Last week we all gave Obama credit for making the right decision in authorizing the attack on Osama bin Laden (“OBL”). Some people are assuming that any U.S. President would have given the order to attack OBL. That is not necessarily true. Clinton passed on a chance to get OBL before 9-11. However, after 9-11 any President who failed to authorize a mission to take out Osama bin Laden would be committing political suicide.
Obama who demanded air time on all the networks for an “emergency” statement from the President of the United States. This was great news, but it was not an emergency. The only emergency was the fear that someone other than Obama would get to make the announcement. The plan was for Obama to break the news and receive a spontaneous wave of adoration that would sweep him to re-election, if not deification. Of course, that strategy didn’t work because the White House leaked like a sieve, and most people knew OBL was dead long before Obama got around to speaking. Perhaps if he hadn’t delayed giving his speech in an obvious attempt to pre-empt Donald Trump on Celebrity Apprentice, he might have had more impact.
It was bad enough that Obama gave the great I AM speech, but then he set about on a national victory tour. It started with a trip to Ground Zero, a place he had not visited in over two years. He tried to invite Bush to join him, but while Bush has avoided criticizing Obama, he wasn’t about to put up with that nonsense. Obama followed up the trip to Ground Zero with a big pep rally where he gave the Presidential Unit citation to the Navy Seals. This was another obvious attempt to focus the spotlight on himself.
As more and more information is released, it is increasingly clear that this was hardly great Presidential leadership. According to reports, Obama was told in August that our intelligence people thought they knew where OBL was located. The next eight months were spent being double damn sure before Obama would authorize any action. It is important to understand that OBL was in a fenced-in compound that represented no significant challenge to our military. We didn’t spend eight months planning the mission; we spent eight months making sure Obama wouldn’t risk making an embarrassing mistake. Really? It was obvious that the people in the neighborhood knew someone nasty was living there. They didn’t necessarily know it was OBL, but it certainly wasn’t a place where innocent people lived. If our guys had gone in and OBL was not there, we would have just eliminated some other nasty people in his place. Perhaps I am wrong, but I suspect that if George Bush was told in August that our intelligence thought they knew where OBL was located, OBL wouldn’t have made it to Labor Day.
After eight months, there was finally enough solid evidence that even Obama was satisfied. (The most surprising thing about this whole deal is that we were able to watch this location for eight months without tipping off OBL.) The National Security Staff approached Obama and requested authority to launch the mission. They were stunned when Obama refused to give the order and had to sleep on it and wait another 16 hours before he could make a decision. That is the opposite of leadership.
After planning this event for about eight months, they seemed to be totally unprepared for what to do afterwards. The decision to kill OBL, take the body, do DNA testing, and then give him a first-class Muslim sendoff is just plain dumb. The Muslim extremists will give us zero credit for handling OBL’s body according to Muslim traditions. They are more likely to be insulted that we would even pretend to do that. While I am convinced we got the right guy; there will be conspiracy theories about OBL that will last a lot longer than any of us. I, frankly, do not understand the thought process. Why didn’t they just capture him, take him some place really special, and just deny the whole thing? They could have used him to roll up the entire al Qaeda network. Just imagine how this would have worked. Every time there was a successful action against al Qaeda, the administration could leak information that they had OBL and that he was singing like a canary. Publicly, of course, they would deny it. Al Qaeda would know that we had OBL, but they probably wouldn’t admit it. This would have reduced OBL from a Muslim martyr to a sniveling snitch. In the Muslim world, getting killed for Allah is hitting the big time, but weeping like a woman when things go wrong isn’t all that inspiring. Even if we had to kill him, we didn’t need to admit it. It could have been a beautiful thing. I fear that most of the decisions were made primarily to benefit Obama’s re-election campaign rather than to deal effectively with a national security issue.
Obama had the chance to step up to the plate and act like a President. Instead, his act was closer to that of a self-absorbed Terrill Owens after he scores a touchdown. It is the difference between class and crass. The majority of the people recognize this. It is obvious that the capture of OBL was the result of great work by our intelligence community and our Special Forces. Only a really naïve Kool-Aid drinker would consider Obama capable of leading this type of operation.
I remain glad he gave the order. At first, I feared the wave of joy over the death of OBL would propel Obama into a second-term President. We don’t have to fear that anymore. In the long run, all he did was provide a vivid demonstration of the difference between class and crass.
TDM