In the run up to the 2008 elections and thereafter one of the persistent criticisms of Barack Obama was that he would be “soft” on terrorists and likely to be ineffectual in dealing with the hydra headed threat of Islamic terror. We were told again and again by people like Rudy Giuliani that if Obama were elected that “we would be hit again.” Sarah Palin warned in a speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention that Obama would “reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world” and ” Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America … he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights?”
Once elected the criticisms didn’t subside either. Newt Gingrich said: “This administration is underestimating how hard this war is going to be. The American people should demand that we are much more aggressive in seeking data and that we are much more aggressive in stopping people.” Likewise Dick Cheney opined ” We’ve seen a lot of decisions made, especially in this administration with respect to the War on Terror, which is no longer a War on Terror, it’s an overseas contingency operation.” The aforementioned are but a sampling of the doubts and criticisms that were slung at the Obama Administration with a fair degree of regularity and which would reach fever pitch in the far right media anytime a terrorist attack had been thwarted or as was all to apparent during the Ground Zero Mosque controversy.
Well, it goes without saying that the liquidation of Osama bin Laden on Barack Obama’s watch should, in the eyes of any intelligent and rational human being, lay to rest the plethora of nonsense that has surrounded this administration as it relates to both its ability and commitment in successfully prosecuting the war on terror. Alas, the fact that we can provide some degree of procedural rights to those being held on suspicion of having been involved in terror plots in no way impeded our ability to eliminate Osama bin Laden. Nor did our same Navy Seals show any predisposition towards appeasement when they freed the crew of the Marsek Alabama off Somalia in 2009 by killing or capturing their pirate captors.
To paraphrase conservative commentator Major Garret of the National Journal: “Killing bin Laden represents a continuum of competence on the part of Barack Obama in fulfilling his campaign pledge to eliminate Osama bin Laden as a terrorist threat and thus the War on Terror is seen to be effectively fought. Few would deny that the death of Osama bin Laden represents a major victory for the administration and the nation. Likewise, few would deny that so much of the criticism leveled at the Obama Administration by opponents on the right constitutes political grandstanding at a time when we should all be standing shoulder to shoulder in a unified war or Islamic Terror. In the aftermath of the bin Laden assassination Barack Obama appears more serious then ever while so many of his critics seem to have done nothing but jumped to conclusions about the Administration’s ability to successfully fight the war on terror.
SJG
5/3/11
who sound all the more unhinged.
“so many of his critics seem to have done nothing but jumped to conclusions about the Administration’s ability to successfully fight the war on terror.”
Racist mud-slinging isn’t such tepid tea as “nothing but jump(ing) to conclusions”. Even when a “conservative” gets it right he gets it wrong by engaging in the first concern of such cretins: ass-covering.
Though “it goes without saying” (the most useless cliche in any language: if a thing goes without saying, then one doeesn’t say it), “damning with faint prise” is an art with “conservatives” when it’s all they have as alternative to their only other modality: hysterical self-promotion.
We are lucky to have President Obama — intelligent, perhaps even brilliant, thoughtful, measured, and informs himself before deciding and or acting.
Don’t you miss the out-of-control knee-jerkism of the heroic patriotic Bushits and their chest-thunmping gusto for as immediately as possible sending others as their proxies to fight and die in their always-no-alternative-to wars?
What I find amusing and not the least bit surprising is how the far right has tried to frame this whole thing as the natural outcome of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld era while all the while ignoring the fact that it was Bush & Co. who let bin Laden off the hook at Tora Bora and then took their eyes off the ball in Afghanistan by invading Iraq.
Yes it’s true that Obama built on what had come before him, however the great irony is that Bush could have done the job himself but was distracted by those around him who were ultimately more ineffectual than was Bush himself.
Neener-neener
Ni
What an intelligent comment, did you think this up all by yourself or did you require someone’s assistance. How utterly profound!