The successful Navy SEAL raid which killed Osama bin Laden is becoming one of the central themes of the Obama campaign.
Almost every other sentence out of the mouth of Joe Biden (who opposed the raid) is about “bin Laden.”
We know that bin Laden was located as the result of years of work by intelligence agencies which in substantial part predated Obama. And as we now know, Obama laid the groundwork to blame the military if the raid went wrong.
But put all that aside. Obama got Osama. Fair enough.
But the killing of one person has been against the backdrop of a complete disaster for the United States throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.
North Africa is or is on the way to domination by radical Islamists. We pushed Mubarak out without any transition, and the Muslim Brotherhood and even more extreme Islamists are nearing control. The same is true in Libya and Tunisia.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban are resurgent, waiting out Obama’s timeline for withdrawal. In Iraq, the Iranians have extended their influence and the nation again is dividing along sectarian lines, with the unifying factor (except among the Kurds) being hostility to the U.S.
In Syria, where for once we could have dealt a crushing blow to Iranian influence, we have helped Bashar Assad hang onto power to the extent that both sides hate us.
Our one true ally in the region, Israel, is in its most precarious position in decades, surrounded by massive Iranian-backed missile bases in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.
There is almost nowhere in the Middle East that the United State is better off than it was four years ago.
Obama’s foreign policy has been a profound disaster, subjugating generations of women throughout the region to fundamentalist tyranny as Obama concocts a false “war on women” campaign theme against Republicans.
Yet Obama and his campaign team trot out Osama bin Laden to cure all those political ills, and as political cover for a failed presidency.
One lucky three-point shot doesn’t make you a star.
Obama got Osama, but lost the Middle East. Repeat.
Update: Fausta reminds me that our foreign policy in this hemisphere has been a disaster as well. Remember when Obama sided with the Chavez-backed Manuel Zelaya and then went to extensive lengths to isolate and bully Honduras? I sure do. Meanwhile Iran and Hezbollah are more active than ever in our own backyard.
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Professor, this reminds me of the 2008 primaries when Biden made fun of Guiliani…
“Rudy Giuliani, there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence — a noun and a verb and 9/11 and I mean, there’s nothing else. There’s nothing else.””
Now it looks like Barry and his minions have nothing else, its a noun, verb, and Bin Laden.
Here is the video;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DteDRD6cbbM
Breitbart’s site could superimpose Biden’s words of “Guiliani” with “Obama” and “9/11” with “Bin Laden”
and that would make one hell of an ad to neuter that stupid ad from Barry’s gang.
Jeepers, Professor, you’re insisting on impossibly high standards and overlooking the successes.
For example, the administration wasn’t quite able to bring out Assad’s latent reformer, which they insisted he had, but they made a good try.
Brave Iranians take to the streets in their tens of thousands and chant, “Obama, you are with us or them!” and although he waited a week to say anything, at the end he did announce that he was “bearing witness.” Certainly that should have brought the mullahs to heal. Who could have predicted that it wouldn’t?
But most importantly, he has let the Arab world know that our solemn undertakings to Israel mean nothing if there’s a different guy in the White House. Further, he has shown the Arabs that the US is perfectly willing to pick fights with Israel and if, say, a ten month freeze on building we insist upon produces nothing, that our response will be more pressure. Surely this will lead to peace in the near future.
It just depends on how you define “success.”
I think John Bolton had it about right when he recently said that Obama had about as much to do with getting Bin Laden as Nixon did with landing on the moon.
1. Apparently, per Instapundit, it’s not even clear how much credit Obama deserves for bin Laden.
2. Biden’s babble illustrates how today’s American elite thinks. Some sleazy muckety-muck waves his/her hand and sets a carefully worded approval in motion. If things go well, the bigshot takes the credit; if not, underlings are thrown under the bus.
Keeping a modern nation running requires an enormous infrastructure of conscientious competent people. Why would such people work under the conditions I just described?
3. Let’s not forget Hillary’s role in all this. I’ve seen her “successes” at the State Department touted as a qualification for 2016. If Obama is reelected and followed by Clinton, outright collapse of the USA within Boomer lifetimes becomes thinkable.
Professor, as you like to say, “put all that aside.”
Can you say, “Second Nobel Peace Prize”?
Wow, you folks really hate the idea of giving Obama credit for getting Bin Laden.
Of course, if Bush had done it, you’d have been ejaculating all over yourselves in your rage to praise.
Strange, strange people you folks are….
I say this as someone who did not vote or support Bush, I don’t remember Bush spiking the football every 10 mins over the capture of Saddam Hussein, and I remember Bush very much gave credit where it was due, to our troops.
To listen to Barry, he singlehandedly propelled down and took down Bin Laden.
Awwwww yeahhh… 100% the truth.
Wow, you folks really hate the idea of giving Nixon credit for landing on the moon.
Of course, if Kennedy had done it, you’d have been ejaculating all over yourselves in your rage to praise.
Strange, strange people you folks are….
LukeHandCool (who, precocious child that he was, in his seventh-grade English class, as another student took his turn to read aloud a portion of the short story as the class read along silently, when the boy came to the phrase, “(blurted quote), he ejaculated,” Luke, somehow aware of the other connotation of the word, looked up just as the beautiful teacher, Mrs. Maddaford, also looked up from her book (obviously to see if any dirty-minded kid knew this word). Luke, the only student who looked up, instantly locked eyes with Mrs. Maddaford. Luke, thereafter afraid to look the pretty Mrs. Maddaford in the eye, only overcame his fear and shame when, a couple weeks later, as the class waited for the tardy Mrs. Maddaford to arrive, a boy strolled to the front of the room and started reading her roll sheet. Mrs. Maddaford had penciled in a word or two next to each student’s name at the beginning of the school year to help her associate each name with its owner’s face. Luke blushed as the boy read aloud to the class the word Mrs. Maddaford had pencilled next to Luke’s name: “Cute.”)
Luke, living in your head has got to be one hell of a wild ride.
Tamminator,
Are you trying to say I’m crazy? 🙂
Well, as my peaceful half-Jewish Jehovah’s Witness maternal Grandmother (see, I was doomed to be a little nuts) once told me when I was a young boy, if another boy were to bully me at school, I was not to engage in a violent fistfight, but rather to quickly change the subject and get him to befriend me. She insisted that any animosity directed my way by another boy at school was because he was just jealous of me.
I was no nerd and couldn’t imagine any boy at school challenging me and just wondered, “Where did this come from? I’m not being bullied.”
I guess she was just trying to impart a little wisdom. It rubbed off on my mom. She was also very peaceful and mild-mannered and I remember her saying once or twice that mean kids were only jealous.
Well, it was that same time, in the seventh grade, (the very first day of Junior High) only the setting was Mrs. Knowlton’s science class.
Our junior high school was made up of students from three elementary schools. I knew the bratty Steven Greenwood from my elementary school, Franklin.
Being the first day, we didn’t yet know the kids from the other two primary schools, like Matthew Cooper, who hailed from Roosevelt Elementary.
As Mrs. Knowlton called the role for the first time, Steven Greenwood was looking at Matthew Cooper sitting at the desk in the neighboring row.
Steven loudly proclaimed, so the whole class could hear,
“Wow, the hair on your arms is long!!!”
An embarrassed Matthew Cooper lamely retorted, “You’re just jealous.”
Steven laughed hysterically and buried Matthew in sarcasm with, “Yeah, I wish I had hairy arms!!”
I knew then that Steven Greenwood’s wisdom trumped my mom’s and my grandma’s (and obviously Matthew’s mom’s, and perhaps his grandma’s too) at least in this case.
Life’s lessons are everywhere … even in the smallest, seemingly insignificant happenings.
LukeHandCool (who, on the second play of the ninth-grade all star football game, caught a touchdown bomb. The following week, the school newspaper account told how Luke “burned safety Matthew Cooper on the play.” Years later, when he was a freshman at UCLA, a friend Luke had met in high school, and who was a freshman at UC Santa Barbara, asked Luke if he remembered Matthew Cooper. Luke’s friend, Phil, had known of Matthew, but had never met him in their large high school. Somehow, he had heard the story. In their first day in the UCSB dorm, after settling in was done and socializing was starting, Phil and Matthew exchanged, “Oh yeah, you went to my high school” and other bonding pleasantries. Phil, trying to think of other mutual things, brought up Luke and said, “I hear Luke burned you in your school’s ninth-grade all star game.” As Phil told Luke, “Jeez, he wouldn’t stop following me as I went into the other dorm rooms to meet people. He wanted to know how I knew the story and kept asking me questions about it. He’s obssessed with it!” Poor Matthew. His mother’s wisdom had failed him with his hairy arms. Luke wished he could have held Matthew in a comforting embrace and sweetly imparted the wisdom, “Those who tease you are just jealous … and never let a receiver get behind you when you’re playing safety … and, nobody is jealous of hairy arms).
Yet you and jug-ears have no problem continuing to Blame Bush.
jdkchem,
And when the economy finally starts growing like it should under President Romney, Obama will say Romney inherited the fruits of the seeds Obama planted. Heads Obama wins, tails Obama wins.
He is basically Gaia … only better … and cooler.
LukeHandCool (who couldn’t agree more with “Red Eye’s” Andy Levy that Obama isn’t cool. Well, let Luke amend that. Obama is cool to the nerdy dorkus hipster losers for whom finding and latching onto something perceived as cool in hopes the trickle-down runoff will rub off is the be-all and end-all to their pathetic poseur existence. Trying too hard is not too cool. The Jimmy Fallon fail was Obama’s Dunkirk … only without the boats and ships … all the supposedly heavy cool artillery was left behind. No cool moral victory this time).
Gaia? That would explain the mom-jeans. I see him more as the Teflon waffle!
Harlan welcome. Its not that anyone denies Obama was in charge when Bin Laden was killed. It marks a closed chapter is all.
What is unseemly is using the killing as an election tool given rational and irrational sensitivities on the issue.
Its simply not “smart policy” to go on a brag campaign over anyone’s death. It also seems rather inconsistant given this Administrations general propensity to downplay the entire “terrorist” subject.
Harlan, we need more chicken. Lotsa’ customers..
Excellent post Professor.
“Obama’s foreign policy has been a profound disaster, subjugating generations of women throughout the region to fundamentalist tyranny as Obama concocts a false “war on women” campaign theme against Republicans.”
This is the ugly truth about Obama and his foreign policy. There is horrific stuff coming out of Egypt against women. He has not denounced any of it. How many more women are going to die thanks to his policies? I don’t want to hear anymore from the msm about Rush, or the word slut, or the Republicans. Obama has blood on his hands, and unfortunately there will be much more.
If you haven’t seen this from Nonie Darwish – take a look at the women at Cairo University in Egypt starting in 1959. There were NO veils, no punishing of women. There has been a steady Islamic radicalization invading the Middle East. These photos show what is going on in the Middle East like no words can:
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/02/05/how-the-veil-conquered-cairo-university/
No veils but they we rabid hats of the Jews. That’s the face of Islam.
Thanks for those pics.
I’ve done a search on Afghanistan, and found the same thing.
The entire middle east is slipping back into the dark ages.
Yes and many want to drag us there as well.
Fortuately, those of us that have some smarts will resist descending into the abyss with every means at our dispasal.
I wish that I could say the same regarding the leadership of this country…
who didn’t see this coming?
I have to disagree with you on this one, Professor. Logically, if you think that Bush should be given some credit for killing Bin Laden, then Bush should also be given credit for the US losing the middle east. The roots to both took place under Bush.
Of course, I would argue that we never really had the middle east in the first place. By being an ally to Israel (which I think is a good thing), we automatically became enemies to the very (and this cannot be stressed enough) very anti-semetic Muslim nations surrounding it.
The middle east is a very volatile location. The “stability” that we had from 1991 to 2003 was put in jeopardy when Bush went to war with Iraq. Bush should have known, and probably did, that this would have many repercussions in the area. This is where Bush made his mistake. He failed to plan for a way out of Iraq, I believe he even admitted to that in the last few months of his presidency.
Of course, his mistakes were compounded by the mistakes from Obama.
Here we go again with the ignorant and stupid “exit strategy” BS. Contrary to what you idiots on the left think/wish the only “exit strategy” in war is win and go home. Anyone who buys or sells a lack of an “exit strategy” is an idiot.
Wow, you really did just call me a leftist? The fact that you called me a leftist proves that you are woefully ignorant.
I’m disinclined to respond to name calling when used a form of arguement, so I’ll ingore that part of your retorts.
I agree with you. So let me stress that Bush failed to go home. That is where he failed in planning the exit strategy of the war. Instead he tried to force a democracy on people that weren’t willing to stand up to the dictator ruling them. As a result, factions formed in the populace from groups with their own ideas on how to gain control over Iraq and its people.
Islamic groups fought secularists in Iraq and received support from other nations, particularly Iran. This changed the focus of the “War in Iraq” from the United States vs. Saddam to Islamists vs. Secularists. It then spilled over to other nations. Secularists in Iran started trying to resist the Mullahs, thinking that they would receive help from the US. Unfortunately for them, Obama was in charge at the time and he didn’t want to upset his leftist base so he rebuked the secularists.
Of course this lead to criticism of Obama, so he then decided to straddle both sides and “support” ousting Mubarak without violence. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian politics after the ousting of Mubarak was deemed a failure for the Obama administration, so they were getting desperate to find a foreign policy success and that is where Libya and France came into play. Libya, a weak state that stood no chance against us, was picked as his next target.
Libya would be used as an example of a success in foreign policy. Not only would Obama claim that we were helping an ally, France, but he would also be able to show that he was willing to engage in hostilities was another country (has a Big Stick). He forgot to look at the other people he was allying with, which was Islamists…backed by Al-Quaida. Once again he had egg on his face. Then came his chance for redemption. Bin Laden.
The chance came to kill Bin Laden. Bin Laden, who had been essentially neutralized from Al-Quaida and was little more than a figurehead to Islamists now, was found to be hiding in our supposed ally, Pakistan. Obama, desperate for any success in foreign issues, made the easy choice of killing Bin Laden. That feat done, Obama has claimed his foreign policy a success and has, quite mercifully, decided to keep out of foreign issues as much as he can.
All of these actions have a root based in Bush’s failure to leave Iraq and go home in time. To take the politically partisan stand and say that the entire middle east debacle is Obama’s fault is to ignore Bush’s own bad judgements. This is just as bad as giving Obama complete credit for killing Bin Laden while ignoring Bush’s own efforts in starting the hunt for Bin Laden.
Woefully ignorant? This coming from the same person ran with the same “exit strategy” meme pushed by the losers on the left. An exit strategy is what you use when you’re losing. Exit strategies are for losers. Until you’re capable of grasping that concept you need to refrain from commenting on the intellectual capacities of others.
Additionally you make the woefully ignorant assumption that failing to leave Iraq when it was convenient for the left was a failure. Funny how after knocking off Saddam, Qaddafi gave up any further desire for nukes. Then comes commander jug-ears “saving” the day in Libya. As for Iran getting involved in Iraq. Perhaps if you ninnies on the left had some sense and a pair hanging you would have actually supported the military mission instead of playing police squad. How many American lives did you traitors cost by engaging in the rule of law when you should have been engaged in the rule of war?
It should also be noted that the whole concept of an “exit strategy” came from the democrat party and their disgusting desire to lose. Well now you turds got what you wanted and you’re still blaming Bush. The way you fools yap anyone could be forgiven for thinking that Bush is in his third term in office.
Stability from 1991 to 2003?
Hello?
World Trade Center, Khobar Towers, USS Cole,
then the final destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11
You must live in an alternative universe.
You did see the quotes around the word, correct? That implies that the word was used while questioning whether the situation was truly stable.
So no, I don’t think that the middle east was stable then. It was just more stable then than the periods preceding and following it, which was Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
I would call it an era of appeasement coupled with a few “wag-the-dogs.” Because of the appeasement, 9/11 occurred without question.
Regarding Bush II, he was a weak president but stands as a knight in shining armor as compared to what we have today…
I agree, somewhat. I think the weaker of the two was his father, for deciding to stick with the devil he knew than the one he didn’t. I think that we would have been better off had we ousted Saddam during Desert Storm. Thanks to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait we had many arab nations allied with us against him; we should have pushed them into ridding Iraq of Saddam then, but we didn’t.
If I recall correctly, there was a resistance group of Iraqis that wanted Bush Sr. to go all the way to Baghdad. By abandoning them to Saddam as the devil he knew, it allowed Saddam to literally beat the resistance to submission. Further, the resistance was less likely to trust us in the future.
This was twenty years ago, though, and I was living in Egypt at the time so I don’t know what the national mood in the States was like. So I don’t know what pressures Bush Sr. was receiving on ending Desert Storm. There might have been a good reason, but I have always thought that it was a missed opportunity.
Please continue to spout stupid. The reason GHWB called off the dogs was to maintain the coalition and appease you democrats. You democrats never want to do what is necessary only what is expedient and provides you with more pie and chips.
It was a dispute over oil fields between Iraq & Kuwait. There were no babies being thrown out of neo intensive care cribs by the hundreds. That was a PR stunt.
A salient point was that the west did not ask anything of Kuwait in return.
This thing has already been forgotten . I am sorry for those who died for Kuwait’s oil.
Frankly, killing Osama was a no brainer and after it’s all said and done I really don’t care one way or another. For Whatshisname to make it an all important focus of his campaign is just pathetic.
Crediting obama for getting osama is like crediting Nixon for the moon landings.
I got beat to it
[…] JACOBSON: Obama Got Osama, But Lost The Middle East. It does seem to be working out that way, […]
I agree with retired ground-pounder and blogger McQ…
BigPeace has this story wrong.
http://www.qando.net/?p=12926
Bad Luck Barry did what politics dictated he do, but that memo is a non-story.
I don’t concede one thing to Obama, he was in a closet shivering when the decision to get bin Laden was made. According to a report on Instapundit “As reported by Big Peace, Time magazine has obtained a memo written by Leon Panetta, then-director of the Central Intelligence Agency and now-Secretary of Defense, that says “operational decision-making and control” was really in the hands of William McRaven, a three-star admiral and former Navy SEAL.”
So, as usual, somebody did the work, Obama got the praise, Obama was in the closet hiding out while Admiral McRaven made the critical decision to get bin Laden, and Obama was sharpening his long anti-military knife to stick in McRaven’s back if anything went wrong.
Obama probably would have gotten credit even if OBL was not there … they had good intel and took a good risk. Success is much better … but I think Obama could have tooted his own horn either way. Or maybe it would have actually stayed covert, if we’d gotten out clean.
[…] Insurrection sums it up well: Obama got Osama, but lost the Middle East. But the killing of one person has been against the backdrop of a complete disaster for the United […]
[…] Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion looks at what happened after, But the killing of one person has been against the backdrop of a complete disaster for the United States throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. […]
“I’m not prepared at this time to cut off aid to Pakistan. So I’m not prepared to threaten it, as Senator Obama apparently wants to do, as he has said that he would announce military strikes into Pakistan.
We’ve got to get the support of the people of — of Pakistan. He said that he would launch military strikes into Pakistan.
Now, you don’t do that. You don’t say that out loud. If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.”
http://www.riazhaq.com/2008/09/mccain-and-obama-debate-pakistan-policy.html
Obama was bragging even in 2008, about what a tough guy he was. He’d go into Pakistan without their approval, and he’d boast about it on national TV. Great way to try to shore up a weak ally.
At the time, I think we were already going into Pakistan covertly, but Obama wanted credit for braveness, so he blows the covert aspect. Same with getting OBL, couldn’t wait a few days or weeks to try to milk any intelligence gained in the raid … nope .. Obama wanted to hit the news cycle … shore up his numbers. The world revolves around Obama’s ego.
Obama’s “foreign policy” is interlocked with his “domestic policy”.
As New Yorkers and Washingtonians alike marveled at the awesome sight of the space shuttle piggy-backing atop of a 747, it would be prudent to remember why it’s engines are idle.
As noted above, it’s not because Obama doesn’t have the money to spend–he’d just rather spend our money on the muslims.
“Leveling the playing field” ring a bell?
“When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — (Obama) charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.” — Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator.
I’m sure you have probably already read this article Browndog, but perhaps others have not…..heartbreaking.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/46332
Houston, we have a problem-
The ONE place, the FIRST place that should have been “awarded” a shuttle was Houston, TX.
But no, Barry has to play his little childish partisan games-
Mission Control
If it’s “fair enough” to credit Obama for getting Osama, why were we told it’s unfair to blame Clinton for not getting him when he could have (before 9/11)?
Besides, there isn’t a single potential president (Hillary especially included) who wouldn’t have okayed that mission, given its odds. So the guts displayed were in no way out of the ordinary, which is usually how guts are assessed. What was out of the ordinary was Obama’s pipe laying for blaming the military if anything went wrong.
Then, too, how were we ever going to know if something did indeed go wrong? The Pakistanis would have complained, we’d have denied, and la-dee-da.
Funny, I don’t remember Sander Vanocur interviewing Harry Truman in the White House on August 6, 1946, the one-year anniversary of Hiroshima. This was, after all, a time when the American public was almost entirely grateful to have that dreadful war (almost half a million Americans alone dead) over and done with. By every stretch of the imagination, ordering those two atomic strikes (remember, Truman didn’t even know about the bombs while FDR was still alive) was infinitely gutsier than Obama’s call.
Capt. Kickass has a knack for “leading from behind.
-After having solid intelligence on Bin Laden, Obama was very hesitant–and refused to move, citing the need for more intelligence, forcing Panetta to move, dragging Capt. Kickass off the golf coarse and into a photo-op.
http://talkwisdom.blogspot.com/2011/05/white-house-insider-obama-hesitated.html
-When Somali pirates captured a ship’s Captain, Obama told our military to stand down–he was sending lawyers out to sea. The Navy dispatched the pirates before Holder’s boys got there to read them their rights.
http://thedeadhand.com/Journal/tabid/160/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/530/The-real-story-of-the-Somali-pirate-hostage-rescue.aspx
In Libya, France was set to go it alone, as Sarkozy was afraid Omar Kahdaffi would cut his oil supply, having beat back the uprising. Hillary Clinton panicked, knowing America would look weak, and the 3 women (Clinton-Jarret-Rice) dragged Obama into his ever bold “leading from behind” doctrine, which led to the “not war”, and the “not impeachable” violation of the War powers Act.
Link: Yea, I’m done playing games with Google, and how Obama “Doesn’t hesitate” to do anything-ever.
I don’t think we’ve lost the Middle East. I think this is a bit simplistic an assessment and tinged with partisanship.
Unless I read some of the neo-conservatives and others wrong before the liberation of Iraq wrong, one of the goals of invading Iraq was to destabilize the status quo in the Middle East. I think this has been accomplished. Christopher Hitchens used liked to make this point.
The status quo was unacceptable and now it is changing. It will be ugly and pretty all at once and there is nothing we can do about that because that is just how people are and because the Middle East has got some major cultural issues. If those people have freedom and not despotism, they will still be making a lot of bad choices. Better free and making bad choices whether than despotism and bad choices. This allows the U.S. to finally move away from realpolitik relationships with despots and can now and in the future deal with quasi-democratic governments.
Revolution can be revolting and that is just what it is and no U.S. President can ultimately control what will go down, but for removing the authorities from power and supporting the revolutionaries or not.
The bottom line is the chaos is in the Middle East is a good thing and we’re partly responsible for it due to our actions post 9/11.
“But it still matters that the president doesn’t have a coherent agenda, or a political philosophy that is really clear to people.”
So where is the “Obama Plan” for a second term ?
Adm. Painter: What’s his plan?
Jack Ryan: His plan?
Adm. Painter: Russians don’t take a dump, son, without a plan.
Great movie.
[…] got Osama, but lost the Middle East. It’s OK — Democrats don’t believe in winning wars, just “ending” […]
Another fair point around over celebrating Bin Laden’s death. Sure it had an impact on AQ but lets not confuse his death with the end of AQ (to Obama supporters)
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/04/27/a-year-after-osama-bin-ladens-death-al-qaeda-alive-and-kicking/
Sort of gets at my earlier point that smart people dont say things that may well come back and bite them in the kiester.
With Bush maybe it was “Mission Accomplished”. With Obama its I killed Bin Laden. Maybe its time Obama got a guy to follow him around reminding him “You are just a man”
[…] Prof Jacobson […]
[…] Obama Got Osama, But Lost The Middle East […]
Professor Jacobson makes a point worth repeating. As Obama dances in the end zone for his one military success, the Middle East is sliding into Islamofascism.
As they say in Bridge, let’s review the bidding.
The short range purpose of invading Iraq was to insure that Saddam did not pass out WMDs to Islamic extremists like OBL. Mission accomplished and although we did not capture lots of WMDs after toppling Saddam, with him gone that option was closed.
The long-range purpose of going into Iraq, in my opinion, was to create a large military presence in a stable country so that the surrounding Muslim dictatorships would not come under the domination of Iran, and to provide a model for the Mid-eastern people to follow on the path to representative government.
Unfortunately, Obama happened.
The idea of Iraq as an American protectorate was abhorrent to him, so he made arrangements to dismantle our presence in Iraq. At the same time he sent some of our best troops to perform “Viet Nam – the Sequel” in Afghanistan, a war fought primarily for domestic political purposes; to prove that he really did believe IT was the “good war.” What is the strategic reason for fighting in Afghanistan? Does anyone remember?
Back to Iraq, that militarily naked country has become an Iranian protectorate. Once the region became unstable, the seeds were planted for regional revolution. Lacking an American presence, and more importantly an American President who doesn’t like the idea of American power, the most committed revolutionaries are winning out. And those revolutionaries are not idealistic college students and small shopkeepers who want a better life, but Islamic ideologues who are essentially 2, 3 many Osama bin Ladens.
While the MSM was having orgasms over the Arab Spring, I predicted the outcome. “Hope vs. Experience.” “Don’t blame Obama, he’s only the President.” “The ‘Arab Spring’ is a Horror Show”
There is no pleasure in this “I told you so.” Given the cast of characters, any Conservative could have foreseen this. For the same reason, Liberals could not.
What choice did Obama have? Too many people in Washington knew we were getting close to bin Laden. If he stopped the mission word would get out and he would be in real political trouble.
The Arab spring was Obama’s opportunity to unleash his Community Organizing skills. He green lighted the muslim brotherhood in his Cairo speech. He hates Israel even though American Jews supported him at 78% in 2008.
His largest missed opportunity was the failure to support the Iranian democracy movement.
It is only a failure if you believe in supporting a secular government over an islamist government.
Instead of the PAX ROMANA we have the POX OBAMA. Nov. 6 cannot come soon enough!!!
No.
But I do remember when the US eventually backed the coup regime even as it tortured and murdered its opponents with right-wing death squads.
Of course you don’t because that does not support your BS narrative. Just because perky Katie said it was a coup does not make it so.
WTF are you talking about? Do you have the slightest idea?
All this stuff about Obama being in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood is hilarious. Read a history book kids. The US has always been buddy-buddy with Islamists when it fits its agenda. Look at who Reagan backed in Afghanistan.
Maybe America should just pack up and leave the Middle East. The US has no right to stick its dick in other countries’ affairs, be it Bush invading Iraq or Obama bombing Libya.
Really? Whom did Reagan back in Afghanistan?
Oh, and why exactly doesn’t the USA have the right to insert itself wherever it damn well pleases? What principle of law or morality says it shouldn’t?
Bonus question: while you’re reading the history books, have you ever heard of Kitty Genovese? Do you think her neighbors were right not to stick their dicks in other people’s affairs?
I posted in these forums about one month ago on liberal media suppressing info of Obama’s accelerated pullout of 23,000 troops by September 2012 that’s putting our brave soldiers at risk , its very difficult to wade through the quagmire of news reports to extract information about The Logistical Nightmare of Leaving Afghanistan.
The Despair and Necessity in Afghanistan, a liberal media who is only capable of in-depth investigative reporting when it seems to vindicate the anti-war presidents hopey changey on again , off again and then on again robot drone wars, with an incompetent and duplicitous ally in Pakistan and now Yemen or wherever / whomever?
NBC News release via Politico
In a “Rock Center with Brian Williams” exclusive airing on Wednesday, May 2 at 9p/8c, President Obama and his national security and military teams, relive the pivotal moments of the raid targeting Osama bin Laden.
The interview, which will air on Rock Center with Brian Williams on May 2, comes at the one-year anniversary of bin Laden’s killing, an event the Obama campaign is touting in a new ad that goes after Mitt Romney.
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