Little Miss Attila snarks:
A lot of the people celebrating this victory would have impeached Bush for doing the same thing; some of them didn’t even want us to collect some of the intel that helped us accomplish this.And Michelle's got it, "All About Obama: Who’s politicizing bin Laden kill?":
Leftists are swarming Twitter to chastise any conservatives who dare give any credit to President Bush for his resolve and role in leading the post-9/11 counterrorism/national security response to the worst attack on American soil.Steve Benen's first update appeared after he Googled around a bit, and found: "On March 13, 2002, George W. Bush said of bin Laden, 'I truly am not that concerned about him'."
Meanwhile, Democrat hacks are burning the midnight oil making this All About Obama.
The Obama White House acted and that is good. But the killing of Osama should be a victory for America and Americans. Politics is never far behind, but the left's sheer dishonesty in claiming credit on this --- after nearly ten years of the most intense demonization of GWOT hawks --- is no doubt digging deep for some news depths of progressive depravity.
Image via Markos "American Taliban" Moulitsas' Daily Kos.
10 comments:
Bush failed to protect America, used 9/11 to invade the wrong country, killed the economy and failed to get Bin Laden.
Obama has protected America, ended the war, stabilised the economy and got Bin Laden.
Suck it up.
Their claiming full credit stings too because it looks like Obama got lucky that OBL didn't find out we knew where he was. Obama's leftist mindset wanted to be so sure before action he delayed for months. Sounds like he had good intel by last September and held "intensive" meetings through February, March and April when it sounds like military and intelligence had to drag him into action. (I guess in October to January he was too busy with the election and fallout to do anything about OBL) Actually, give him credit for no leaks over 8 months. That must have been hard to pull off.
It would seem to me that Obama had no choice. Far too many people knew what was going on to hide from taking this action especially with an election coming up. About the only thing Obama has done right is to keep doing what Bush originated.
Any claim by the Left for credit rings hollow given that they tried everything they possibly could to keep it from happening. It is the ultimate hypocrisy to now try to take credit.
I suspect that because Osama was being protected by Pakistan that he figured we would not do anything given Obama's reticence and weakness. His mistake!
Ultimately Obama is driven by the political calculations and not protecting the country.
It would take a very small mind not to recognize the calculations that took place and not see the lack of taste in the Left's attempts.
"Any claim by the Left for credit rings hollow given that they tried everything they possibly could to keep it from happening."
Word.
Simply pathetic. Obama did the deed and it's eating you guys up.
First off, the Bush Doctrine was all about big armies exerting strength. And so we attacked the wrong country by sending big armies into Iraq. And that's how Bush let Osama escape from Tora Bora, because he didn't want to waste any extra troops on Afghanistan when he had his real war to setup. Bush had his chance, and blew it.
Capturing Osama stopped being a priority for Bush the moment he decided getting Saddam would be his priority. Except Osama attacked us and Saddam didn't. Dumb. And that's what the majority of Democrats have been saying the whole time. We supported the war in Afghanistan and blamed Bush for starting the dumb one in Iraq. And that's why Obama's plan has been to withdraw from Iraq and escalate in Afghanistan. Had Bush put more troops in Afghanistan earlier, this all could have been avoided. But the dummy wanted Iraq instead, so that's what we got.
And then Obama came in, made Osama a priority again, and finally caught the bastard; and he didn't need an army to do it. As it turns out, you don't use armies to fight terrorists.
Oh, and here's a blast from the past, from July 2006:
The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.
The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.
The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."
The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/washington/04intel.html
Oops!
Tying this to Bush is like giving credit to Eisenhower for getting us to the moon - yes, some things were done that laid the groundwork, but the heavy lifting and good decisions were made by later administrations.
Almost no one of any political persuasion was against the Afghan war (although many of us were against the "bomb them from afar" campaign, rather than putting people on the ground who could catch the terrorists).
Liberals were indeed dead-set against the idiotic and pointless war that Bush waged in Iraq - the one that caused us to lose Bin Laden at Tora Bora. Bush made bad decisions and LOST him. FULL STOP. He broke up and reassigned the CIA group dedicated to finding Bin Laden. FULL STOP. He even admitted (with admirable candor) that capturing Bin Laden simply wasn't a big priority to him.
Obama made a campaign promise to make Bin Laden's capture a top priority. He instructed the new CIA head to do so. They put their effort into developing leads, and then they found him. And then Obama made the gutsy choice to send in SEALs inside Pakistan to make sure we got him.
Trying to give Bush credit is delusional. That's not to say Obama deserves all the credit - there are probably hundreds of intelligence officers (many of them simply "pencil-pushers" who process and evaluate data), there are the people who design and procure our hardware, the entire JSOC organization, and of course the incredibly brave SEALs that carried out this mission.
But to deny that it was Obama's leadership that righted the course, that shifted away from Bush's marginalization of the pursuit of Bin Laden to make it a top priority, that's just silly.
Obama was a leader, and just personally oversaw the most successful anti-terrorist mission of the modern era.
There is no "oops" about "The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri." OBL ceased to be an operative threat early on when we disrupted AQ in Afghanistan. Certainly he remained a high value target for his propaganda potential. We wanted him. We are glad we got him. This is a symbolic success, which is important, but it isn't a practical success. Obama deserves credit for launching the strike without tipping off the Pakistanis. But Bush shifting away from a figurehead hunt to a more diffuse network of terrorists hunt wasn't "oops." Witness the travel advisories and terror concerns now that OBL is dead. If he were still the operational head of the terror beast, then they would be in a state of disarray and the threat would come later, when they regrouped. Instead governments and embassies are issuing advisories because the diffuse terror network is capable of launching smaller scale revenge attacks. OBL was nothing to operations anymore, and hasn't been for a long time.
AHLondon, yeah, I get the point of why they shut down the Osama unit. And I agree with your logic on why catching Osama wasn't as important as it had been before. But...Bush shut the unit down. Obama started it back up again. Obama caught Osama. That's the timeline.
And so while I understand why Bush took the focus off of Osama, it makes it tough for us to now give credit to Bush. Not saying Bush made the wrong call. Just saying that Obama wasn't merely continuing Bush's policies towards catching Osama; but rather, he fixed them. As much as a president can take credit for this sort of thing, this one is all Obama.
BTW, anyone's nuts if they didn't think Obama wanted Osama the whole time. Make no mistake, he's a nice guy, but that dude is a cold-blooded shark. Just thinking about his performance at the Correspondent's Dinner and he KNEW that something big was about to happen. Yet he was cooler than a cucumber and you wouldn't think he had a care in the world. But when you watch it now, you can see it in the smirk on his face: He's got a secret.
Sorry guys, think what you want of his policy leanings, but you've got to admit Obama's one bad ass president. Sucks that you guys don't have anyone like him, huh. You don't have anyone who's half the politician Obama is, and will be sucking wind again in '12. You better hope the economy doesn't keep getting better, or we'll end up getting the House back, too.
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