Politics is a rough sport, but President Obama has taken unusually heavy flak for running a campaign ad that credits his role in the killing of Osama bin Laden, and for using statements by Mitt Romney to suggest that the former governor might not have exhibited similar leadership.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Senator John McCain accused the president of hypocrisy. But some of the harshest criticism has come from unexpected quarters. New York Times reporters Peter Baker and Michael Shear seemed to imply that the president has been inappropriately boastful. "Few presidents have talked about the killing of an individual enemy in such an expansive way," according to Baker and Shear, who added that Obama has taken the "unusual route of bragging about how he killed a man." Arianna Huffington, typically an Obama supporter, said that the bin Laden ad is "despicable."
I'm disinclined to celebrate bin Laden's or anyone else's death. But the broader context is that Republicans have been criticizing Democrats for being weak on foreign policy for two generations, even when such criticisms were unwarranted. As Slate's William Saletan reminds us, the Bush administration and its surrogates, including Senator McCain, were shameless in their use of war rhetoric to depict John Kerry and other Democrats as wimps. (Disclaimer: Saletan is a personal friend). So it seems inappropriate to blame the president for inoculating himself against such accusations.
While it is true that President Obama cites a military success to score a point, compare his approach to the Bush administration's use of boasting to reframe failure as success. In one notable instance, Bush cynically used the word "victory" 15 times in a single speech to try to fool the public into believing that the war in Iraq could be won. When President Obama heralds a foreign policy success, he's not trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
I'm not claiming that President Obama ignores the domestic political implications of his foreign policy agenda. No president could be expected to do so. But when he pursues a foreign policy initiative, it's generally and reasonably connected to the promotion of the national interest. By contrast, the previous administration seemed willing to pursue foreign policies to achieve parochial political ends, even when doing so undermined U.S. security. Hoping to justify the decision to launch the Iraq war, for example, Bush authorized torture to try to compel detainees to acknowledge a link between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks.
When it comes to bragging about killing U.S. enemies, President Bush and his surrogates arguably went beyond the current administration in terms of both the frequency and tone of their rhetoric. With the exception of his 2007 State of the Union speech, Bush bragged about killing U.S. enemies in every SOTU address between 2002 and 2008. In his 2004 State of the Union address, for example, he said that "We're tracking Al Qaeda around the world, and nearly two-thirds of their known leaders have now been captured or killed." He added that "of the top 55 officials of the former [Iraqi] regime, we have captured or killed 45." So, Bush's boastfulness about killing was not infrequent.
On some occasions, Bush used an unfortunate tone to brag about killing. In his 2003 State of the Union address, he said that, "To date we have arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of Al Qaeda... All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries... And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies." I have never heard President Obama speak about the death of an enemy in such a chesty way.
Senior Republican operatives such as former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton have even gone so far as to brag that the killing of bin Laden was the result of policies that the Bush administration put into place. If the Republicans can take credit for the bin Laden operation, why should President Obama be panned for doing so?
All Americans would benefit if political leaders in both parties set aside bravado, and insisted on a thoughtful, understated foreign policy conversation. That said, the recent criticism of President Obama seems impervious to a political climate that he did not create, and to the GOP's track record not just of bombast, or even of bluster for political point-scoring, but of bragging to divert the public's attention away from failure and to re-code failure as success ("Mission Accomplished!")
If there is anything "unusual" about President Obama's record, it is that he finished the job.
Jon Soltz: Obama Right, GOP Horribly Wrong on bin Laden Ad
Mark Green: McCain Can't Handle the Truth: "Bin Laden" IS Answer to "Appeaser"
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
Let Obama be president and responsible for his own leadership, whether good or bad. No more distractions of the past but clear focus on creating the best in the present moments. What we are creating right now in our present moments determines the future we will experience. So to have the best future we need to learn to give our best right now. Maybe it would be good to ask an honest question, "what good future are my comments creating?" I think we all should try to bring out the best in any president we have, and learning to cooperate will be the key for their success, right?
This will take an effort of will to change the culture of conflict but if children can learn it I think we adult creative thinkers can. I promise you it will be worth the effort if we can come together. Don't you want that too?
He chose to stand down---so the story goes---because he wanted to send assets to Iraq---he never thought OBL was a priority--which justifies the Obama administration for questioning what the Republican President to be---would do?
I'm hard on the left for being weak--I apologise--sorry AH
I find it ' despicable" that President Barack Hussein Obama is 'using' the courageous accomplishments of The Navy Seals to further his PERSONAL agenda. Does nothing 'shame' this man?
In this case, seeking to deflect the ridiculous amount of crap he is taking from an obstructionist republican thuggery he has offended the folk on the left.
Had he taken the other route and not responded to criticisms of his supposedly weak foreign policy, the republicans and the increasingly conservative media would have raked him over the coals for not standing up to criticism. They also would have claimed that his lack of a response supported their claims.
Wake up, democrats! Thanks to recent supreme court decisions that have allowed the unfettered flow of corporate money into the upcoming presidential race this is a .... f---ing gun fight. Obama is not going to be able to win by using fisticuffs, much less by the wimpy, Marquis de Fantailer sort of fisticuffs a lot of us seem to think he has to abide by.
Republican propaganda sells emotion to information challenged voters, who need reminders that NOTHING Obama does is right. They toss out multiple choice epithets (communist-socialist-Nazi-Muslim-Kenyan-anti-colonialist) that normal people find silly to beguile their base, a Confederacy of Dunces, looking to preserve their prejudices and remain profoundly ignorant.
The target audience over Obama's end zone dance is not people that can logically contrast "Mission Accomplished" (NOT!) and our undramatic departure from Iraq. The party that wrapped itself in 9/11 for eight years is trying to motivate the uncommitteds, independents, and moderates to vote for the most boring candidate in history, making the phlegmatic, clueless Romney seem temperate and thoughtful despite his propensity for gaffes.
Bottom line: If Obama's raid to get bin Laden had failed, we wouldn't ever hear the end of it from the GOP. Republicans are simply ticked off that a "Democrat" president did something in the realm of national security that they could not do. I hope Obama runs a lot more ads on this issue.
High risk equals high reward---or should----conservatives ought to just shut up and swallow this one because a lot of folks believe the GOP liked a live OBL to parade in public--
Secondly, Romney has always adopted the GOP neocon doctrine on this issue, which was that finding and capturing/killing OBL was NOT a priority. We know, because Romney himself frequently said so.
So when he came into office, Obama completely changed the US OBL strategy. FInding him became a priority, which means that a president has to give the right orders, invest the necessary means, to the follow up, and in the end has to take the decision to send the SEALs on foreign soil, into a sovereign country, knowing that there was a chance that OBL was NOT there, and/or that SEALs would be killed.
If the mission would have gone wrong, he would have lost his presidency, and the US would once again have a much worse image abroad.
So a LOT was at stake here. Romney would NEVER have taken this decision not only because he SAID he wouldn't (well, today, now that OBL is dead and that people like it, he flip flopped and says that he would have done the same thing, but that doesn't mean anything of course), but because you don't risk your presidency for something that is NOT one of your priorities.
People should know this. Because national security is too important to let lies be spread without any correction.
So thank you Obama, for having set the record straight.
I just retired a year ago. Obama changed very little in the way of UBL policy. There was already a standing order, process and mechanisms in place in regards to UBL and other TIER one personalities. UBL went into hiding and was tactically, operationally and strategically irrelevant very early in the war. He was symbolic and I'm glad he's dead but he hadn't been calling the shots for a long, long time.
Wasn't it convenient that the GOP rhetoric happened to be in a caution state concerning going into a foriegn country to get the man----even after we went into Afghanistan without permission...
This phoney GOP rhetoric sounds like a very sensitive attempt to deny any thought that they never would have gone after OBL in Pakistan---we know they wouldn't..
Now we got some here in HP that aren't comfortable about bringing up the death of OBL as part of some campaign ad in an American election----Let's face it---the left has to learn to fight back against an opponet who believes and hopes the rules of engagement only apply to weak righteous democrats----whose had to be satisfied with the public narrative the GOP are the stronger party concerning defense------Get in the game Ms H----this subject will hurt/curb all future attacks on the weakness of Obama and the dem party---The ALECs of the world hate American democracy and will do and say anything to drive a wedge between corporate freedom and we the ppl.