I wouldn’t have felt compelled to add my own blot of ink to the metric tons already dumped on the subject of the killing of Osama bin Laden, except that we are now coming to Day Seven in one of the most unbecoming spectacles I’ve yet seen out of even Barack Obama.
Some part of me can’t blame Obama and the Obama-adulating old-line press for their interminable Glory Tour, because of course the hunt for Osama bin Laden is just about the only thing that’s not gone from bad to worse in the Age of Obama. Indeed, the fact they’re all making so very much of this, for so very long, is final proof that Obama has no other success to show for his two years and three months as president. By this point in his presidency, George W. Bush had led America in the tearing down of two of the very worst regimes on earth since the Second World War, and the implanting of decent, democratic systems in their place, making 50 million Muslims free citizens for the first times in their histories.
And that’s the trouble with this Adoration of The Obama, as much as anything else: the bin Laden operation was a sort-of SWAT team swoop on a man who hadn’t been out of the house in half a decade; the Afghan and Iraq wars were earth-quaking re-makings of ancient and malignant whole nations. There is no perspective in this bin Laden affair whatever, for the obvious reason that Obama and all that the press had invested in him are on course for a historic repudiation in 2012, and so he’s desperate for a shot in the arm.
America is today losing in Afghanistan, and the killing of Osama bin Laden does nothing to arrest or reverse even that, much less every other blessed thing that’s gone the wrong way. America is losing also in Libya, which is a war without a cause and which no-one even dreamt of until the moment we learned we were at war, Obama having decided to take us to war in that country the night before. And I will spare the reader a recapitulation of all those other troubles, and let it suffice to say only that the share of Americans on food stamps stands today AT 14 PERCENT.
One could go on, but it’s all been said ad nauseam already so I’ll endeavor to make a point or two that have been under-made or not made at all:
*There’s a reason some of us Bush-nostalgia-ists have lamented that Bush and his administration have not been more credited in the bin Laden mission, and it goes beyond the usual reasons -- the intelligence trail that ended at bin Laden’s bedroom a week ago, began with Bush's “enhanced interrogations” including at “black sites”, and progressed with the interrogation of al-Qaeda captured in Iraq; the CIA team on the ground in Pakistan that tracked bin Laden the rest of the way was instituted under President Bush; and the Navy SEALs team that did the deed in the end was part of the Joint Special Operations Command which had been denounced on the Left as “Dick Cheney’s assassination ring”; and so on. The deeper reason we whine that Obama is credited with the bin Laden operation single-handed, and Bush mocked, is that Obama damned all of this as senator and candidate, and then outlawed some part of it as president, and so one cannot but fear that the bin Laden operation was the cashing in of investments that have not been kept up since the day Barack Obama moved into the White House.
*The man most responsible for the 9/11 attacks and their success was in fact not Osama bin Laden but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and of course Obama wanted him granted the rights and protections of a U.S. citizen, in an open-ended civilian trial in New York City, in which the United States itself and especially the Bush Administration would have wound up in the dock at least as much as the enemy leader responsible for the worst attack on America in its history. Obama suspended for two years the military commission case against KSM, in which Mohammed had already pleaded guilty. If it had been up to Obama, that civilian trial would be ongoing even now, but blessedly it was not up to Obama, and the Congress intervened to deny funding for any such abominable thing.
*The Greeks and Romans were great ones for warning leaders and the sycophants who stroke them, and so it’s not for nothing that so many of the best words to describe Barack Obama generally and in this instance especially come to us from the classical languages: narcissism, hubris, vanity, etc. Had Obama been a man, and honorable and meek, he’d simply have authorized some functionary to break the news of bin Laden’s death, as for instance President Bush did on the occasion of the capture of Saddam Hussein, instead of calling a televised address for 10:30 Eastern on Sunday night to announce the news personally and peppered with the personal pronouns (for which Obama was an hour late, as ever, while the nation panicked at what emergency must be warranted by such an extraordinary development), and then giving a blockbuster, blow-by-blow interview for Sunday evening TV, staging an event at Ground Zero, accepting a presidential jersey at Fort Campbell, etc. Had Obama been the breed of man who truly does great and heroic things, he’d have gone about his business and let other folks talk about heroism and greatness if they cared to. But Barack Obama is not that kind of man; he is the kind of man who will fly very high and in the end be brought very low, like in those Greek myths and Roman cautions.
Some part of me can’t blame Obama and the Obama-adulating old-line press for their interminable Glory Tour, because of course the hunt for Osama bin Laden is just about the only thing that’s not gone from bad to worse in the Age of Obama. Indeed, the fact they’re all making so very much of this, for so very long, is final proof that Obama has no other success to show for his two years and three months as president. By this point in his presidency, George W. Bush had led America in the tearing down of two of the very worst regimes on earth since the Second World War, and the implanting of decent, democratic systems in their place, making 50 million Muslims free citizens for the first times in their histories.
And that’s the trouble with this Adoration of The Obama, as much as anything else: the bin Laden operation was a sort-of SWAT team swoop on a man who hadn’t been out of the house in half a decade; the Afghan and Iraq wars were earth-quaking re-makings of ancient and malignant whole nations. There is no perspective in this bin Laden affair whatever, for the obvious reason that Obama and all that the press had invested in him are on course for a historic repudiation in 2012, and so he’s desperate for a shot in the arm.
America is today losing in Afghanistan, and the killing of Osama bin Laden does nothing to arrest or reverse even that, much less every other blessed thing that’s gone the wrong way. America is losing also in Libya, which is a war without a cause and which no-one even dreamt of until the moment we learned we were at war, Obama having decided to take us to war in that country the night before. And I will spare the reader a recapitulation of all those other troubles, and let it suffice to say only that the share of Americans on food stamps stands today AT 14 PERCENT.
One could go on, but it’s all been said ad nauseam already so I’ll endeavor to make a point or two that have been under-made or not made at all:
*There’s a reason some of us Bush-nostalgia-ists have lamented that Bush and his administration have not been more credited in the bin Laden mission, and it goes beyond the usual reasons -- the intelligence trail that ended at bin Laden’s bedroom a week ago, began with Bush's “enhanced interrogations” including at “black sites”, and progressed with the interrogation of al-Qaeda captured in Iraq; the CIA team on the ground in Pakistan that tracked bin Laden the rest of the way was instituted under President Bush; and the Navy SEALs team that did the deed in the end was part of the Joint Special Operations Command which had been denounced on the Left as “Dick Cheney’s assassination ring”; and so on. The deeper reason we whine that Obama is credited with the bin Laden operation single-handed, and Bush mocked, is that Obama damned all of this as senator and candidate, and then outlawed some part of it as president, and so one cannot but fear that the bin Laden operation was the cashing in of investments that have not been kept up since the day Barack Obama moved into the White House.
*The man most responsible for the 9/11 attacks and their success was in fact not Osama bin Laden but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and of course Obama wanted him granted the rights and protections of a U.S. citizen, in an open-ended civilian trial in New York City, in which the United States itself and especially the Bush Administration would have wound up in the dock at least as much as the enemy leader responsible for the worst attack on America in its history. Obama suspended for two years the military commission case against KSM, in which Mohammed had already pleaded guilty. If it had been up to Obama, that civilian trial would be ongoing even now, but blessedly it was not up to Obama, and the Congress intervened to deny funding for any such abominable thing.
*The Greeks and Romans were great ones for warning leaders and the sycophants who stroke them, and so it’s not for nothing that so many of the best words to describe Barack Obama generally and in this instance especially come to us from the classical languages: narcissism, hubris, vanity, etc. Had Obama been a man, and honorable and meek, he’d simply have authorized some functionary to break the news of bin Laden’s death, as for instance President Bush did on the occasion of the capture of Saddam Hussein, instead of calling a televised address for 10:30 Eastern on Sunday night to announce the news personally and peppered with the personal pronouns (for which Obama was an hour late, as ever, while the nation panicked at what emergency must be warranted by such an extraordinary development), and then giving a blockbuster, blow-by-blow interview for Sunday evening TV, staging an event at Ground Zero, accepting a presidential jersey at Fort Campbell, etc. Had Obama been the breed of man who truly does great and heroic things, he’d have gone about his business and let other folks talk about heroism and greatness if they cared to. But Barack Obama is not that kind of man; he is the kind of man who will fly very high and in the end be brought very low, like in those Greek myths and Roman cautions.
