On this day in 2000 George W. Bush had not yet been elected president and the USS Cole was at anchor in the Yemenese port of Aden, having stopped there for a refueling.
A few hours later, a bomb-laden small boat made a suicide attack alongside. Seventeen US Navy sailors perished in the blast or soon thereafter, and the rest of the crew fought in sweltering conditions for days on end to save their ship from foundering. The first naval assistance on scene was the HMS Malborough. US Marines and other Navy ships soon followed to lend support.
In the environment then in fashion, the first question on the lips of the political elite was this: How much blame could be laid at the feet of the ship’s commanding officer for the fact that Islamist terrorists had attacked his ship: Some, most, or all?
That was then.
This is now.
Every Navy ship has a radio callsign. The Cole‘s is “Determined Warrior.”
Just so.
When the Cole was hit I knew we were in the deep do0-doo. I guess most Americans still didn’t realize it. My hat is off to the brave sailors of the USS Cole for saving their ship. Not much more I can say without getting very emotional but… my son was at the time applying for USNA and I KNEW his tour wouldn’t be during peacetime.
I also want to say how much I resented the CIC coming on the TV and telling me that he would get to the bottom of this. You lying SOB, I thought to myself.
God Bless everyone on the Cole…
Maybe the CIC was referring to another “bottom”. Godspeed to “Determined Warrior”.
Lex,
While that top picture makes me sad, this one:
http://www.msc.navy.mil/annualreport/2001/graphics/ColeBlueMarlin.jpg
is just heart rending.
I hate to say it, but when it happened, I knew that Clinton wouldn’t do anything about it other than pass it along to the next guy, whoever it might be at that time.
He was a big believer in denying problems until he actually had to do something.
Have you noticed that in the Dem talking points on terror, the USS Cole is attributed to Bush? How’s that for wishful thinking?
There are no grown-ups left in the Dem party, I fear.
God bless her and all who sail in her.
God rest the souls of the 17 Sailors who died.
I was serving aboard a similar ship (DDG 73), when COLE was attacked. I later came to be acquainted with a GSM1 who was in the oil shack when the explosion occurred. She survived, the other two with her did not. I’ll remember well her story, but mostly I remember her stoic bravery. The tenacity and indefatigable efforts on the part of COLE’s crew to save her are a testament to the soul of the Navy. They honor all of us, as well as their 17 lost shipmates. We will not forget.
“I hate to say it, but when it happened, I knew that Clinton wouldn’t do anything about it other than pass it along to the next guy, whoever it might be at that time.”
Did you also know that the next guy would do nothing about it?
Hey Joe – Did you expect the “next guy” to do something immediately after the Clinton admin did nothing? Did you expect the “next guy” t0 do something after all kinds of legal walls had been set up to prevent the “next guy” to do anything?
How long were you willing to give the “next guy” to do something? How about 9 months… If you will remember, we got hit again on 9/11.
The “next guy”tried to bring the bombers to justice. Unfortuantely, the Yemanies let them go or, er… they escaped.
If I were the “next guy” I would have blown them all to hell, as the CIA did a couple of them.
I guess JoeCitizen wasn’t watching the news on 7 October 2001.
I wasn’t either…was too busy getting some green ink in my flight log.
There are those who are in the arena, and those who are cold and timid souls, I guess.
President Clinton could not react until it was determined who the perpetrators actually were beyond rumor. And it would have been grossly irresponsible to do so until that determination was made. Remember, at the time there were several terrorists groups we were watching capable and likely of the act, and Al Qaeda had not yet risen to the prominence it has today.
Even after Bush’s inauguration it was “still unclear” in Secretary Rice’s own words that Al Qaeda was involved in the attack.
According to Dr. Rice, the decision not to respond militarily to the Cole bombing was President Bush’s. She said he “made clear to us that he did not want to respond to al Qaeda one attack at a time. He told me he was ‘tired of swatting flies.’” LINK
And to Lee, my condolences and prayers for his shipmates. I won’t forget.
What exactly would one have had either President do? And when you frame your answer please remember that this was before 9-11 changed the political and global landscape.
I remember at the time that I was in favor of leveling Sana- I still think it would have been a good idea to kill as many Yemenis as possible-but I’m not too sure how well that would have gone over and how well it would have advanced US interests in the Middle East
Also in framing your answer be aware of the following facts:
The destroyer’s rules of engagement, as approved by the Pentagon, kept its guards from firing upon the small boat loaded with explosives as it neared them without first obtaining permission from the Cole’s captain or another officer.
On January 19, 2001, The Navy completed and released its Judge Advocate General Manual (JAGMAN) investigation of the incident, concluding that Cole’s commanding officer Commander Kirk Lippold “acted reasonably in adjusting his force protection posture based on his assessment of the situation that presented itself” when Cole arrived in Aden to refuel. The JAGMAN also concluded that “the commanding officer of Cole did not have the specific intelligence, focused training, appropriate equipment or on-scene security support to effectively prevent or deter such a determined, preplanned assault on his ship” and recommended significant changes in Navy procedures.
It was not until 2002 that On November 3, 2002, the CIA fired a AGM-114 Hellfire missile from a Predator UAV at a vehicle carrying Abu Ali al-Harithi, a suspected planner of the bombing plot. Also in the vehicle was Ahmed Hijazi, a U.S. citizen. Both were killed. This operation was carried out on Yemeni soil.
Plus I think its a real leap to assume that either Bush or Clinton could have been prescient enough to see an attack on the scale of 9-11 coming. And prior to that day it would have been virtually impossible to build a coalition of the willing to support a large scale military action-which Fliterman’s quote also points out.
Lex, thank you for the reminder that the events of 9/11 were not the start of the GWOT. For that matter, neither was the USS Cole; I’d argue the events of the Iran hostage crisis set the world stage for what has followed since.
May none of us forget the sacrifices of the soldiers on the USS Cole – their courage, their commitment and their amazing willingness to stay their own course and save their ship whilst knowing their shipmates were dying right next to them.
Since many of us are military, many of us have a little collection of ribbons and awards. Some of us here even have Legions of Merit, I’ll wager, to go along with their MSMs and DMSMs.
I recently walked into the local medical clinic, talked to the pimply-faced corpsman who looked fresh out of high school, and noted the “V” on his Navy Achievement Medal (NAM). Fallujah. And the two divers who repeatedly went down to desparately weld what was left of USS Cole together? Plain old NAMs, or so I’ve been told.
Which is why I don’t pay much attention to the lettuce, not when small awards go to great sailors like the corpsmen of Fallujah and the crew that literally welded the USS Cole together.
I remember when that happened. I remember thinking, “Dammit, that’s an act of Warre!”
“Pericardis alive, or Raisuli DEAD!”
Bombard the Sultan’s palace, dammit!
Instead, our Govt. wussed out.
We’ve been through this before, when we paid tribute to Barbary (Mohammedan) Pirates.
I grew up in Decatur, Ga., named after ol’ Stephen himself. They still have a sword of his in the old DeKalb County courthouse.
(and Krupp gun off of a submarine for the courthouse cannon. Ga. has the best courthouse cannons.
I lie, above. I lived in Decatur, GA, from age 0-5, and was then removed by my parents to Southern Florida, where I lived until 17, and then went back to GA.
Oh, to get back on topic:
Would that be a Gadsden Flag flying from her port yardarm?