TRR: Is a General losing his job over Benghazi?
Is an American General losing his job for trying to save the Americans besieged in Benghazi? This is the latest potential wrinkle in the growing scandal surrounding the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack that left four men dead and President Obama scrambling for a coherent explanation.
On October 18, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta appeared unexpectedly at an otherwise unrelated briefing on “Efforts to Enhance the Financial Health of the Force." News organizations and CSPAN were told beforehand there was no news value to the event and gave it scant coverage. In his brief remarks Mr. Panetta said, "Today I am very pleased to announce that President Obama will nominate General David Rodriguez to succeed General Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command.” This came as a surprise to many, since General Ham had only been in the position for a year and a half. The General is a very well regarded officer who made AFRICOM into a true Combatant Command after the ineffective leadership of his predecessor, General William E. "Kip" Ward. Later, word circulated informally that General Ham was scheduled to rotate out in March 2013 anyway, but according to Joint doctrine, "the tour length for combatant commanders and Defense agency directors is three years." Some assumed that he was leaving for unspecified personal reasons.
However on October 26, "Ambassador" posted the following RUMINT on TigerDroppings (h/t Jim Hoft):
I heard a story today from someone inside the military that I trust entirely. The story was in reference to General Ham that Panetta referenced in the quote below.
quote:
"(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."
The information I heard today was that General Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.
General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.
The story continues that now General Rodiguez would take General Ham's place as the head of Africom.
General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.
The story continues that now General Rodiguez would take General Ham's place as the head of Africom.
This version of events contradicts Mr. Panetta’s October 25 statement that General Ham advised against intervention. But so far there is nothing solid to back it up. Maybe Ham attempted to send a reaction force against orders, or maybe he simply said the wrong thing to the wrong people. Perhaps he gave whomever he was talking to up the chain a piece of his mind about leaving Americans to die when there was a chance of saving them. At the very least U.S. forces might have made those who killed our people pay while they were still on the scene. The Obama White House is famously vindictive against perceived disloyalty – the administration would not let Ham get away with scolding them for failing to show the leadership necessary to save American lives. The Army's ethos is to leave no man behind, but that is not shared by a president accustomed to leading from that location.
The question remains why the repeated requests – which is to say desperate pleas – to send a relief force were refused. Perhaps Mr. Obama and his national security brain trust thought the terrorist assault would be a minor skirmish and quickly blow over. When it became clear that the attack was something more serious, they may have had visions of the rescue team getting involved in a Mogadishu-like firefight, a “Blackhawk Down 2.” This would have been too much for the risk-averse Mr. Obama, particularly in a Muslim country, and less than two months before the election. Instead they simply watched the live video hoped for the best. If there were American fatalities, they felt they could shift blame for the circumstance to the supposed Youtube video which they had already blamed for the riot at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo hours earlier. In fact the Embassy had sent out its “apology” tweets even before the Cairo riot commenced.
Hillary Clinton’s freakishly bizarre statement on September 14 is also worth noting. At a memorial service to the fallen she told Charles Woods, father of slain former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, that “we will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted." In that situation one would expect her to vow to take down the terrorists who killed Tyrone, not the supposed instigator of the spontaneous mob action that never happened.
But since when does the Secretary of State feel it is her duty to promise to have an American filmmaker who has committed no crime arrested? For all the bowing and scraping to Islam that has gone on in the last four years, blasphemy against that or any other faith is still not illegal in this country. The First Amendment still exists. It is strange that Mrs. Clinton believed that the parents of the slain Americans would empathize with her outrage at the filmmaker, rather than reserve their anger for the extremists who actually did the killing. But as Mr. Woods said, he "could tell that she was not telling me the truth." Indeed the truth has been the fifth casualty in this entire tragic affair.
Obama's Taqqiya Unravels
I have never entertained the idea that Obama was a Muslim and always believed he was a socialist. But Obama's behavior over the last four years regarding Islam has convinced me that Obama has a Socialist/Islamic centered worldview -- a combination that is not uncommon in many parts of the Muslim world.
Having been a journalist in Egypt for six years in the seventies, I have witnessed socialism with an Islamic twist to be a popular political ideology, especially amongst Arab journalists and intellectuals. Socialism, and even communism, have managed to survive in the ruthless Islamic political system as an alternative to full-fledged Sharia. The two ideologies have blended together in cases including the Baath Party in Syria and Iraq and socialist regimes in Egypt and Yemen. One major difference between the two ideologies is that Islam uses Allah, while socialism uses atheism, to fight the God of Christianity. Free democracies, such as the United States, are alien to Islam and socialism both because they regard government as a servant of the people and hold that human rights are granted by God and not by government or the code of Sharia.
Both Sharia and socialism are united in their envy of Western society and need to change it. That is why Obama has become the savior of both Islam and socialism. He embodies both ideologies. The claim that Obama is a Christian was a silly joke, but a necessary lie for the greater cause of changing America to fit the goals of both creeds.
Obama became the One, the savior of both Islam and socialists. To do that, Obama had to deny who he really was, which explains why his actions and words have never added up. At the recent Alfred E. Smith Catholic Charity dinner speech, Obama did not seem to be just kidding when he said that Romney uses his middle name Mitt and "I wish I could use my middle name." Obama was referring, of course, to his Islamic middle name of Hussein. In Obama's mind, he was not ashamed for having deceived America -- he blamed America for putting him in the position of having to deny his true pride in his middle name.
That brings us to an important discovery by WND in an article by Jerome Corsi titled: "Obama's Ring: 'There is no God But Allah'." The article featured close-up photos of a ring still worn by Obama today in the White House, one that he has worn since his visit to Pakistan as a young man. The ring, which later also became his wedding ring, has very tiny and discrete Arabic calligraphy that means nothing to Americans, but to Arabic-speaking people like myself and Dr. Mark Gabriel, means quite a lot. Such Islamic calligraphy is commonly found throughout the gold markets of the Muslim world. I am not a writing expert, but I can clearly see on the ring the word 'La Ilaha IllaAllah. ("There is no god but god.")' Such a sentence in Arabic has a lot of the letters A and L which in Arabic are simply a straight line like the number one.
The only explanation for Obama's exciting ring secret is that he is a closet Muslim and feels that he can serve Islam best if he denies his being a Muslim for the purpose of a higher aspiration to serve the Muslim world from the White House, in Islamic terms the "higher jihad." Obama has no problem whatsoever in lying for the sake of "Hope and Change" since lying about being a Muslim in a majority non-Muslim country is allowed under Islam. Lying for the purpose of jihad (known as "taqqiya") is not only allowed, but an obligation to be proud of and even serves as a reason to blame the enemies of Islam for one's lies. Sharia law states: "Lying is obligatory if the purpose is obligatory." Muslim clerics have no problem in lying not just to the non-Muslim world but even to the Muslim masses, since Islam also allows Muslims to lie in order to bring Muslims together in harmony and friendship.
That brings us to the current debacle in Libya, which can only be understood if we grasp Obama's worldviews as regards the "Muslim World." Like the so-called 'moderate' Muslims, Obama insists Islam in and of itself has nothing to do with terrorism and blames previousAmerican foreign policy (along with Israel), for Islamic anger. Obama narrowed down the problem of Islamism to Al Qaeda while embracing other Islamic groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, as moderate. In the process, Obama dismissed the Brotherhood's long history of terror, which in fact gave birth to Al Qaeda and hundreds of other terror groups. Nothing in Obama's world is the fault of Islam, which is why he ordered the Fort Hood massacre to be classified as "workplace violence" and not Islamic terrorism.
Obama believes that he uniquely understands the Muslim world and will bring about a new era of peace with Islam, at least during his administration. There are strong rumors in Egypt that when Obama met with the Egyptian foreign minister, he confided in him that he was a Muslim and that he would assist the Islamic cause in America after he passes the Health Care Bill.
But as president of the United States, Obama was caught in a quagmire between protectingAmerican lives and appearing loyal to Islam. Placing American Marines at US consulates in dangerous terror-infested Islamic countries created the possibility of a bloody confrontation between American security and Islamists. That would discredit Obama's attempt toseparate Islam from terrorism. Also, if Obama confronted militant Muslim jihadists in Islamic countries, his entire claim to opening a new page in American/Islamic relations would fall apart. He would then be no different from his predecessors, Bush or Reagan.
That explains why the demands for American security by U.S. ambassador Stevens went unanswered. Obama did not want to deal with the possibility that American Marines would shoot at Muslim attackers in order to save American lives.
According to Sharia, it is a capital crime for a Muslim individual or leader to shoot at fellow Muslims -- even Islamists -- for the purpose of protecting Americans. That would make Obama a violator of Sharia and an apostate. If Obama considers himself a Muslim and wears an Islamic ring, then he must have had a very hard time deciding on how to protect the consulate without killing Muslim attackers. His solution? Settling for the lesser of two evils: getting Muslims, in the form of Libyan security, to guard the property and in this way, forcing Muslims to shoot other Muslims in order to defend the consulate. But that plan was useless because even the Muslim guards had to follow Sharia, and ran away and left the Americansto be killed rather than violate Sharia themselves by killing other Muslims. Obama gambled with the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others and left them as sacrificial lambs rather than violate the dictates of Sharia.
The Benghazi fiasco merely underlined Obama's failed promises of peace with the Muslim world. The murder of Americans at the hand of Muslims did not even get us an apology from any Muslim leader or cleric. No one is taking responsibility, not even Obama himself.
With the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Islamists and jihadists made it clear to us that they could care less about Obama, his appeasement, his apologies, and even his Islam. They could not put jihad on hold or restrain themselves on behalf of an American president who wanted to help build a better image of Islam. They could not play the game with Obama and refrain from jihad even during the Obama presidency. The jihadists in effect declared that Obama, Muslim or not, is just another American president who should not be trusted. No leader, Muslim or not, can get away from the wrath of Islamic jihad, and that is why angry Islamic mobs were recently seen torching Obama's effigy.
It is unfortunate that it took a tragedy in Libya and the lives of decent Americans to prove that Obama is unfit to be president of the USA. Obama has fooled many Americans for four years and that is why, when he sees the face of Mitt Romney, he is reminded of a reality that he could not fully eliminate. Obama knows the game, and his presidency, is over.
Nonie Darwish author The Devil We Don't Know and President Former Muslims United.
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