In my opinion, they are doing this all wrong.
They should have never leaked any information...played along like everything was Business As Usual.
Then, quietly replace all embassy staffs with Marines, Special Forces and the like.
Arm the embassies like Fort Knox.
Then - let them come, and wipe them all out.
‘Course, we have Obama and his cadre of losers in the White House, so I guess self defense would be out of the question...
I like the way you think ..... Awesome !
I understand where you are coming from, and partially agree. However, from my admittedly limited experience as a citizen “customer” of one of our embassies in a 3rd world country where there are hostile Muslim elements, there is unfortunately no way to “quietly” do as you suggest, especially in a period measured in months or less. “Local” intelligence of the enemy would have it figured out before we got 1/4 of the measures in place.
What we should have been doing for the last several (20+?) years is special forces training any personnel sent to “at risk” embassies, and gradually building up defenses, such that any such embassy could hold off for at least several hours any attack short of a battalion from a modern army. There are many creative and highly lethal options. This does not mean the embassy is not overrun, but much can be done, and as a last resort, it means real and defensible safe rooms, not the rinky-dink excuse for such we had @ Benghazi. Then we make sure we have MOBILE rapid response units in the theater, and means to quickly move them, and UAV’s or other aircraft to within a couple hours strike time if threats appear imminent. (This last, done correctly, the enemy in at least their present capacity, would be unable to observe in real time.)
Mutual support agreements with other nations (Britain and France, for example) would also be useful. Though that implies considerable planning and cooperation, WTH, the “Allies” bombed the daylights out of Libya without any major friendly fire incidents. If one looks at a map of the embassies currently closed, the above is NOT all that formidable a task, at least in this instance.
Host countries are told in no uncertain terms that if they cannot defend our embassy’s perimeter, we will give brief warning to them, but get the **** out of the way when they see us “incoming”.
Of course, this assumes a competent chain of command that will actually respond decisively to an attack, but, that is a separate problem.
AQ could respond with attacks in multiple locations, some heavier than others, but that would spread them thin, meaning our embassy based forces could hold out even longer, giving us more time to bring more forces to bear. In the end, AQ could be easily outmatched at every turn.
The thing that bothers me is that IF this latest threat is real, “strategically significant” would mean something beyond even multiple embassy attacks. Others have addressed this point in this thread, also. Either our response is incorrect, or someone is fearmongering. I’d love to see someone publicly discuss this point Monday. (Rush?)