologist Theodore Millon’s brief description of personality disorders, has a Borderline Personality Disorder comorbid with both a Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personal Disorder. That Clinton callously sacrificed the lives of those soldiers for a political agenda, when a mere order to execute a rescue could have changed the scenario and possibly saved lives when hostile forces overran, sacked and murdered people at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, is nothing new to history; it has happened before.

Similar circumstances occurred during the Siege and eventual massacre at the British Residency in Kabul during the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1879, when the powers that be saw the signs of trouble and yet allowed Sir Louis Cavagnari, Lt. Walter Hamilton, and the rest of the staff to die fighting for their lives against Afghan troops. But let us not hang this on our former Secretary of State alone.

Why didn’t our Commander-in-Chief take a more active role and authorize a rescue attempt? The closet American assets were in Aviano, so why not request British reinforcement? They had even closer assets in Cyprus, such as the RAF and, most likely, their British SAS.

This whole debacle has driven many Monday morning quarterbacks to share their views on what should have or should not have been done. Let me join them: in my opinion, if I had been a senior commander on scene, I would have gladly disobeyed orders to stand down and sacrificed my career in order to to get those people out of the besieged consulate. As part of the Army’s “Warrior Ethos” we are not to leave anybody behind, and yet this is what happened.

We failed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Information Management Officer, Sean Smith and CIA contractors Tyrone S Woods and Glen Doherty.

What we see here in the Benghazi scandal is an example of decaying leadership. Senior officers are not taking responsibility for their actions, NCOs are not behaving like NCOs, and junior-enlisted are emulating the actions of those above them. Everyone is more concerned about the wrongdoing of an individual and not about those who work alongside them. When the truth about Benghazi does come out, how will America react to the findings? Many people will and are saying that the only reason anyone is paying attention to this disaster is because Hillary is a woman.

In my 23 years of service, I have served with women who seized the proverbial moral high ground, and never stood down or relinquished a foot of ground. Besides Hillary, there is the CIA station chief who also refused to allow help to get to the diplomatic compound. He too should be “gifted” with a “special place in hell.” Instead they should both be charged with four counts of negligent homicide. These are not the type of people that we want serving or representing us.