May 4, 2011 Don't look now, but the same people who brought us 9-11, the "slam dunk" invasion of Iraq, and the quagmire of Afghanistan, are trying to wrest credit for President Obama's recent military strike against Osama bin Laden and give it to... you guessed it .... his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
Now even setting aside the observation that Bush left office over 2 years prior to Obama's strike, and had 7 years to do the same thing without success (8 if you take seriously Bush's denial of counter-terrorism co-ordinator Richard Clarke's charges that the pre-9-11 Bush administration did not share Clinton's anti-al Qaeda urgency), this is still an audacious claim.
But the revisionist historians are not even letting Osama bin Laden's body return to the biosphere without weighing in with this spin: President Bush, the man who created the need to kill Osama bin Laden in the first place (9-11 happened on his watch), should now get credit for another administration's success.
To those of us who inhabit the reality-based community, this might seem like a stretch, especially since Bush famously stated 6 months after 9-11 that he was not spending much time on Osama bin Laden.
1. "even though he [President Obama] was given the full plate"
2. "we [meaning Democrats in 1998] could not muster the political courage" to kill Osama bin Laden
3. "and the result was Sept. 11th."
4. "failure in leadership"
5. "how long he dithered"
6. "what conditions were put on the raid"
Personally, I would prefer honest hostility to a dishonest, backhanded thank you. And so, I imagine, would President Obama.
Now even setting aside the observation that Bush left office over 2 years prior to Obama's strike, and had 7 years to do the same thing without success (8 if you take seriously Bush's denial of counter-terrorism co-ordinator Richard Clarke's charges that the pre-9-11 Bush administration did not share Clinton's anti-al Qaeda urgency), this is still an audacious claim.
But the revisionist historians are not even letting Osama bin Laden's body return to the biosphere without weighing in with this spin: President Bush, the man who created the need to kill Osama bin Laden in the first place (9-11 happened on his watch), should now get credit for another administration's success.
To those of us who inhabit the reality-based community, this might seem like a stretch, especially since Bush famously stated 6 months after 9-11 that he was not spending much time on Osama bin Laden.
Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not. We haven’t heard from him in a long time. The idea of focusing on one person really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than one person. He’s just a person who’s been marginalized. … I don’t know where he is. I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.
And here is the email in question:
As more of the details of the Bin Laden killing come out it looks like we need to extend our congratulations backwards ...who set the conditions to make the operation successful. Anyone who played a part in the capture and interrogation of KSM that led to the identification of the courier that proved the vital piece of evidence to get Bin Laden deserves our thanks, as well as those who made the difficult decisions to authorize the success of that intelligence-gathering effort in spite of vicious criticism.
This "vicious criticism" was apparently a jab at those who felt that our legal and moral obligations to abide by the Geneva Convention and various torture protocols signed into United States law should be respected. This is the first allegation I have heard that anything useful, much less the elimination of Osama bin Laden, came out of the repeated drowning (there is no simulated about it) of KSM. Bush has now admitted in writing in his book that he authorized this torture (lest there be any doubt that it is torture, please refer to its inventors, the Spanish Inquisition who called it the "water torture"), even though he publicly lied at the time, stating "we don't torture."
It also appears from public accounts of those in the know that some of the changes in procedure made by officers like Stan McChrystal in the early-to-mid 2000s paid dividends long after his departure... And even those of us who have not been supporters of our current president should be wise enough to extend our congratulations and realize that even though he was given the full plate, he had to make the tough decision. Obama was surely aware that the last time we knew exactly where Bin Laden was (1998) we could not muster the political courage to order his death and the result was Sept. 11th. He most likely did not want to repeat that failure in leadership and while we will learn over time how long he dithered or what conditions were put on the raid, for the time being we owe him a well-done.Let's examine this paragraph for a snarky phrase count:
1. "even though he [President Obama] was given the full plate"
2. "we [meaning Democrats in 1998] could not muster the political courage" to kill Osama bin Laden
3. "and the result was Sept. 11th."
4. "failure in leadership"
5. "how long he dithered"
6. "what conditions were put on the raid"
Personally, I would prefer honest hostility to a dishonest, backhanded thank you. And so, I imagine, would President Obama.
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