Obama and bin Laden

There has been a great deal of vulgar and absurd political theatre on the first anniversary of the Navy’s elimination of Osama bin Laden.  Breathless coverage of Obama’s (not those of the men who actually performed and directed the mission) actions leading up to the raid by his sycophants in the traditional media has treated  those actions  as something comparable to Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb, Kennedy’s blockading Cuba, or Reagan’s calling the Soviets’ bluff in Iceland. Obama’s own shameless showboating and drive to make himself and not the servicemen the center of attention displayed  a character both puerile and small.

This has all been commented upon at length by various people, but one particularly silly  claim has not gotten the notice it deserves – the assertion that Obama ordered the mission at great political risk. Some of his acolytes even spoke of  his having risked a political disaster comparable to what happened to Carter after the failed rescue attempt in Iran. That is of course nonsense. He ran no political risk at all. If a mission to get Osama bin Laden had failed, the American public would have been saddened by the casualties and regretful of the lack of success, but not against having tried or critical of  those who made the effort.  American forces have been fighting Islamic terrorists for over a decade. Some missions succeed, and some don’t. People accept that, and they would not have blamed Obama for an unsuccessful mission (which might have never become publicly known anyway).

Even with Carter, the failure of the mission was not as crucial an event as some have claimed. His problem  was not that one mission failed, but that that failure became a symbol for the failure and  futility of his administration  in most areas of foreign and security policy. It highlighted a general weakness and ineptitude and reinforced an already present general fear that things were going terribly wrong with our armed forces, our position in the world, and our leadership.

All in all attempts to write some sort of profile in courage about Obama’s actions in this are just silly, silly and demeaning. There was plenty of praiseworthy courage displayed, just not by him.