By Billy Birdzell

Best Defense guest columnist

On April 30, 2013, Fox News aired an interview with a supposed member of U.S. Special Operations Command who said that members of "C-110," who were training in Croatia on September 11, 2012, could have both arrived at the Benghazi consulate in 4-6 hours and arrived before the second attack on the annex during which Tyronne Woods and Glen Doherty were killed. The mystery man critiques the Obama administration's decision-making, yet offers no information as to how C-110 would have influenced the battle in such a way that the outcome would have been different. Perhaps because it was actually impossible for C-110 to arrive before the attack, and if they did, they would not have been able to do anything that would have prevented our heroes, Woods and Doherty, from being killed.

"C-110" stands for Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group. It is a unique company within the 10th SF Group in that it is trained as a Commander's in-Extremis Force (CIF). Each of the five active duty SF Groups has a CIF and they respond to important threats within their geographic area which are below the threshold for, or availability of, elements from the Joint Special Operations Command (like the Delta Force). A CIF has approximately 40 operators. 

According to the Pentagon timeline posted by CNN, the enemy attack began at 2142 and all US personnel were out of the consulate by 2330. By 2330, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the foreign service information officer, Sean Smith, were dead. President Obama was briefed at 2300 and SOF were approved to launch from Croatia (C-110) and the United States (Delta Force) at 0239 and 0253 respectively. At 0515, the attack began against the annex. Doherty and Woods were killed by mortar fire shortly thereafter.

Obama gave the launch order at 0239. The mystery operator said 4-6 hours. That's 0639-0839. Woods and Doherty died at 0515. An Air Force C-17 was evacuating personnel from the Benghazi airport at 0740. Mystery man and Fox News can't add. Strike one.

For argument's sake, assume Obama gave the launch order 10 minutes after he met with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta at 2300. Four to six hours turns into 0310-0510. Six hours, however, would have been impossible.

If the Commander of European Command coordinated with his counterpart in Africa Command as soon as the National Command Center informed General Dempsey at 2230 and they diverted a C-17 to Croatia in anticipation, it is still highly unlikely the plane would have been on the ground in Croatia before midnight; it takes an hour to fly to Croatia from Germany and a crew would have had to have gotten ready, briefed, examined contingency plans, and fueled the plane. From Zaton Military Airport in Croatia, it is over 900 miles to Benghazi, which would have taken approximately two hours in a C-17 cargo plane. Zaton is on the coast and it more likely the CIF would have flown out of Udbina Airport, but this is a best case scenario.

Assuming the Air Force was willing to land a C-17 at the Benghazi airport with an unknown security situation, once on the ground, the 40-man CIF would have then had to have moved to the annex which was 30 km away. Moving such a far distance would have required vehicles. 40 operators can move in 8 HMMWVs, which can fit into one C-17. However, did they have the vehicles with them? Did they have everything on the training mission that they needed to go into combat? If not, it would have taken more time for someone to get everything ready. Maybe the man of mystery is creative and planned on renting cars from Avis (yes, Avis has a location at the Benghazi Airport) and using stealth to get to the consulate in a move akin to the French using taxis to get to the front in order to stop the Kaiser's hordes back in 1914. Mystery man is really a cook who has never been on a deployment. Strike two.

Even if one of them had Avis First and the cars were waiting on the runway, the timing would have been iffy. Parachuting would have been another option. There is a large, open field close to the U.S. consulate at the southwest intersection of Third Ring Road and Shan Al-Andulus Road that could have accommodated the CIF. However, one is defenseless while parachuting, so it is a good idea to insert a good distance from the action to ensure one is not shot before his boots hit the ground. The Benghazi Zoo is only 3 miles from the consulate and the combination of trees and animal cages would have provided good cover, as well as entertainment, in case someone saw 40 people parachuting into the middle of the city.

Assuming magical planes were waiting for the CIF and they were somehow able to physically get to the annex before 0515, mystery man failed to mention that Doherty and Woods were killed by mortar fire. Forty operators armed with rifles and light-machine guns can neither stop mortar rounds nor determine from where the mortar is being fired. The only thing the CIF would have done had they gotten to the annex before 0515 is created more targets and overcrowded the consulate.

Even if the CIF was on ready 5 (fully armed, sitting in the aircraft with pilots at the controls) in Sigonella (the closest European base to Benghazi) with advanced warning of an attack but unsure of the time, and they launched at 2232 on only-in-Hollywood orders from someone other than the president, they would not have been able to do anything about Stevens and Smith's deaths, nor stopped the mortar rounds. Strike three.

The person in the interview is a clown and I am incredibly disappointed in the news for not using Google.

Billy Birdzell served as a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer and special operations team leader from 2001 to 2009. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in security studies at Georgetown University.

Pretty small to start: Six Irish troops with work with 21 British troops. And less than 100 years after the Easter Rising! (And why six Irishmen -- for the "six counties that live under John Bull's tyranny"?)

I wonder: Has the British Army ever formally recognized and honored the role that Irishmen (not Anglo-Irish aristos) historically played in its enlisted ranks?

In other Anglo-foreign military news, a Canadian reservist who presided over a lethal screw-up with Claymore mines in Afghanistan was demoted from major to lieutenant. I don't remember that sort of two-grade demotion occurring in the U.S. military -- do you?

By Steve Donnelly

Best Defense Libyan wars and Fox flak-catcher correspondent

In 2011, Ambassador Robert Ford boldly engaged his new assignment in Syria, brazenly and very publicly meeting with opposition leaders on the brink of armed rebellion against the al-Assad Regime.

Three times in as many months he had been surrounded by mobs of pro-government protesters, pelted with eggs, and attacked in embassy cars on the streets of Damascus. No phalanx of Blackwater. No body armor and helmet. No impenetrable motorcade of up-armored SUVs.

Was he nuts? What was he doing there?

Foreign Policy's Josh Rogin got the answer from the horse's mouth for a September 29, 2011 article:

"When an ambassador makes a statement in a country that's critical of that country's government, when that government visits an opposition or a site where a protest is taking place, the statement is much more powerful -- and the impact and the attention it gets is much more powerful if it's an ambassador rather than a low-level diplomat," Ford told The Cable in an interview last week.

Ultimately, the Syrian pressure cooker was nearing boil, and Ford had to pull out.

Three years before, Ryan Crocker, himself a survivor of the 1983 Beirut Embassy bombing, whose residence had been attacked in 1998 when he was Ambassador to Syria, and one of the first diplomats on the ground in Kabul after the Taliban's departure in 2002, took up his post in Baghdad, not before or after conflict but in the midst of it, and charged with the dangerous and difficult task of US conflict stabilization and transition out of that historically conflict-ridden country.

With Special Representative Sérgio Vieira de Mello killed along with 20 of his staff in the massive 2003 Canal Hotel bombing attack on the UN's Baghdad office, Crocker was, no doubt, the next prime trophy for Iraqi bad guys, but even if almost suffocated at times by Blackwater, and US military and diplomatic security, he stayed on and directed the civilian side of the US Surge.

The unusual aspect of Crocker's task in Iraq was not just to knowingly put his own life on the line, as many prominent diplomats have done in this region with inevitable results, but to institutional that role within the State Department ranks by managing the deployment of hundreds of Crocker-inspired diplomats out into the dangerous Iraqi landscape to support the civilian transition through the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, or PRTs that walked into Sadr City in 2008 behind the US crackdown after hundreds of mortars fell on Embassy Baghdad for more than a month, and regularly met in provincial capital buildings that were themselves routine targets for massive truck bombs, and firefights.

Surprisingly few of Crocker's PRTs were killed in Iraq, primarily due to the robust US military presence there. But that is seldom the case in most unstable areas where US engagement is essential. From 1968 to 1979, a US Ambassador was killed in office on the average of one every two years, so its is not just about "our times."

Does that explain the professional tradition that Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was following as he settled in for a restless night in the Benghazi compound after an important day of carrying the US flag into an unstable and emerging democracy? Risky business. Important work. Speaks for itself.

Ten Libyan guards, after all, were killed along with three other US civilians, before, finally, the US diplomatic survivors in Benghazi reached the marginal safety of the larger CIA compound a few blocks away, with help from Libyans.

In June 2012, the Center for New American Security (CNAS) held its annual conference at the snazzy Willard Hotel in Washington, DC ,for the national security elite to discuss waging wars in the face of budget cuts. No one, however, was lamenting any shortages of battleships, packhorses or the plumes for parade helmets. The masthead for the CNAS Conference said it all: "Rethinking U.S. Security: Navigating a World in Transition." As strongman dictators fall, things just get chaotic, especially in landscape characterized by non-state actors and factions with scores to settle with each other, transnational terror networks with scores to settle with us, riots trigger by Facebook, and cyber-attacks that can destroy a power plant grid by attacking the operating software. Much more complicated than the days of Gavrillo Princip and Professor Moriarty, and little to do with negotiating arms treaties in Helsinki.

The same hawks who cheered Crocker and his PRTs in Iraq, and Ford in Syria, including Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, know why US diplomats take these risks, especially in these fractured areas, underscoring Tom Ricks' accurate observation of Fox News's political "hyping" of Benghazi as a "wing of the Republican Party."

The oft said, "It's complicated," explains the chaos of Benghazi. We may never know anything more than that those whose lives were lost bravely put them on the line for what they believed to be important enough to do so. What don't you understand about that?

Stephen Donnelly is former senior planning advisor on Iraqi reconstruction for the Department of State.

By J. Dana Stuster

Best Defense office of Arab seasonal affairs 

In the earliest days of the Arab Spring, Algeria appeared poised to join Tunisia in its revolution. Protests swept through the country weeks before the first stirrings in Egypt, Bahrain, Libya or Syria. According to The Economist's tongue-in-cheek attempt to quantify the factors generating the unrest ("the shoe thrower's index"), Algeria seemed less likely to be stable than its revolutionary neighbor and far outpaced Bahrain in factors contributing to potential unrest.

Algeria isn't stable now, but it has managed to avoid reaching a critical mass of domestic upheaval through a measured police response that has been severe without being so brutal that it incites more anger, as well as economic concessions that reduced the cost of staple foods and legal reforms that include the repeal the country's twenty-year-old emergency law. While it remains to be seen whether these concessions will stick in the long-term, they seem to have bought some time for the Algerian government.

The next potential crisis will be the country's legislative elections, scheduled for May. The country is only dubiously democratic; true power resides with a cabal of political and military officials informally know as Le Pouvoir, and there are concerns that, if a truly democratic election is held, the military may intervene to prevent an Islamist landslide in the parliament. The last time the military stepped in was 1992; what followed was a military coup, the institution of the emergency law, and an ugly civil war. The Algerian government is only now walking back the many effects of 1992, and if Le Pouvoir intervenes in May it would be a significant setback for the country, but so too could be a polarizing election.

Speaking at CSIS recently, Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci expressed his full confidence that the military will support the results of the election and downplayed the significance of a potential Islamist election, pointing out that an Islamist party (condoned by the government) has participated in the parliament since the late 1990s. Listening to Medelci, it is easy to get caught up in his optimism for Algeria. He boasts about his country's progress toward meeting the United Nations' Development Program's Millennium Development Goals and speaks eloquently about the political and economic reforms underway. Speaking to a collection of Arab media, businesspeople, think tank experts, and diplomats, he touted the increasing privatization of the economy, the large college-educated population (the majority of which are women), the proliferation of trade agreements, and the government's attempts to diversify the economy, including a large solar array to reduce Algeria's reliance on oil exports. He tied the new flurry of reforms to Algeria's efforts over the past decade to better incorporate minority groups, though he didn't go into detail on these. He seemed pleased with the new reforms, which include expanded press freedoms, a new quota system for women's representation in the parliament, an increased role for the judiciary in elections to make them more independent from the administration, and an upcoming revision of the constitution.

It all sounds very promising, and if done right, it could be precisely the sort of gradual reform that the United States has encouraged the monarchies in the Gulf to embrace. But even ignoring the questions about how healthy Algeria's economy truly is (only last year, Issandr El Amrani called Bouteflika's economic policy "an unmitigated disaster"), Algeria has only a narrow window of opportunity for this to succeed - Bouteflika's term expires in 2014, but he is physically ailing and there is no clear means of succession if he passes while in office. If Algeria cannot prepare its democratic institutions for this essential transition, it will face a two-front struggle: a crisis within Le Pouvoir, and also the remobilization of the disenfranchised and disheartened public that took to the streets in January 2011. Eurasia Group's James Fallon pointed to Algeria for a potential renewal of upheaval last November, and while the protesters in Algiers had difficulty expressing a set of common grievances, they will no doubt learn from the successes in Egypt and Tunisia.

While Algeria's problems are far from solved and new unrest may arise between now and then, for now, its role in the Arab Spring is restricted to its participation in the Arab League delegation to Syria. Medelci distanced his government from Anwar Malek, the Algerian monitor who resigned from the delegation and called it a "farce." Medelci has pointed out that Malek was representing a non-governmental organization and not the Algerian government, which remains committed to the mission in Syria. Justifying this commitment involved some verbal hurdles. Pressed by Ellen Laipson of the Stimson Center to reconcile Algeria's involvement in the Arab League's involvement in Syria with its policy of non-intervention, Medelci explained that he considers the Arab League mission as less a matter of interference, but an effort to prevent broader interference through providing an option for third-party mediation.

Medelci was nothing if not positive in his assessment. Speaking of its revolutionary neighbors in North Africa, he told the audience, "We hope that these countries now control their destiny and can join us as stronger partners. We need stronger partners, but we are not in a position to be hegemonic. We don't have lessons to teach but we share a revolutionary heritage." This July will mark the fiftieth anniversary of Algeria's independence from France, and while, for now, Algeria's non-interventionist intervention in Syria may be the center of attention, it is shaping up to be a dramatic year domestically as well. Here's hoping it lives up to the foreign minister's optimism.

By Patrick McKinney
Best Defense department of Maghreb affairs

In late October 1956, British and French forces aided Israel's seizure of the Suez Canal from Egypt. In March 2011, an allied force including British and French forces intervened in Libya to establish a no-fly zone and protect rebels from the ruling Gaddafi regime. Half a century apart, these actions in North African defined trans-Atlantic defense. The Suez Crisis heralded an era of American leadership and action, while Libya has shown that, though powerful, America intends to rely on its allies to carry larger burdens, and take responsibility for their own regions. America once drove and financed western security, but due to fiscal shortfalls and a decade of conflict, it no longer intends to guarantee European security.

In 1956, the once-powerful European states were still weakened from the world war and faced forceful colonial independence movements. The French lost Indochina in 1954 and the situation in Algeria continued to deteriorate, while the Suez Canal Zone in Egypt was England's last foothold in the Middle East. After tense negotiations, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened to nationalize the canal as sovereign Egyptian territory, and in response, Israel, England, and France coordinated an invasion with the pretext of securing the canal for world commerce. They failed to inform the United States of their intent and expected American support or indifference. To their surprise, they received neither.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower forcefully protested the Suez invasion and demanded that foreign forces withdraw from Egypt. Though he had little compassion for Nasser and his regime, Eisenhower intended to support international order and avoid unnecessary international conflicts. He condemned the invasion, saying, "We believe these actions to have been taken in error. For we do not accept the use of force as a wise and proper instrument for the settlement of international disputes." Israel, England, and France were surprised by the American response and false expectations of support. Their forces began withdrawal from the Suez Canal Zone, and returned control to Egypt.

After the conflict, American authority and consent became pre-eminent in the Trans-Atlantic partnership.  Through NATO, America assured European defense from the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, and American priorities were NATO's priorities. England lost its Middle Eastern influence and decided to influence western and world security through cooperation in its "special relationship" with the United States. Embarrassed and affronted by the perceived betrayal, France took the alternate path and sought to set its own defense priorities. France demanded a restructure of NATO leadership in 1958, and began the withdrawal of its forces from the command in the 1960s. France remained outside of NATO for more than forty years until operations in Afghanistan and officially returned its forces in 2009.

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