Category Archives: War and Peace

Again, maybe Obama DOES deserve major credit for getting bin Laden

As you may recall, back when we first heard about the raid, I said something dismissive about our current president just being the lucky guy to have killing bin Laden happen on his watch. A few days later, I amended that to say that maybe we wouldn’t have gotten Public Enemy No. 1 if not for leadership exhibited by Barack Obama.

Today, I ran across further evidence that the specific actions taken by the president — which easily might have have been taken — helped lead to that SEAL coup de main.

It was in a piece in The New Yorker that gives a blow-by-blow account of the raid itself. I haven’t even finished reading the piece myself. I’ve looked at it in short glances ever since Nu Wexler brought it to my attention this morning (hope to finish it tonight), but I did get this far:

One month before the 2008 Presidential election, Obama, then a senator from Illinois, squared off in a debate against John McCain in an arena at Belmont University, in Nashville. A woman in the audience asked Obama if he would be willing to pursue Al Qaeda leaders inside Pakistan, even if that meant invading an ally nation. He replied, “If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable, or unwilling, to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush Al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national-security priority.” McCain, who often criticized Obama for his naïveté on foreign-policy matters, characterized the promise as foolish, saying, “I’m not going to telegraph my punches.”

Four months after Obama entered the White House, Leon Panetta, the director of the C.I.A., briefed the President on the agency’s latest programs and initiatives for tracking bin Laden. Obama was unimpressed. In June, 2009, he drafted a memo instructing Panetta to create a “detailed operation plan” for finding the Al Qaeda leader and to “ensure that we have expended every effort.” Most notably, the President intensified the C.I.A.’s classified drone program; there were more missile strikes inside Pakistan during Obama’s first year in office than in George W. Bush’s eight. The terrorists swiftly registered the impact: that July, CBS reported that a recent Al Qaeda communiqué had referred to “brave commanders” who had been “snatched away” and to “so many hidden homes [which] have been levelled.” The document blamed the “very grave” situation on spies who had “spread throughout the land like locusts.” Nevertheless, bin Laden’s trail remained cold…

That additional pressure on al Qaeda — from pressing the CIA to try harder, to a direct escalation of military action in Pakistan — seems to draw a line that eventually led to what happened in Abbottabad. Yes, we’ve known since 2007 that Obama intended to be very aggressive about pursuing bin Laden into Pakistan. But this passage served as a clarifying reminder that Obama is more like Michael than like Sonny.

Actually, the rest of the piece seems to be more exciting than that tidbit I just shared. But I had a point to make about that part…

While WE waste time on the stupid debt ceiling…

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Bud has a legitimate desire to read more about the debt debate here. And if I can when I get done with ADCO stuff today, I’ll have something to say about the embarrassing behavior of South Carolina’s House Republicans.

But in the meantime, I’ll take just a second to express my utter frustration that we’re having such a big fight over THAT (which we should have been able to work out in a few hours, long before now), when there are things such as this going on in the world:

WASHINGTON—The U.S. for the first time formally accused Iran of forging an alliance with al Qaeda in a pact that allows the terrorist group to use Iranian soil as a transit point for moving money, arms and fighters to its bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Treasury Department outlined on Thursday what it said was an extensive fund-raising operation that uses Iran-based operatives and draws from donors in oil-rich Persian Gulf countries such as Kuwait and Qatar. The Treasury said it had sanctioned six al Qaeda members for allegedly overseeing this network.

The U.S. has long been concerned about alleged Iranian support for the terrorist group, though Iran and al Qaeda hold differing interpretations of Islam and divergent strategic interests.

But Tehran, anticipating the U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, has been moving increasingly to assert its regional influence. Iran has helped smuggle sophisticated weapons into those countries to hasten the withdrawal of American forces, the U.S. says—a charge Tehran has denied….

That was the lede story in the WSJ today. But this idiotic ideological garbage over debt is sucking up all the oxygen…

Equal time for Robert E. Lee

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Since I did a post about Grant (sort of), I thought I’d share with you this article that Stan Dubinsky brought to my attention this morning:

How Did Robert E. Lee Become an American Icon?

After President Dwight D. Eisenhower revealed on national television that one of the four “great Americans” whose pictures hung in his office was none other than Robert E. Lee, a thoroughly perplexed New York dentist reminded him that Lee had devoted “his best efforts to the destruction of the United States government” and confessed that since he could not see “how any American can include Robert E. Lee as a person to be emulated, why the President of the United States of America should do so is certainly beyond me.” Eisenhower replied personally and without hesitation, explaining that Lee was, “in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. … selfless almost to a fault … noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history. From deep conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities … we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.”

The piece goes on to explain in detail why Lee became a revered memory, without trying, while others such as Jefferson Davis who so avidly sought justification failed.

It’s interesting. I actually haven’t finished it yet. Y’all can read it while I do.

Back off! I’m armed, and I have really big hands!

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Today at Rotary, our speaker was from FN Manufacturing — you know, the plant in the northeastern part of our community that makes the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (the weapon that replace the legendary BAR), the M240 medium machine gun, and the ubiquitous M16. Among other things.

And I learned quite a bit. I learned that FN owns Browning and Winchester, for instance. Interesting stuff.

Including stuff that I didn’t realize I was learning at the time, but which came in handy.

Before the meeting, I was hefting and examining some of the wares on a table in the back of the room. And when I say “heft,” with some of them I mean heft. Our speaker would tell later about how the steel version of the M240 — or was it the 249? — weighs 28 pounds (without ammunition), and when they came out with a lighter, titanium version, the Army essentially said, “Great! Now our soldiers can carry five pounds less!” and the Marines said “Great! Now our Marines can carry five pounds more ammo!”

Anyway, as I was holding and examining a SCAR adapted for sniper use with a scope almost as long as the weapon (it looked something like this, and reminded me of “Vera,” which if you’ll recall was Jayne Cobb‘s very favorite gun), Kathryn Fenner walked by and said, in a tone calculated to cool my enthusiasm, “They’re not giving free samples…”

Turns out she was wrong. At the end of the meeting, there were two door prizes — a scrimshaw knife, and this lovely charcoal lighter. To get them, you had to answer correctly a question based on the talk.

Apparently, I was the only one who was listening when the speaker said the Columbia plant is 188,000 square feet. No, I didn’t write it down. I just heard, and remembered. (I did write down that the M240 — or was it the M249 — bears a warranty up to 100,000 rounds. Of course, it can fire 1,100 rounds a minute.)

You just never know when an odd sort of memory is going to pay off.

You can’t really blame THAT part on the CIA

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Meant to post this the other day, from an opinion piece in the WashPost:

The reaction from public health workers was understandably fierce when the Guardian reported last week that the CIA had staged a vaccination campaign in an attempt to confirm Osama bin Laden’s location by obtaining DNA from his family members. We recognize the importance of the mission to bring bin Laden to justice. But the CIA’s reckless tactics could have catastrophic consequences.

The CIA’s plot — recruiting a Pakistani doctor to distribute hepatitis vaccines in Abbottabad this spring — destroyed credibility that wasn’t its to erode. It was the very trust that communities worldwide have in immunization programs that made vaccinations an appealing ruse. But intelligence officials imprudently burned bridges that took years for health workers to build….

Uhhh… I don’t think the CIA is to blame for that. Sounds like you need to put the blame for that at The Guardian‘s doorstep.

Yell and holler, if you are so inclined, about the CIA using a phony deal to use bin Laden’s kids in order to get to him so we could kill him. That’s really, really cold. Creepy, even.

But the CIA’s action didn’t erode health workers’ credibility. If it had been kept secret — which I feel sure would have been the Agency’s preference — no damage would have been done. It was reporting it that did the eroding.

Oh, and note that I’m not criticizing The Guardian for reporting it. I’m just saying, let’s be clear about causes and effects here. Actions, even worthwhile actions, have consequences.

Video: IED exercise at Fort Jackson (WARNING — lots of simulated blood)

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I mentioned this the other day in my post about the Fort Jackson tour. I shot a lot of video that day — and if I could figure out how to edit iPhone video (when I call it up in my PC-based editing software, the sound drops out), I’d give you a video overview of the tour.

Instead, here is one unedited scene from the tour (I can upload a complete clip directly to YouTube; I just can’t edit it). It’s the most dramatic.

We were warned before we went in that we would see a lot of fake blood — particularly flowing from the sophisticated mannequin. There were two real soldiers in there with fake wounds, and you’ll hear them moaning over the recorded sounds of battle. But the mannequin had the most horrific wounds — both legs missing. The mannequin moves as well as bleeding. We were also told not to be surprised that it was “anatomically correct,” and was wounded in that area, too. There were ladies in our group. Of course, there were ladies among the soldiers going through the exercise, as well.

The scenario was that three soldiers’ humvee had just hit an IED. The mission of the recruits was to secure the site, treat the wounded, and prepare them for evacuation. One of the main challenges was to stop the mannequin’s profuse bleeding with tourniquets.

The trainees had learned about such situations in the classroom, but this was their first hands-on simulation of this kind, with all the sights and sounds. One of the recruits was appointed to be squad leader, and they were thrown into this under the watchful eyes of instructors. You will see four soldiers assume defensive positions with their rifles (the challenge for them was to keep their eyes looking outward, since they were staring at blank walls) while the rest of the squad deals with the wounded. I assume the soldier you see moving about among the group checking on everything was the squad leader.

One thing you can’t see — it was pretty hot in there. We were indoors, but there was no air-conditioning. A little added stress for the exercise.

And yeah, we were standing right on top of them. The room wasn’t very big. We just tried not to get in the way.

Touring Fort Jackson

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I spent more than half of Thursday on a tour, sponsored by the Greater Columbia Chamber, of Fort Jackson. It was kind of weird that I’d never done this. I’ve been to Fort Jackson more times than I can count, but had never seen much more than the golf course and the other more public facilities. Even though I’ve always known what Fort Jackson is for, as the Army’s largest basic training base — I had never actually witnessed any of the training. About the closest I had ever com was hearing automatic weapons fired in the distance while I was playing golf.

On Thursday, I saw a lot, and it was impressive. The basic outline of our tour:

We heard remarks from Maj. Gen. James Milano. He gave us the overview about what they do at the place where 50 percent of all U.S. soldiers, and 60 percent of the females, receive initial training. Just one interesting factoid: Only one in four recruits measures up. “That’s a national crisis,” said the general. The biggest disqualifying factor? Obesity, and just generally being out of shape. Young people today just aren’t as physically active as earlier generations, and too many have grown up on junk food. A lot of what they do at the Fort is help soldiers who do get in make it in this regard, from sophisticated physical training and injury treatment to making sure they eat right for a change. The nutritious food is “a shock” to many, but “It they’re hungry enough, they’ll eat it.”
Graduation. We had been told it would be an inspiring ceremony, and it was. I was sufficiently struck with awe that I suppressed my natural inclination to say, “Where is Sgt. Hulka’s platoon?” My favorite part was when PFC Joshua Hinton was honored for being the best marksman in his training company. He’s from Jackson, TN, which is one of my hometowns (my wife and three of my kids were born there; I worked at the paper there for 10 years).
We visited a recently remodeled barracks.
We climbed the Victory Tower, which is recruits’ first big test of courage and confidence. That is to say, we climbed it by the stairs. Two of our number signed the necessary waivers and tried their hands (successfully, fortunately) at rappelling. I did not. I was afraid. Of my wife. If I had even slightly injured myself right after spending 400 bucks on a shot of cortisone next to my spine, she would never, ever have let me forget it.
Chow time! At the mess hall, I had a revelation: I always assumed that even if they had let in guys with asthma when I was young, I would have starved to death because of my food allergies. But thanks to the new, healthy menu, I had a great meal — baked salmon, rice, pinto beans, Brussels sprouts and jello. (By the way, the irony is that my allergies cause me to eat healthier than most people, and I was reasonably athletic when I was draft age, so I would probably have been in better shape than most guys who enter the Army.) We entered the mess hall early, but hundreds of soldiers came in after us — all with their rifles.
We visited an area where soldiers are taught about teamwork (as opposed to the Victory Tower, which was more about individual achievement via such means as the “quicksand” exercise — they had to work together to cross a wide expanse without touching the ground, using only two or three wooden planks. We watched a couple of groups doing it — each group worked it out slightly differently. I kept thinking about the Twins’ favorite TV show, Wonder Pets, with its song, “What’s gonna work — TEAMwork!”
Then, we saw a particularly intense exercise in which armed recruits came upon three soldiers — two real, one of them a sophisticated mannequin that could move and bleed copiously — whose humvee had just been blown up by an IED. They had to secure the area and stabilize the wounded to prepare them for evacuation, with the particular challenge being to apply tourniquets successfully to the mannequin, which had just lost both legs.

A full day, even though we were done by 2 p.m.

Below are a few of the pictures I took. Here’s a key to understanding what you’re looking at, left to right, top to bottom:

I’m sorry I missed when these soldiers’ names were announced at the start of the graduation program, but I liked the picture anyway. They were receiving a huge ovation from the crowd in the reviewing stands, right after we heard about their service in combat zones.
The five companies graduating pass before the reviewing stand. There was no Sgt. Hulka’s platoon, but they all seemed to be go-getters.
You don’t see many pay phones these days, but there were six outside the barracks we visited. Recruits are not allowed to keep cell phones.
While phoning home, the troops can continue their training by studying the chain of command, located above the phones. They are expected to know the chain of command, but they tend to have trouble with the middle parts of the chain. Few have trouble with the top or the bottom: They know who President Obama is, and they will never forget their drill instructor for the rest of their lives. I was struck by how the most faded photo was that of Sec. Gates. But then I realized, he’s had his job longer than any of the others.
The barracks. I think they told us this room was for female soldiers, but that doesn’t sound right. I looked at some of those boots atop the lockers, and they were way too big for any of the women in our tour group, near as I could tell. In the shower area (not pictured), the colonel guiding us noted that there’s not much privacy. Well… there was more privacy than in the shower room in the Honeycombs when I was at USC.
Soldiers at the Victory Tower had to stack arms before climbing.
You’re looking at soldiers atop the tower, about to rappel down a sheer 60-foot wall. I liked listening to the female instructor with the dark hair and wearing the cap, sitting right at the edge and speaking to the bareheaded soldier holding his hands up. With each recruit, she said, “Are you scared?” If they said “no,” she would say, “Well, I would be.” And then she gave them a calming spiel about how to make it through this challenge. And then they went over.
Capt. LeMay was our guide at the Victory Tower and elsewhere on our tour. I finally had to ask him. Turns out that yes, he’s the great-grandnephew of Gen. Curtis LeMay. Small world. He gets asked that a lot.
After you climb the “ladder” at right (partly seen), you rappel down the wall. I managed to suppress the temptation to take part.
Our bus was held up briefly as we waited for this armed column to pass out of our way, en route to the mess hall.
At the team training area, we walked past a company-sized group eating MREs among the trees. When next I looked that way, they were all in the prone firing position with their rifles pointing outward from their large defensive circle. I suggested that we go back another way, in case we had offended them somehow.
Gear piled up outside the building where the troops engaged in the exercises dealing with the aftermath of IED explosions.
Soldiers secure the area around a crippled humvee, while some of them try to help the wounded. The “blood” is made of corn syrup and food coloring, I believe. But it was pretty realistic, though. After they had dragged the wounded out of there and tracked it all over, it was hard to get out of the room without walking through it.
A soldier comes bursting out of the building ahead of his comrades trying to evacuate the “wounded.” I had noticed that soldiers had their names written on tape on the butts of their rifles. I didn’t notice until I was editing these photos that this guys’ said “The Situation.”
The squad awaits evac outside the building.

I’ve got video of that exercise, by the way, complete with the sound of canned gunfire to add to the soldiers’ stress level. I’ll try to post it later. We were in the room, right on top of them. Capt. Collins, who was guiding this part of the tour, told us that the Army had learned some things about staging such exercises from Hollywood. He had been through a similar exercise at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin. It turned out to be a little too intense for some of the combat veterans who went through it. They had to take a break afterwards. It had been too much like what they had actually experienced in combat.

By the way, before that exercise, a sergeant demonstrated for us how to apply the high-tech tourniquets that all soldiers carry. He told us that we probably would have had as many killed in Iraq and Afghanistan the past decade as we lost in Vietnam, if not for what has been learned about treating wounds since then. If we had known then what we know today, Staff Sgt. Cheadle said, that memorial wall in Washington would be a lot smaller.

Congressman Joe Wilson, antiwar activist

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Here’s another chapter in what I wrote about back here, in the post headlined “Are we starting to see a geologic shift between left and right on national security?”…

I’ll give you the two items backwards. Friday afternoon, I received this release from Joe Wilson:

(Washington, DC) – Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02) released the following statement after the House of Representatives voted against authorizing the limited use of the United States Armed Forces in Libya:

“The President’s decision to ignore the Constitution along with the War Powers Resolution has led us to this point. Choosing not to consult with Congress on this conflict was complicated even further by this Administration’s failure to explain and outline a plan of action to the American public.

“NATO is one of America’s closest allies. I do not want to jeopardize the progress it has made in removing Muammar Gaddafi from power. However, the President’s failure to actively engage Congress forces me to vote against committing our Armed Forces on the ground in Libya.”

I hope y’all didn’t get whiplash in that last paragraph. Let’s see, would not want in any way to jeopardize NATO’s mission in Libya (which, last time I checked, was not officially removing Gaddafi, but we can wink and nod at that one), on account of NATO being our great friends and all. BUT… he wants to tie Obama’s hands in supporting that mission, on account of, you know. Obama being Obama.

There are just so many bizarre things going on here. Republicans (especially Republicans of the strong national defense wing, like Joe Wilson) caring about the flippin’ War Powers Resolution. I mean, normally you hear folks in that camp saying the War Powers Resolution is what violates the Constitution. Then… well, I’ll let y’all figure out all the bizarre things about it. Here’s a news story on what Joe’s talking about, by the way.

I wanted to share something else with you. That morning, before the vote, this piece by Kimberley A. Strassel (normal world view: Obama bad, Republicans good) appeared in The Wall Street Journal. It was headlined, “The GOP’s War Powers Opportunism: Republicans abandon principle in a rush to score political points on the president.” I’m going to take a chance here of getting into trouble with the Journal by quoting large chunks of the piece, because it just makes so many good points. Here goes:

But what fun is there in criticizing Democrats on national security when the GOP is offering up a much more embarrassing spectacle? In their rush to score points on the president, what congressional Republicans have actually managed to do is hurt themselves. They’ve highlighted their own divisions and given voters reason to question whether the party is throwing over principle in favor of political opportunism or, more worrisome, a new form of GOP isolationism.

In the space of a few months, Republicans have gone from coherently criticizing Mr. Obama’s timid approach to the Arab awakening, to a few weeks ago incoherently losing 87 members to antiwar Democrat Dennis Kucinich’s resolution to end military engagement in Libya. This caused an open rift in the party, compelling Sen. John McCain to stand up for U.S. victory and sponsor a resolution giving Mr. Obama freedom of action for another year.

House Republicans have very publicly let it be known that they intend to hold a vote on Mr. McCain’s resolution—solely so that they can very publicly vote him down. Not satisfied that this is an ample enough rebuke to those who would win a war, the GOP is now working to pass legislation to defund the president’s Libya mission. That’s right, House Republicans (not House Democrats) intend to kneecap a commander in chief….

… House leaders are of the view that failing to take action against the president is the equivalent of letting him “get away” with his snubs and bad policy and to “win” on this issue. The only real winner of a Libya withdrawal is, of course, a terrorist named Moammar Gadhafi. But try telling that to a GOP that has come full circle to congressional Democrats, circa 2006, who masked their ambitions to undermine President Bush behind lofty arguments of Iraq “oversight.”

Speaking of 2006, some of this is also the consequence of a party with no obvious leader. Mr. Bush kept his caucus (barely) on Iraq only by constantly reminding members of the stakes. Those GOP candidates who would follow Mr. Bush have been mostly craven on Libya and Afghanistan, with Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann more worried about winning the next public-opinion poll than winning a war. House Speaker John Boehner remains reluctant to openly engage his excitable freshmen. Rather than lead on Libya, his default has been to try to make the best of a fractious GOP—for instance, by offering up a less-bad version of the Kucinich resolution.

To the extent there is political pressure, it comes from the tea party, which has no interest in foreign policy but is instead focused on spending and federal powers. This has helped to drive the growing group of self-described constitutionalists and war-deficit-hawks who are giving rise to a new brand of Republican isolationism.

The prevailing antigovernment feeling has allowed folks like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul to spin the Libya mission as some sort of affront to the Constitution, since Mr. Obama failed to beg Congress’s approval for Libya, as required by the 1973 War Powers Act. Never mind that conservative scholars will point out that it is the War Powers Act itself that is unconstitutional. That used to be the general GOP view, but with “Obama violated the Constitution” making for such a delicious sound bite among base voters, Republicans are willing to forget the past.

Really, I wanted to quote the whole thing, but restrained myself slightly, giving you only the parts that best address what Joe Wilson and the majority did yesterday.

I urge you to go read it all — and browse the site, and give your custom to the Journal’s advertisers, so they will forgive me for quoting so extensively. It will be worth your while.

By the way, other “conservative” pundits are not getting on the House’s case here. George Will is attacking John McCain for, as Ms. Strassel wrote, daring “to stand up for U.S. victory and sponsor a resolution giving Mr. Obama freedom of action for another year.” Mr. Will’s column is headlined “John McCain’s never-ending war.” Mr. Will seems angry with Sen. McCain for daring to call the latest trend among Republicans “isolationism.” But that (coupled with Obama Derangement Syndrome) is precisely the right word. And it’s not entirely a new thing. We’ve been here before.

Are we starting to see a geologic shift between left and right on national security?

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This is something I’ve been thinking about the last few days, and I haven’t written about it because it’s complicated and I haven’t had time to do something pulling all the threads together. But when I saw this development, I decided I’d better go ahead and throw out the general idea and get the discussion started:

Obama Says War Powers Act Doesn’t Apply to Libya Mission

White House maintains that the president doesn’t need lawmakers’ permission for U.S. role in NATO-led effort.

The White House on Wednesday told skeptical lawmakers that President Obama doesn’t need their permission to continue the nation’s involvement in the NATO-led mission in Libya because U.S. forces are playing only a supporting role there.

Administration lawyers made their case as part of a larger report sent to Congress responding to complaints that the president had yet to provide a sufficient rationale for continuing the Libya campaign, the New York Times reports.

“We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own,” State Department lawyer Harold Koh told the paper. “We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped, or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”…

OK, digest that. Here’s the NYT version, and here’s the WashPost. And then consider some of the other things I’ve been noticing lately:

The fact that, in the GOP debate the other night, we heard some Republicans moving more toward the “get out of Afghanistan ASAP” line. Ron Paul, treated as an outcast for saying such things four years ago, got cheered by the Fox News crowd.
The bold way Obama decided to go in and GET bin Laden, without any of that multilateral consult-the-allies (as in, tell the Pakistanis we’re attacking in the heart of their country) touchy-feely stuff. No fooling around.
The way the administration is playing on having stunned the world with the bin Laden thing to get its way elsewhere. That prompted me to write that the difference between Bush and Obama is that Bush was Sonny, while Obama is the far-deadlier (that is, more effective) Michael.
The way Obama is taking advantage of chaos in Yemen to just GO AFTER terrorists there, without asking Congress or the UN, or presenting arguments about the War Powers Act, or anything like that. Read this, and this.

This has been building ever since the election, with a lot of Obama’s antiwar base feeling pretty disoriented (wait — is this who we elected?), and people like me being reassured by his steady pragmatism.

But lately, the process has seemed to be accelerating. Obama still talks a good war-as-last-resort, multilateral, we-don’t-want-to-be-a-bully line for the base… but watch what happens. (And how about the way he threw everybody off-balance on Libya, letting the FRENCH of all people take the lead, while still managing to get in there and go after the bad guys? That enabled him to have it both ways. The allies couldn’t do it without us, but it came across looking like we were a reluctant junior partner, which bought Obama some support for the move among liberals.)

And I find myself wondering, is anyone else noticing? I mean, while the Republicans get more timid about the U.S. role abroad (in some ways) and obsess more and more about domestic issues (because that’s what the Tea Party cares about), Obama is out there going all JFK and LBJ. He’s going Old School. He’s defining Democratic presidential leadership back to where it was before Vietnam.

Are the parties moving toward switching places?

This is a fascinating development. I think it has the potential to completely realign the country politically, and on more than national security.

Anybody else noticing this?

Talk about a contrast between substance and triviality…

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At one moment yesterday on Twitter, about half the Tweets in my feed were about this Weiner guy (or should I say, “this weiner guy” — either way, it makes sense). Something about his wife being pregnant.

It’s not just Twitter. He (or rather, the debate among Democrats over what to do about him) LED The Wall Street Journal‘s “What’s News” column this morning. Normally, that briefing column exhibits a very fine sense of what is significant and what is not. But not today.

Yes, I get why other people think it’s important. It has to do with the never-ending war between the parties in Washington, and who’s up and who’s down, and which party is being embarrassed and which party is taking advantage of the other party’s embarrassment, yadda-yadda. NONE of which, I’m here to tell you, is actually important. I wouldn’t give two cents to have either party in the majority at any time, because as was said by Simon and Garfunkel, either way you look at it, you lose.

So take away that veneer of “importance” laid on by the daily partisan talking points, and all you have is a sex scandal, which is of no greater importance than a similar scandal involving one of those people on “Jersey Shore.”

A Twitter exchange I had a couple of days ago helps illustrate the difference between the dominant view and my own. Todd Kincannon — local attorney and Republican — retweeted this:

How many “objective” journos were more desperate to prove Palin was wrong about P. Revere than proving Weiner was wrong about his P?

I reacted by saying, “Who cares about either? Not I…” I mean, those are TWO “news stories” I was doing my best to know nothing about — and failing, of course. (Oh, and having learned more than I wanted about the Palin thing, I’ll just say that you’ve REALLY got to be a Palin fan to think anyone had to lift a finger to “prove” her wrong; any schoolchild should have known without checking.)

Todd responded: “I would be in your camp if Weiner (a) wasn’t married and (b) hadn’t lied.” To which I said, “He has NOTHING to do with me — nothing. I am NOT a NY voter. And I HOPE Palin never becomes relevant again, either…”

Of course, I can downplay and belittle this garbage all I want, and it’s not going to stop other people from making a big deal about it on a slow national news week.

But what I CAN do is take some pleasure in small things. Such as the above-pictured page in The Wall Street Journal yesterday. I thought the ironic contrast impressive. Here you have a story about this self-involved Weiner loser, whom everyone just goes on and on about and can’t get enough of… right next to a story about a man who lived an extraordinary life of service and accomplishment — but about whom no one is buzzing on Twitter (OK, no one I saw, anyway).

John Alison, who died at age 98:

Was deputy commander of the Flying Tigers (actually, the successor unit to the Flying Tigers), defending China from the Japanese
Innovated night fighter operations. Actually, that doesn’t describe it. He flew up at night and shot down two Japanese bombers, when no one knew you could to that.
Led glider-borne commandos behind the lines in Burma.
Played a key role in the Lend Lease program helping Britain and the Russians hold back Hitler.
Was there when the German army reached the outskirts of Moscow.
Advised Eisenhower on the use of gliders for D-Day.

As I once wrote in an editorial, that was the generation that Did Things. Him especially. And I’ll bet most of you never heard of him before his death. Meanwhile, we just can’t shut up about a guy who supposedly took pictures of his privates and sent them to women. Or something. Like I said, I’m trying to ignore it.

This is what we have come to.

Bush was Sonny; Obama is more like Michael

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I said this as a comment back on a previous post, and liked it enough to say more prominently…

After reading that quote I cited in the WSJ about how the Obama administration is, ever so quietly, without saying anything overt, taking advantage of its stunning effectiveness in taking out bin Laden:

This month’s military strike deep inside Pakistan is already being used by U.S. officials as a negotiating tool — akin to, don’t make us do that again — with countries including Pakistan thought to harbor other terrorists. Yemen and Somalia are also potential venues, officials said, if local-government cooperation were found to be lacking…

… I got to thinking how this was similar to the effect that Bush’s invasion of Iraq had on thugs like Moamar Qaddafi — for a very brief time, before everybody around the world figured out that (given our internal dispute over that invasion) W. wasn’t likely to get the chance to do that ever again…

And then it hit me: In terms of the politics of projecting a credible threat that gets others to do what you want (an idea that I realize makes a lot of us squirm), George W. Bush was like Sonny Corleone. The blusterer, the guy you just know is going to jump in the car and come after you in a mad, blind rage if you touch his sister. The guy who doesn’t want to negotiate; he just wants Sollozzo dead. And ultimately, the guy who has trouble achieving all his goals.

Barack Obama, by contrast, is more like Michael. The clean-cut college kid who was never involved in the muscle end of the business, who held himself aloof from that, even expressed distaste for it. The guy who was supposed to be “Senator Corleone, President Corleone,” and not a wartime don. The guy who speaks softly and reasonably, and never utters a threat. The guy who takes out the heads of the other four New York families in one stunning stroke, right when you’ve forgotten about the bad blood. The guy who keeps on speaking reasonably after that, but nevertheless everybody respects him now, in the uomo di rispetto sense…

Not that, you know, I’m saying either president is a criminal. Far from it. I’m just using very familiar fictional characters in order to draw a comparison…

How much do I actually NEED to know about the bin Laden raid?

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How much of what THEY know do WE need to know?

Here’s a consideration I hadn’t though much about before now, and should have (given all those spy novels, and military history books, and Tom Clancy thrillers I’ve read):

Has the U.S. Said Too Much About the Bin Laden Raid?

Military officials fret that constant stream of leaks may hinder future missions, put Navy SEALs at risk.

By Josh Voorhees | Posted Friday, May. 13, 2011, at 11:09 AM EDT

In the nearly two weeks since the U.S. operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, a near-constant stream of detailed information about the raid’s specifics has seeped out from White House officials, lawmakers, and pretty much anyone else with security clearance.

But that’s not how things were supposed to be, at least not according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. “Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the Situation Room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out Bin Laden,” Gates told Marines at a Wednesday town hall at Camp Lejeune. “That all fell apart on Monday—the next day.”…

The White House announced last week that it was done briefing reporters on the specifics of the mission, but that has done little to stop the ongoing flow of new details from being reported. The latest major leak came Thursday night, when CBS News gave a detailed play-by-play of what the Navy SEAL team’s helmet cameras captured during the raid….

There is the danger that the more we know about details of the raid, the greater potential for threatening our capability to do something like it in the future.

For instance, the lede story on The Washington Post‘s front page yesterday told us that a key element in preparing for the raid involved high-altitude drones flying WAY deeper into Pakistan than the Pakistanis suspected we were going. So that we could get higher-resolution photos than you get from satellites. And if you consider how high-resolution satellite photos can be, these images must have been pretty awesome. So… you have a revelation of greater technical capability than the world might have expected, and of a tactical deployment that no one knew about.

Of course, it’s a two-edged thing. Let enemies and potential enemies know what you can do, and it could intimidate them into deciding they don’t want the United States as their enemy after all. Or at least, it MIGHT work that way with some — say, your less fanatical foes. But let anyone know what measures you are capable of, and it empowers them to develop countermeasures. That’s a huge theme in military history — measures and countermeasures — and it never ends.

We may find all these details fascinating — I know I do. But how much of it do we really need to know?

Shooting replaces tough talk

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In case you weren’t worried enough about this whole relationship thing with Pakistan:

Well, this isn’t going to make an alreadytense relationship any better.

A brief firefight between Pakistani ground troops and NATO helicopters erupted early Tuesday morning near the Afghan boarder. Pakistan claims that two of its soldiers were wounded as a result of the clash, and officials are demanding a meeting with NATO leaders to address the situation, Reutersreports.

Pakistan has admitted that the ground troops opened fire first, but maintains that they were in the right because the two helicopters had crossed into Pakistan’s airspace from Afghanistan, the New York Timesreports. Western military officials, meanwhile, have so far declined to say whether the helicopters were indeed over Pakistan…

Geronimo, bin Laden, history and popular culture

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That headline sounds like the title of a college course that might be briefly popular among those trying to fulfill a requirement in history or sociology or the like, doesn’t it?

Just ran across this WashPost piece from six days ago, stepping away from emotion over the use of “Geronimo” as the name of the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, and noting the parallels between the U.S. military’s pursuits of the two men. I found it informative, so here it is. An excerpt:

The similarities are not in the men themselves but in the military campaigns that targeted them…

The 16-month campaign was the first of nearly a dozen strategic manhunts in U.S. military history in which forces were deployed abroad with the objective of killing or capturing one individual. Among those targeted were Pancho Villa, Che Guevara, Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein.

The original Geronimo campaign and the hunt for bin Laden share plenty of similarities. On May 3, 1886, more than a century before a $25 million reward was offered for information on bin Laden’s whereabouts, and almost 125 years to the day before the al-Qaeda leader’s death, the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a joint resolution “Authorizing the President to offer a reward of twenty-five thousand dollars for the killing or capture of Geronimo.”

In both operations, the United States deployed its most advanced technology. Whereas a vast array of satellite and airborne sensors was utilized in the search for bin Laden, Gen. Nelson Miles directed his commanders to erect heliograph stations on prominent mountain peaks, using sunlight and mirrors to transmit news of the hostiles. Neither system helped anyone actually catch sight of the man who was sought.

Small raiding forces … proved more decisive than large troop formations in both cases. In 1886, Lt. Charles Gatewood was able to approach the 40 Apache warriors still at large with a party of just five — himself, two Apache scouts, an interpreter and a mule-packer. He convinced Geronimo and the renegades to surrender on Sept. 4, with a deftness that would have been impossible with 5,000 soldiers. Similarly, the United States could never have deployed the thousands of troops necessary to block all escape routes out of Tora Bora — the deployment of 3,000 troops three months later to Afghanistan’s ShahikotValley in Operation Anaconda failed to prevent the escape of the targeted individuals from similar terrain — but a lightning strike by a few dozen commandos was successful.

Both campaigns also demonstrated the importance of human intelligence to manhunting. Gatewood was alerted to Geronimo’s location near Fronteras, Mexico, by a group of Mexican farmers tired of the threat of Apache raids, but he also needed the assistance of Apache scouts familiar with the terrain and with Geronimo’s warriors to close in on his quarry. So, too, according to administration officials, did the success in finding bin Laden depend upon the interrogation of his former confederates in al-Qaeda and upon the efforts of local agents in Pakistan to track the courier who led U.S. intelligence officers to the Abbottabad compound….

And so forth. By the way, on a related topic, here’s a piece written by a paratrooper on the history of U.S. soldier’s tradition of yelling that name when jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. Apparently, it all came from a 1939 movie starring “Chief Thundercloud,” a.k.a. Victor Daniels (not to mention the immortal Andy Devine!).

And talk about your coincidences… I had been clicking around through my Netflix instant queue one night recently and watched a few minutes of the ubersilly “Hot Shots Deux,” starring Charlie Sheen and Lloyd Bridges. (Hey, in small doses, I very much enjoy the whole “Airplane!” comedy genre — even when Leslie Nielsen is absent.) The scene below was part of what I saw. The very next morning, I first read of the controversy among some American Indians over the “Geronimo” operation… Seemed ironic. You know, what with Charlie Sheen being such a paragon of sensitivity and all.

Oh, and what do I think of it? The same thing I think about the Redskins, the Braves, et al. It’s a tribute, not a sign of disrespect. You really have to want to be insulted to take it that way. But as you know, I have little sensitivity toward — or, admittedly, understanding of — the complex resentments than can be felt by people to whom Identity Politics is important. And I hate arguing with people like that, because I’m willing to grant that in many cases such people DO actually feel hurt, with or without justification that makes sense to me. But it seemed like it would be a cop-out if, after bringing up the subject, I didn’t share my own opinion, for what little it’s worth, and however lightly I may hold it.

… and what Noam Chomsky thinks

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I just shared with you a poll about what normal Americans think about killing Osama bin Laden. Here’s what Noam Chomsky thinks:

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s…

“Uncontroversially,” he said. Which sort of makes him demonstrably, inarguably, objectively — that is to say, “uncontroversially” — wrong, doesn’t it?

As usual.

Ran across that this morning, and had been meaning to share it with you all day. Talk about your outliers. Talk about your people who are very, very lucky that they live in this particular country — or in a pluralistic liberal democracy, in any case.

Chomsky ended his statement with,

There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts should provide us with a good deal to think about.

Yep.

As you may know, bin Laden was a Chomsky admirer. Liked to quote him.

Big, tough, confrontational talk out of Pakistan

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Did you see this in The New York Times:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The head of Pakistan’s army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said Thursday that he would not tolerate a repeat of the American covert operation that killed Osama bin Laden, warning that any similar action would lead to a reconsideration of the relationship with the United States.

Of course, this stimulates three immediate reactions:

You won’t “tolerate” it? Really? Perhaps you’d like to explain what that means.
What a coincidence. We just reconsidered our relationship with you.
So… you think another such raid by us is likely? Does that mean you’ve got somebody else at the top of our list hiding on your turf? Tell you what — why don’t you just can the tough talk and give us a map to his house? Save everybody a lot of trouble.

Yeah, I know this is about Pakistan’s extremely fouled-up internal politics. But you know what? I’ve had it up to here with Pakistan’s extremely fouled-up internal politics. Reconsider away, fellas, and make up your minds which side you’re on in this war.

Yeah, I know I’m sounding like the arrogant Ugly American (with “big, tough, confrontational talk” of my own) in dismissing your hurt pride in this way. But finding out you’d been letting bin Laden hang in the ‘burbs with your own generals for the last 6 years sort of put me in an ugly mood.

Obama right, Graham wrong on bin Laden photos

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Meant to blog about this all day, but wanted to do a little research first. I’m out of time, and before the day ends, I’m just going to throw it out there…

I was disappointed by Lindsey Graham’s criticism of the Obama administration for deciding not to release photos of Osama bin Laden’s bullet-riddled body:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., criticized President Barack Obama’s decision Wednesday not to release death photos of terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Graham on Monday had congratulated Obama on Sunday’s daring raid that killed the al-Qaida leader, but he said withholding photos of bin Laden’s corpse would raise questions about whether he is really dead.

“The whole purpose of sending our soldiers into the compound, rather than (delivering) an aerial bombardment, was to obtain indisputable proof of bin Laden’s death,” Graham said.

“I know bin Laden is dead, but the best way to protect our decisions overseas is to prove that fact to the rest of the world,” the second-term senator said. “I’m afraid the decision made today by President Obama will unnecessarily prolong this debate.”

Obama, though, said releasing photos of the slain terrorist would amount to gloating that would only inflame anti-American sentiment and do nothing to satisfy skeptics.

“That’s not who we are,” Obama told CBS in an interview. “We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.”

Especially since I seem to recall Lindsey Graham saying additional Abu Ghraib pictures should not be released, using pretty much the same arguments the White House uses for not releasing this.

By the way, in going to look up an Abu Ghraib link, I just noted that Mother Jones notes the same inconsistency that I do. Mark this day, folks — Mother Jones and Brad Warthen having the same thought.

Sen. Graham’s argument now is that we must shut up doubters by proving we did, too, kill bin Laden.

But you know what I think? I think this decision fits perfectly with the series of good decisions the president has made in this situation, from the start. He was right to send in the SEALS rather than B-52s so that we’d know we got him (not to mention the intelligence treasure trove that would have been destroyed in a bombing). He buried him at sea so that not one could make a fetish of his body or his grave. Then he similarly refused terrorists a rallying point by refusing even to let them see photos of the body.

The president knows he’s eliminated bin Laden (let anyone who says otherwise produce him as evidence). That’s enough for him. It’s enough for me, too.

Changing my mind — maybe we DID get Osama because of Obama

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This is one of the problems with new media. Sometimes you spout off before you have taken in enough information and processed it. After the Obama administration analyzed intel for eight months, and STILL only had a little better than a 50-50 supposition that bin Laden was in the house, maybe I should have taken a little more time to pass judgment. After all, my original training was in a medium when I could take all day, or — in the case of my columns — all week to make up my mind. Consequently, I can only think of one or two columns ever that I later regretted writing.

Blogging is different. I try to make sure I really mean what I say here, too, but sometimes my interlocutors get my dander right up, as Professor Elemental would say, and I give ill-considered answers.

Such is the case with my reaction to a comment by our old friend Bud the other night. Here I was very pleased with President Obama’s performance in the bin Laden case, and saying so, when I read this by Bud:

Let’s not forget the tireless work the president did as commander in chief to bring this operation to a successful conclusion. It really does matter who our leader is. Thankfully we have someone competent in charge.

… it tapped me on a sore spot. The comment itself was pretty innocuous by Bud standards, but in it I read the ghosts of so many other comments by Bud along the lines of EVERYTHING George W. Bush ever did was wrong, especially invading Iraq, and so I responded:

Bud, we should all give President Obama full credit for playing his leadership role well. But don’t make the political mistake of thinking this happened because he is president. This is more about stellar work by nameless, ground-level people in our military and our much-maligned intelligence services.

There is one sense in which Obama was a critical factor, though. It’s complicated. I think I’ll do a separate post about it…

That separate post was the one in which I argued that it was Obama’s laudably bellicose attitude toward going after our enemies hiding in Pakistan that made a positive difference here….

And as I was writing that, my sense that Obama being president WAS critical to the way this happened started to take hold. Not that Bud was right or anything; I still object to the way he characterized it, especially later when he said, “I find it so refreshing to have a competent, bright, hard-working leader in charge. He’s not rashly going in to places like Iran and Libya. Not sure why we still have troops in Iraq but otherwise Obama is doing an outstanding job keeping our foreign involvements to a minimum.”

But that’s quibbling over personal quirks.

Bottom line is, the more I’ve thought about it the last couple of days, then more I have decided that on the MAIN, unadorned point, Bud’s right: There are elements to what happened that are uniquely Obama. Not that it wouldn’t have happened under other presidents — JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. — but maybe not exactly this way, or this successfully.

I was thinking that this morning when reading The Wall Street Journal’s detailed story on how the raid unfolded, “U.S. Rolled Dice in bin Laden Raid:”

An early favorite: a bombing raid. That approach would minimize risk to American troops and maximize the likelihood of killing the residents of the compound. But it might also have destroyed any proof bin Laden was there.

A helicopter raid would be more complex, but more likely to deliver confirmation. Some officials were wary of repeating a fiasco like “Black Hawk Down” in Somalia, when U.S. forces were killed after a botched raid on a warlord… [By the way, one quibble on this story: That last sentence was inaccurate. The raid was NOT on the warlord, but to grab some of his lieutenants, and it was successful, not “botched.” The lieutenants were neatly grabbed and the operation was essentially over when the militia managed to hit two helicopters with RPGs.]

On April 19, Mr. Panetta told the president the CIA believed bin Laden was there. Other advisers briefed Mr. Obama on preparations for an assault, including the outcomes of the dress rehearsals. Mr. Obama told them to “assume it’s a go for planning purposes and that we had to be ready,” an administration official said.

That same day, Mr. Obama gave provisional approval for the commando-style helicopter assault—which was launched from Jalalabad, Afghanistan—despite the added risk. Senior U.S. officials said the need to get a positive identification on bin Laden became the deciding factor.

You’ll notice that Bill Clinton wasn’t on my list above. That’s because I’m practically certain that he would have opted for the bombing. And the more I think about it, the less I’m positive about the other presidents.

Whereas Obama made exactly the right call. The Seal raid was the way to go. And the president was completely right not to tell the Pakistanis — another point where I have my doubts about some of those earlier presidents (for instance, Bush pere was all about some multilateralism). There is a certain confidence — something important in a leader — in Obama’s choosing the riskier option in the absence of certainty, and then, once HE was satisfied that this was bin Laden who was killed, having the body buried at sea. The president was saying, LET the conspiracy theorists claim it wasn’t him — I know it was, and I’ve eliminated his body or his grave becoming an object for our enemies to rally around.

The president may be a lousy bowler, but he makes good calls in a tough situation. That is my considered opinion — now that I’ve taken time to consider.

By the way, I might not have decided to write about this change of mind — it happened sort of organically the more I read, rather than in a “Eureka” moment — if I hadn’t read two other items in the WSJ this morning. As it happens, they were opinion pieces by people who are as firmly entrenched on the right as Bud is on the left. But whereas Bud’s reflexive anti-Bush rhetoric put me off from being convinced of his point (that, and the fact that I just didn’t have enough info yet to reach that conclusion), their unadulterated praise of someone they usually criticize really drove the point home in a way that not even I could miss it.

Bret Stephens’ piece was headlined, “Obama’s Finest Hour:”

Thane’s point isn’t that vengeance is better than justice. It’s that there can be no true justice without vengeance. Oddly enough, this is something Barack Obama, Chicago liberal, seems to better grasp than George W. Bush, Texas cowboy.

The former president was fond of dilating on the point, as he put it just after 9/11, that “ours is a nation that does not seek revenge, but we do seek justice.” What on Earth did that mean? Of course we sought revenge. “Ridding the world of evil,” Mr. Bush’s other oft-stated ambition, was nonsense if we didn’t make a credible go of ridding the world of the very specific evil named Osama bin Laden.

For all of Mr. Bush’s successes—and yes, there were a few, including the vengeance served that other specific evil known as Saddam Hussein and those Gitmo interrogations that yielded bin Laden’s location—you can trace the decline of his presidency from the moment he said, in March 2002, that “I really don’t care [where bin Laden is]. It’s not that important.”…

Good points, although I may not be totally with him on the virtue of “vengeance” alone. Note that he makes a point similar to one I made yesterday, as my mind was starting to change (sometimes, and this may be hard to understand, I change my mind as I’m writing something — on the blog, you can sometimes see it happen, as I argue with myself) — that when it comes to Pakistan, Obama is more of a go-it-alone cowboy than Bush. Which to me is a good thing.

Then there was William McGurn’s column, which was about how Republican candidates (obsessed as they are with fiscal matters) have a long way to go to catch up with Obama on foreign policy:

It’s not just that Barack Obama is looking strong. For the moment, at least, he is strong. In the nearly 10 years since our troops set foot in Afghanistan, a clear outcome remains far from sight, and many Americans have wearied of the effort. As President Obama reminded us Sunday night, getting bin Laden doesn’t mean our work there is done—but his success in bringing the world’s most hunted man to justice does reinvigorate that work.

It does so, moreover, in a way that few of Mr. Obama’s recent Democratic predecessors in the Oval Office have matched. The killing of bin Laden was no one-shot missile strike on a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory suspected of making chemical weapons, as ordered by Bill Clinton. Nor was it a failed hostage rescue in Iran à la Jimmy Carter. Instead, it was a potent combination of American force and presidential decisiveness.

First, Mr. Obama authorized a ground operation with Navy Seals far inside Pakistani territory. Second, he did not inform the Pakistanis.

These are the kinds of hard decisions that presidents have to make, where the outcome is likely to be either spectacular success or equally spectacular failure. For taking the risks that would paralyze others, and for succeeding where others have failed, the president and his team have earned the credit they are now getting.

Also good points. And hearing such good points made by people who don’t like the president nearly as much as I do made a big impression on me.

So in the end, I find myself agreeing with those guys, and with Bud, on this point: Having Obama as president made a big difference in this case.

Do we ever CELEBRATE a death? Even the death of a monster?

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As y’all know, I was WAY turned off by all those kids outside the White House partying last night, acting like the death of our best-known enemy was a football victory or something. As I said, within about 100 yards of each other we saw the perfectly right response to the situation (President Obama’s) and the perfectly wrong one. There are a lot of reasons why that demonstration offended me, such as the fact that, well, that rah-rah team, yay-us-screw-them stuff always turns me off. It’s one reason why I am appalled by political parties. And am not very fond of football itself.

But the biggest reason is… do we really celebrate a man’s death? Even when that man is a monster, who has killed thousands of innocents (including thousands of OUR OWN) and himself celebrated it?

If anyone in the world deserved to have people dancing on his grave, he did. But still, I really didn’t like seeing the actual dancing.

We’re talking about something very primitive here. Civilized people do engage in war (despite what some of my friends think), and unless they are destined for the evolutionary scrap heap, they engage in it to win. And that means killing the enemy. And when one engages in war successfully, it is a cause for celebration.

But do we celebrate the MEANS to victory to the extent of celebrating an enemy’s death?

We were totally justified in killing Osama bin Laden, and it was long overdue. And from my anti-death penalty perspective, we killed him the right way — in the heat of battle, rather than executing him after holding him in a cell for a couple of years. My heartiest congratulations and thanks go out to the Seals and support personnel who carried out this operation with such stunning efficiency, and to the president for his handling of it.

Of course we take satisfaction in this victory. But do we PARTY? I think not. To me, the appropriate response is, as I said last night, GRIM satisfaction. If we’re civilized.

But you know, I don’t think I have yet expressed what I’m trying to say nearly as well as Bob Amundsen did:

Celebrating death in battle is wrong. When war is declared (as bin Laden did), you live with the consequences of that choice, including death. True warriors do not celebrate death; we celebrate victory. We have won a battle; the war against extremism continues.

Did we get all giddy and dance in the streets when Hitler killed himself? No. We got all giddy and danced in the streets because the war in Europe was over. Same deal with Hiroshima vs. V-J day.

I’m glad Americans are taking satisfaction in this; so am I. And I fully understand the emotional involvement of people like Anton Gunn, whose brother was killed by bin Laden.

But that partying in the street stuff was deeply wrong, and I hate that the world saw American’s doing that. I’m glad they saw our Seals make short work of Osama once we had the intel, but I’m sorry that they saw the celebration outside the White House.

Does that make sense to anyone but me?

The Obama Doctrine, and the end of the Kent State Syndrome

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Back on the initial post about the death of bin Laden, I got into an argument with some of my liberal Democratic friends about the extent to which “credit” is due to President Obama for this development.

Don’t get me wrong — I thought the president performed superbly. I was in considerable suspense last night between the time we knew bin Laden was dead and the president’s speech, wondering how he would rise to the moment. I needn’t have worried. He met the test of this critical Leadership Moment very well indeed.

Also, he seems to have made the right calls along the way since this intel first came to light. That’s great, too.

Where I differed with my friends was in their assertion/implication that this success was due to Obama being president, as opposed to He Who Must Not Be Named Among Democrats. Which is inaccurate, and as offensive as if this had happened on Bush’s watch and the Republicans claimed it was all because we had a Republican in the White House.

ANY president in my memory (with the possible exception of Bill Clinton, who had a tendency to resist boots on the ground and go with cruise missiles, which would have been the wrong call in this case) would have made more or less the same calls on the way to yesterday’s mission, although few would have delivered the important speech last night as well. (Obama’s the best speaker to occupy the White House since JFK — some would say Ronald Reagan, but his delivery never appealed to me.)

That’s the thing — Obama, to his great credit, has generally been a responsible and pragmatic steward of national and collective security. As most people who actually get ELECTED president tend to be. The continuity that his tenure represents may frustrate some of his base, but I deeply appreciate it, and have from the start. (I first made this observation before he took office.)

But I hinted that I thought that maybe there was ONE way that they were right, although it was not for a reason they were suggesting…

Here is that one way: Obama has been far more aggressive toward going after the bad guys in Pakistan. Which I think is a good thing. I’ve always thought it was. In fact, I first wrote about that in August 2007. At the time, Obama was criticized by many — including Hillary Clinton — for this:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obamaissued a pointed warning yesterday to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying that as president he would be prepared to order U.S. troops into that country unilaterally if it failed to act on its own against Islamic extremists….

The muscular speech appeared aimed at inoculating him from criticism that he lacks the toughness to lead the country in a post-9/11 world, while attempting to show that an Obama presidency would herald an important shift in the United States’ approach to the world, particularly the Middle East and nearby Asian nations…

I applauded it.

And now we see that proposed doctrine translated into reality. Actually, we’ve seen it for some time. Pakistan has gotten pretty testy with us for our across-the-border strikes, which have been far more common under Obama than under his predecessor.

On Sunday, convinced that our most prominent individual enemy was “hiding” practically in the open in a Pakistan suburb, Obama sent in the troops and got him — and didn’t bother telling the Pakistanis until it was too late for them to interfere.

For THIS he deserves great praise. But folks, that’s not the sort of things that folks in his Democratic base praise him for (aside from some nodding that he was right to say Iraq was the “wrong war” — just before they demand we get out of what Obama terms the “right war” immediately).

This was not Obama being sensitive, or multilateral, or peaceful, or diplomatic, or anything of the kind. This was Obama being a cowboy, and going after the guy in the black hat no matter where he was. This was out-Bushing Bush, to those who engage in such simplistic caricatures.

This is not a surprise to anyone who has watched Obama carefully, or even halfway carefully. But it should be a HUGE shock to the portions of his base who are still fighting the Vietnam War, the ones who backed him because they thought he was an “antiwar” candidate.

I’m reminded of Kent State. First, don’t get me wrong — the killing of those students was a horrific tragedy, that was in no way justifiable. I, too, feel chills when I hear Neil Young’s song. Shooting unarmed civilians is never excusable. I felt the full outrage of my generation when that happened. But I’ve always thought the tragedy was deepened by the fact that the protest that led to the shootings was to an extent wrong-headed.

Folks in the antiwar movement were SO angry that Nixon had pursued the enemy into Cambodia. This, to them, was a war crime of extreme proportions.

Me, I always thought it was sensible and pragmatic. You don’t let people shoot at you and then “hide” by crossing a political barrier, not unless you like having your own people killed with impunity.

Yeah, I realize there are important differences in the two situations (the most obvious being that the Cambodian incursion was on a much larger scale). But I think it’s very interesting that some of my most antiwar friends here — antiwar in the anti-Vietnam sense — are even more congratulatory toward our president than I am, when he, too “violated sovereignty” to kill Osama bin Laden. What if Nixon had sent troops to a mansion outside Phnom Penh to kill Ho Chi Minh? The antiwar movement would have freaked out — more than usual. Again, not quite the same — but you get the idea.

One of my antiwar friends recently was arguing with me that the antiwar movement has, indeed, faded away. I had said it had not. But the more I think about this, the more I think Phillip was right. I try to imagine how the antiwar left would have reacted to such a move as this 40 years ago. And yes, we have changed. Then, college students rioted in outrage. Today, they gather outside the White House and party down with American flags. Both reactions seem to me inappropriate, but I’m hard to please.

One thing does please me, however: I do approve of President Obama’s performance on this (as I do, increasingly, on many things).

bradwarthen.com

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