Sarah Adams@sarahadams
There’s a version of Benghazi that keeps getting retold, and it’s wrong. It needs to end.
Not once, over the course of September 11 or 12, 2012, did anyone on the ground request to be “saved” by the U.S. military. The calls were for reinforcements so we could take the fight to Al-Qaeda. That was the mission. That was the intent. We were not asking to run, we were asking to finish it.
When those reinforcements never came, everything changed. It was no longer about securing the compound and hunting down the more than 200 terrorists involved in the six attacks that evening. It became a full evacuation. Not just non-essentials, everyone. And in that shift, we lost the opportunity to pursue the enemy, to hold them accountable in real-time, to deliver justice when it mattered most.
We were forced to give up ground. With that, a U.S. diplomatic presence has NEVER returned to Benghazi.
Al-Qaeda walked away from that night with a massive victory in their minds, even though their original kidnapping objective failed. It emboldened them and sent a clear message of weakness across the global terrorism network that you could kill a U.S. Ambassador and face ZERO consequences.
Just months later, our attackers carried out the In Amenas attack in Algeria, killing more Americans. And over the past dozen years, the network that hit us that night has gone on to kill thousands more, including, yes, even more Americans.
Today, our attackers are actively working on a massive plot targeting the U.S. homeland. So, if this failure to confront Al-Qaeda continues, we will be forced to watch our terrorists kill Americans on U.S. soil because that is the reality of what failure buys us.
That is the cost of being forced to retreat instead of being allowed to fight.
So stop twisting what we asked for. It was never to save us.
It was about justice. We planned to finish the fight against the enemy, and no one stepped up to help us do it!
@BentonDave28405 @TigTiegen @KTantoP @MarkGeistSWP
