If there’s one thing we know, the Obama White House hates leakers. Especially leaks about sensitive national security issues.
Except when the leaks are the official kind.
It’s been interesting to see coverage of the Seal Team 6 raid in Somalia that was reportedly intended to capture a high-level member of the Al-Shabaab terrorist group. US forces, the story went, approached a compound, were spotted and fired upon, and retreated back into the ocean.
But unnamed officials are offering another explanation: the desire to protect innocent lives.
“Heeding New Counterterror Guidelines, US Forces Backed off in Somalia Raid” is the Washington Post headline (10/8/13), which explains that the Seal Team commander “had the authority to call in a US airstrike. Instead, he opted to retreat.”
The Post‘s Karen DeYoung reports that
the operation against an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group had been in the planning stages, for months, current and former Obama administration officials said Monday. A drone strike against the al-Shabab compound had been rejected, officials said, because there were too many women and children inside, the same reason that the commander opted against an airstrike once the operation was underway.
The report adds:
If civilians had not been present at the compound, a senior administration official said, “we might just as well have done a standoff strike,” hitting the site with missiles launched from piloted or unmanned aircraft. The desire to avoid hitting non-combatants, the official said, “accounts for the fact that ultimately [US forces] disengaged” when they “met resistance.”
On CBS Evening News (10/7/13) correspondent David Martin used similar language: The SEAL commander decided against an airstrike because “there were too many civilians, including children, in the compound.” He added:
Officials briefed on the operation said the SEAL commander made the right call in deciding to withdraw. The SEALs had not expected to find so many women and children, in effect human shields, inside the compound.
Jessica Lynch
It’s obviously possible that this is what happened. But unnamed, semi-official briefings on these kinds of military operations—from the rescue of Jessica Lynch to the killing of Osama bin Laden—are hardly known for being accurate.
But they do provide the military a chance to claim that a raid that was apparently unsuccessful failed because US forces were so concerned about killing civilians. And that’s why, from the government’s perspective, some leaks are more helpful than others.
I wonder what criteria are employed to determine what constitutes “too many” civilian deaths?
So we have what, here? Speculation that they may be fibbing? Quelle surprise? Who reported it wrong? Why is FAIR on this case? Momentum? Inherent bias?
Doug Latimer:
I think the prime criterion is that “too many” always be more than the number of civilians they have actually killed, no matter how many that is.
Since when the white house stared to care about children and women is Somalia? What a excuse. Wasn’t it that drones bombed in school in southern Somalia few months ago.
I wonder what criteria are employed to determine what constitutes “too many” civilian deaths? Doug
That’s easy. When the mission fails, then ‘find out’ that too many woman and children would be ‘killed’ and make that the point. Otherwise, they can be neatly columned in “Collateral Damage”.
US government official definition of “innocent”: anyone who does not resist US imperial pursuits!
In defense of the cowardly soldiers who retreated: the US is at its best when it kills unsuspecting unarmed women and children from hundreds of miles away using missiles. As Iraq and Afghanistan have proven, hand-to-hand combat is not exactly their forte even despite having the best gear tax-payer money can buy!!!
Absent anywhere I have looked in the coverage of this raid in Somalia, purportedly in response to an attack on a shopping mall in Kenya, is any focus on what, exactly is the U.S.’s mandate and authority to go into one country to respond to an attack in another, if none of it was directed specifically at the U.S. Who asked them (us) in, and if no one, why is it their (our) right to invade?
Hey- cant win em all
Mr. Barr, didn’t you realize that in the Nairobi mall there was a McDonalds? And any attack on such an American icon rightly conveys the authority of our great democracy to defend such interests, including invading any sovereign country in retribution, So that’s why we pursued the attackers into Somalia.
Thanks for the clarification, Mr. Levy. Now I finally understand.
Do you want him or not, I would try to use a bean bag or secondary weapon with rubber bullets. But have the medic’s standing by on Chinook odds on it would be a none lethal live round to the weapon barring shoulder. As for the “civilians” there would be some collateral damage. How important is he, do you want him or not. If you don’t want him everyone might as well stay home drinking beer. So basically I would not have gone. They did the next best thing they did not hang around and decamped.