Thank you, Navy SEALs, for killing Osama bin Laden. And thank you, President Obama, for turning them loose to do their job, just as you said you would.
This past week, an Obama campaign Web commercial featuring Bill Clinton, quotes Mitt Romney, in 2007, downplaying the significance of getting bin Laden: "It's not worth moving heaven and earth, spending billions of dollars, just trying to catch one person."
That ad got the goat of Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.). "Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of Sept. 11 and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad," he indignantly declared.
Romney himself said "even Jimmy Carter would have given that order" to get bin Laden. His comparison served only to unintentionally highlight the mission's considerable risks, as it invoked the memory of the failed Iranian hostage rescue mission on April 24, 1980. (The mission failed, but Carter did give the order.)
Obama responded to the debate by saying, "I hardly think that you've seen any excessive celebration taking place here," and suggested that people should look to prior statements regarding whether it was appropriate to go into Pakistan.
I know exactly to what he was referring and it has its roots in the last presidential campaign, not the current one.
Long before many gave him a serious shot at the presidency, then-Sen. Obama announced his intentions with regard to Pakistan. On Aug. 1, 2007, he said: "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President [Pervez] Musharraf won't act, we will."
That drew a rebuke from then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during a Democratic debate on Aug. 7: "I think it is a very big mistake to telegraph that and to destabilize the Musharraf regime, which is fighting for its life against the Islamic extremists who are in bed with al-Qaeda and Taliban."
En route to capturing the GOP nomination, McCain, on Feb. 20, 2008, also chastised Obama: "The best idea is to not broadcast what you're going to do. That's naive."
But Obama stood his ground, repeating his willingness to pursue bin Laden in five different conversations I had with him (three while a candidate, two while president). His previous words now look prescient.
On March 24, 2008, he told me: "Sen. Clinton, Sen. McCain, and George Bush all suggested I had said something wrong when I said we should be going after bin Laden and high-value targets, and if we've got them in our sights we should ask for Pakistan's cooperation, we should ask Pakistan to take them out, but if they don't, we shouldn't need permission to go after somebody or folks that killed 3,000 Americans."
And on Oct. 9, 2008, he said to me: "Now we need to work with Pakistan to dismantle those training camps and kill bin Laden. But if Pakistan is unwilling or unable to take bin Laden out, and we have him in our sights, we've got to do it."
The irony of the current debate is that Romney and McCain -- the GOP's most recent standard-bearers -- are leading the chorus of those seeking to diminish Obama's authorization of the raid at Abbottabad by implying that "any leader" would have made the same decision.
But if their previous public statements were to be believed, neither would have been a lock to pull the trigger. At the time, Romney called Obama's August 2007 statements about pursuing high-value targets in Pakistan "ill-timed and ill-considered."
And a year after he called Obama's remarks "naive," McCain demurred in a discussion with me about the possibility of unilateral U.S. action to bring bin Laden to justice.
"Pakistan is a sovereign nation and we have to have the cooperation of Pakistan to have these operations succeed," McCain said during our June 2008 interview.
"If you alienate Pakistan and it turns into an anti-American government, then you will have much greater difficulties," he continued. "Do they do what we want them to do? No. Have they been helpful to us? Yes. Has Musharraf been a friend of ours? He has been.
"I wish there were better relations between [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai and Musharraf. I wish a lot of things were different in this world. But... you and I just have an honest disagreement if you think we can just get tough on Pakistan and they will do what we want them to do."
Obama was the first to voice a willingness to give the order to launch such a mission, and has never wavered. Moreover, given the surgical precision with which the SEALs operated, it is easy to overlook the possible perils that the mission presented. The decision to give the order to launch the attack appears to have been easy only in retrospect. It bears remembering that then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Vice President Biden had serious reservations about the plan.
Had the mission failed, Obama would have been roundly chastised by the same people who now refuse to accord him any credit for the mission's success. Again, the president was decisive, and deserves credit for making a decision that was fraught with peril, politically, militarily, and diplomatically.
He's earned the right to say, "Mission accomplished."
Originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Bush 41 was having breakfast with Bin Laden senior on 9/11. Bush 43 withheld the order to capture/kill Bin Laden at Tora Bora. He then said: "I don't think about him that much ... I'm concerned about him."
W never looked bothered ur correct. Why? Because he never cared.
But I just love you folks. Keep up the low informational voter agenda ....
He's earned the right to say, "Mission accomplished."
Good point Mr. Smerconish. Thank you for the thoughtful and thought provoking post. Your post is the last word on the subject for me. I am done with this subject as a current events news item used for discussion. Peace and keep blogging.
order them to pursue, even though they just spent a week fighting through some of the most heavily defended compounds in Afghanistan getting to that point
(* All other background noises are cross-channel spillover from an energetic campaign for sophomore class president, somewhere in the 'heartland')
We all know that Romney would NOT have gone after Bin Laden in Pakistan. He said so. Its on tape. I also remember that at one point when Bush was president, Bush was given intelligence as to exactly where Bin Laden was located. Bush chose NOT to go after Bin Laden then either.
I didn't grow up in a nation of thugs; what happened to us?
By the way, we got the information from Bin Laden that we need. They found all his files.
Did you think Bush was a "thug" when he started a war in Iraq when thousands of the Iraq people lost their lives for no reason ??
Like any president in his right mind would've said "no"? Obama seriously needs to stop taking victory bows for doing the very least that's expected of him. He's looking pretty foolish — not to mention desperate, since he's sorely lacking in the "achievements" department, with his flagship CrapCare legislation about to go the constitutional crapper next month, and his financial reform having achieved nothing more than establishing yet another pricey new government agency.
Yeah, thanks to the SEALs. Obama didn't exactly suit up and go in there himself, which is why he's doing damage to himself by turning this into a political campaign issue.
>>>GM lives. Obama rocks!>>>
Except that, once again, he's on the wrong side of the issue: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/auto_industry/april_2012/59_view_money_losing_auto_bailouts_as_a_failure Just like he's been on the wrong side of the CrapCare issue all along.
WHY did you MARCH that day mitts?
No one said we shouldn't go after Bin Laden in Pakistan if had the chance, what they said was it's not a good idea to say we're going to do it beforehand.
Obama deserves credit for giving the mission a go.
That's it. The rest of the credit should go to the team put together by Bush who spent 10 years trying to find him.
Finding and capturing Bin Laden would have ruined his little planned fake war n Iraq since they l.ied about Iraq being tied to 9/11
Bush, in public, said capturing Bin Laden wasn't a top priority, yet the team he set up continued to work non-stop for almost 10 years before they found him.