Leon Penetta is Either a Dumbass or a Liar
The Secretary of Defense, in his most determined way, continues to try to protect the President from the fiasco in Benghazi. So desperate to shield the President he announced what will be forever remembered as the Penetta Doctrine:
“(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.”
Of course, in the circles that I ran with, it will be forever labeled “The Dumbest Shit I Ever Heard Doctrine”.
To be fair to Leon, however, his audience for this ridiculous statement was not members of the military and especially not for those in the Special Operations arena who immediately recognized that the entire statement is not a doctrine at all. It is horseshit, nothing more.
The “The Dumbest Shit I Ever Heard Doctrine” was targeted toward civilians. Read the doctrine carefully. On the surface it makes a case for Force Protection being an overriding element of critical decision making and it should be and it makes sense. The Secretary of Defense wants to ensure the safety of our troops and understands the value of “real-time information”. Okay, makes sense, good job Leon, end of story, right?
A couple of points however need to be made.
First. I am certain that Penetta realizes that we have very specially trained folks whose job it is to execute missions just like what was needed in Benghazi. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t, since both of the Generals who he supposedly consulted with have a grand total of ZERO days duty in any Special Operations organization. In fact, they are both old tankers. The senior of which, General Dempsy, has a Master’s degree in literature from Duke University, where he wrote a thesis on the Irish poet W B Yeats. He was a Captain then, and that thesis alone should have rendered him ineligible for promotion to field grade officer.
Second, and this is very important. I don’t know what Penetta’s definition of “real-time information” is, but I suspect that, if Eisenhower had the same doctrine, we’d still be sitting in England waiting to invade Europe.
Let’s review the real-time facts that we know so far. The entire event was being streamed live to the State Department and, in all likelihood, the White House situation room. That’s pretty “real-time” if you ask me, but it gets worse. Not only were we watching the entire damn thing on expensive televisions; we had at least two highly trained special operators on the ground in direct communication!
Do you think the whole Pointe Du Hoc event would have happened during the D-Day attack if Ike and boys had two Navy SEALs telling them that the artillery had been moved?
Maybe MacArthur should have cancelled the Inchon landings in Korea because having a live tv stream and two highly trained individuals on the ground just wasn’t quite enough “real-time information”?
And this is why “The Dumbest Shit I Ever Heard Doctrine” is so ridiculous.
More at Blackfive
This former Delta operator has it down!
People forget that we did want to know how D-Day might shake out……so we had a rehearsal.
Now, care to guess how many of our brave soldiers died during that rehearsal?
Look it up.
You’ll be amazed at Panetta all the more.
This is an entirely sound military principle. Any wartime commander who ignores it will sooner or later get a lot of good people killed. Every intelligent enemy will contrive situations to lure his opponent into carefully prepared traps.
@Greg:
No it is not Greg; come on. Sometimes you make some valid arguments, but you know this is not true. I went through PJ school, (well most of it anyway). Do you know what a PJ does? When the SeALs and Delta call 911, a PJ answers the phone. They are trained to be dropped into the middle of hell and fight their way out; with whomever they were sent in to rescue. Google Pararescue Somalia. I’ll get the summary for you:
And sadly for Greg, we did have Real time intel on the attackers and where their mortar crew was and what troop force was hitting the Consulate. We had rapid strike teams formed ready to counter based on eyes in the sky from the drone flying over and from the Ambassdor and staff pleading for rescue.