Did he get Osama, or not? Case closed

By Bob Gaydos

Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.

Those are two incontrovertible facts.

Barack Obama made the crucial decisions to kill one and save the other.

Incontrovertible.

Also, if one happens to be a Republican, inconvenient and uncomfortably on target for the two things Americans care about these days when voting for a president — national security and jobs.

Protect us from terrorists and protect our jobs.

In a presidency hamstrung by two wars he did not start, a recession he did not cause and a Republican Party that struck the words “bipartisanship” from its playbook on Day One, President Obama has had only a few clear successes. He killed Osama and he saved the American auto industry.

God forbid, though — now that the election campaign has switched focus from the GOP field of nightmares to a man-to-man between Obama and presumptive GOP candidate Mitt Romney — that the president’s supporters should be allowed to brag about his accomplishments.

Take Osama, please, as Henny Youngman might have said. In a surprisingly direct (for Democrats) attack on Romney, Obama’s campaign ran web ads on the first anniversary of the event, trumpeting the daring Navy Seals raid in Pakistan that killed the al-Qaeda leader and asked, “Would Mitt Romney have made that decision?”

Good question. In fact, it’s one Newt Gingrich might well have asked of the man he described as an indecisive liar. But the Republican whiners came out in force immediately. How dare the president exploit the killing of bin Laden for political purposes? How could he take a unifying event like that and make it a divisive one? Whaa! Whaa! Whaa!

Do you hear yourselves? Who precisely is he dividing? I still don’t know a single American who is angry that bin Laden is dead and most of them are grateful that Obama gave the order to go get him.

Which, of course, is more than George W. Bush ever did. I know, we’re not supposed to talk about any of that stuff, either, right? About forgetting about capturing the 9/11 mastermind in the mountains of Afghanistan and deciding to level Iraq instead.

And, of course, we’re supposed to forget about that W. landing, in a Navy jet and wearing full flight gear, on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf to declare “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq when the war there had barely begun. And let’s not bring up the Bush team’s attacks in the 2004 campaign on Sen. John Kerry’s courage and patriotism while serving in Vietnam while W. was avoiding National Guard training in Texas. Wouldn’t be fair to recall that, right?

Aw heck, if W. had nabbed bin Laden, he would have just moved on to getting the next tyrant and we would never have heard of it again, right? He wouldn’t have it any other way.

Utter fantasy. And yet, this reaction is pretty much par for the course for the GOP these days. It has no grounding in reality most of the time and the facts are whatever its members say they are, even when they contradict one another. The more troubling reaction to the Obama ads came from some liberal/Democratic supporters who felt Obama should not be politicizing the killing of bin Laden. That it was somehow unseemly for the president to do so.

Yeah? So?

We are talking politics here aren’t we? Since when has it been a genteel sport? Did anyone pay attention to the GOP primaries? Talk about political blood sport. Republicans, conservatives, tea partiers (once upon a time that was genteel) have shown they will say and do anything to tear down the president, including belittling his accomplishments. Don’t ask, don’t tell? Don’t remind them.

The point is, Obama made a carefully calculated decision to take out the head of the most notorious terrorist group on the planet by using feet-on-the-ground troops rather than remote-controlled drones or “smart” bombs. He did it over the objections of some of his top advisers, including the vice president, secretary of state and secretary of defense. And he did it knowing full well that, if the mission failed — as did President Carter’s effort to rescue the hostages in Iran — as commander-in-chief, Obama would get full blame for it. And we would be seeing ads today reminding us of that, paid for by Romney supporters.

So yes, it seems a fair question to wonder whether the ever-changing Romney as commander-in-chief might have made the same decision. (We already know he would have let GM fail.)

Of course, the raid succeeded and al-Qaeda is a badly crippled shell of itself. To mark the anniversary, the president flew in secret to Afghanistan to thank the troops (photo above) and to sign an agreement with the new government there — the one that replaced the al-Qaeda-friendly Taliban — pledging the support of the United States even when U.S. forces leave Afghanistan.

Yes, the war there will come to an end soon, just as the one in Iraq did. On Obama’s watch.

The man has a right to brag.

bobgaydos.blogspot.com

The man who got Osama

By Bob Gaydos

There I was, sitting around Sunday night, contemplating my navel (a novel refuses to materialize) and trying to decide whether to write about the Royal Wedding (capitals are a must), a rather schizophrenic UFO festival in Pine Bush, the roasting of Donald Trump or the ongoing nuclear meltdown in Japan. This haphazard thought process reflects more than two decades of writing daily editorials, in which no event is ever out of bounds for some sort of comment -- constructive and cogent, of course.

And yet here I am, on Tuesday afternoon, once again feeling compelled to write about the thought processes of Barack Obama, forever more to be known, to the chagrin of Republicans, as the man who got Osama bin Laden.

George W. Bush, the man who made water board a verb and who leapt before ever looking for eight years in the White House, ordered bin Laden, the al Qaeda mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, brought to justice, dead or alive. It never happened on Bush’s watch.

Obama, his White House successor, the anti-Bush who sometimes drives friends and foes crazy by insisting on discussing, debating, compromising and cooperating on every important decision, delivered Osama’s head on a metaphorical platter. Actually, we’re told a Navy SEAL put a bullet in the terrorist’s head and his body was buried at sea within 24 hours, supposedly in accordance with Islamic religious beliefs. The fact that this makes it difficult to build a martyr’s memorial to him, is purely coincidental, we are also told. Besides, the White House said, no country would take bin Laden’s body

Of course. And who cares? There must be a watery entrance to hell as well. Beyond the national euphoria and celebration of the death of bin Laden, there was, of course, the usual political posturing in comments by potential rivals of Obama. Short version: A lot of Republicans managed to praise everyone involved in the mission, except for the commander-in-chief. It’s almost as if he were just a spectator, along for the ride.

Bush and Dick Cheney were not among them, perhaps because their time has come and gone and also perhaps because they know firsthand what it took to finally succeed. They congratulated Obama. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, known for his bluntness, was also direct: “I want to commend President Obama's Administration for its commitment and dedication to finally bringing Osama bin Laden to justice.” Perhaps coincidentally, Christie says he’s not running for president in 2012.

But it fell to the equally direct Rudy Giuliani, the politician most affected by the events of 9/11, to put Obama’s role in true perspective.

The former New York City mayor specifically praised Obama: “I feel a great deal of satisfaction that justice has been done, and I admire the courage of the president to make a decision like this because if something had gone wrong everyone would be blaming him,"

Oh my God, would they ever. For a president accused of dithering and dawdling and trying to be too nice to everybody, this was an incredibly gutsy call. Go into Pakistan, the hell with what their government thinks. Don’t bomb the compound -- too risky for civilian casualties. Send in a small, specially trained force. Capture or kill Osama and get out fast. Get evidence. Don’t leave anything behind.

And yet, we also know that this order did not come without months of intelligence gathering, many meetings, discussions, debates and probably arguments. Out of that had to come an overriding faith by the commander-in-chief in the plan of attack and in the men who would be chosen to carry out the mission. Yes, this is Osama bin Laden. Yes, we can get in and out. Yes, the risks are high. No, we can’t absolutely guarantee success.

Whew! Remember Jimmy Carter’s helicopters in the desert? Blackhawk down? Heck, Remember Ike and U-2 and JFK and the Bay of Pigs? Obama is a student of history. He knew what was at stake, for him and the country and he gave the order. Do it.

That decision immediately puts him in a much different category than any one of his potential opponents in 2012. Not that he wasn’t there already.

Consider first what it took for a junior senator, with little foreign policy experience, to decide to run for president against Hillary Clinton. Throw in the fact that the junior senator is black. Consider that in the two-plus years since his election, Obama, the ditherer and dawdler, has delivered a rescue package for a seriously ailing economy, a major reform of health care that contains new benefits for millions of Americans and also trims the deficit, overseen repeal of the military’s don’t ask/don’t tell policy on gays serving, gotten a budget passed with a GOP-controlled House of Representatives, all the while dealing with a Republican Party seemingly devoid of common sense or at least some leader willing to stand up and say the birthers and the persistent nay-sayers have no clothes, never mind evidence.

Presidents supposedly have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Gerald Ford was often mocked because of his difficulty mastering this challenge, but he was seen as a sincere, good man, so the joking was done in good humor. He never got elected president, however. Obama has no difficulty handling more than one problem at a time. Indeed, his intelligence, charm and rhetorical and oratorical skills are surely scary to some Americans, especially for a guy born in Kenya. (If there are any Fox News fans reading this, that’s a joke.)

Which, brings me back to Donald Trump. One of the most amazing things to me about Obama’s ability to carry on several projects at a high degree of excellence was his performance Saturday night at the White House Correspondents Dinner. As is custom, the president gave a 10-minute or so standup routine, aimed at members of the audience. Obama’s was spot-on perfect and hilarious, skewering a scowling Trump and plenty of other critics in the audience and, in my view, outshining the professional comedian who followed him, Seth Meyers of Saturday Night Live.

Yet Obama knew all the time he was mocking Trump that a decision on getting Osama was on his agenda in the morning. Pressure? Not so you’d notice. Obama was perfect Saturday night, leaving them laughing in the aisles. He didn’t miss a beat on Sunday either, bringing America cheering to its feet.

Some people are going to say he was lucky. Maybe so. But it takes a keen mind and a lot of careful thought and preparation -- not to mention a willingness to be criticized as indecisive -- to be as “lucky” as Barack Obama has been. He may still drive you (and me) crazy sometimes, but look around folks. So long as the wheels in that Occidental/Columbia/Harvard-educated brain keep churning, I’m sticking with the man who got Osama.

bobgaydos.blogspot.com