Navy SEALS do their job to the bitter end, even when it’s not actually their job

I wonder whether any branch of the military has lost a larger proportion of people than the Navy SEAL in the years since 9/11.  Certainly they’ve done their bit and more to fight for American freedoms.  We now learn that, in Benghazi, former Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods, 41, and Glen Doherty, 42, gave their lives to try to Ambassador Stevens even though they were not at the embassy in any official capacity:

The two former SEALS,  Tyrone Woods, 41, and Glen Doherty, 42, were not employed by the State Department diplomatic security office and instead were what is known as personal service contractors who had other duties related to security, the officials said.

They stepped into action, however, when Stevens became separated from the small security detail normally assigned to protect him when he traveled from the more fortified embassy in Tripoli to Benghazi, the officials said.

The two ex-Seals and others engaged in a lengthy firefight with the extremists who attacked the compound, a fight that stretched from the inner area of the consulate to an outside annex and a nearby safe house — a location that the insurgents appeared to know about, the officials said.

The officials provided the information to the Washington Guardian, saying they feared the Obama administration’s scant description of the episode left a misimpression that the two ex-Navy SEALs might have been responsible for the ambassador’s personal safety or become separated from him.

Woods and Doherty were unable to save either Stevens or themselves.  Of course, if they haven’t fought, there’s no telling how many more Americans might have died.  It turns out that the State Department was so determined to keep a low profile in Benghazi (despite advance warning of a terrorist attack), that it hired a British security firm that happily complied with the State Department’s “no weapons” rule.  Here’s a question I wonder if anyone has asked:  If Woods and Doherty hadn’t picked up weapons and given their lives, how many of those British security people would have died along with the Americans?

Meanwhile, while American embassies burn (and Israel stares down another Holocaust), Obama fiddles and diddles away his time in Vegas, on Letterman, partying with Beyonce, and talking with pirates.  Feckless is too nice a word for him, and I’m too much of a lady to use the ones that apply.