Thursday, May 5, 2011

Abbottabad To The Bone

There was some kind of big news story this week, right?  Oh yeah… the last 15 minutes of Celebrity Apprentice got pre-empted by the President.

President Obama: Fire this, Trump!  Booyah!

Right… we got bin Laden, but unless you’ve been in a coma all week, you already knew that.  The news coverage of every conceivable angle has been unending.

I’ll admit that I was pretty happy with the way things played out.  Sunday night, I was all,
AMERICA…
Live from Durkadurkastan

It’s nice when one of our military operations goes that smoothly, even considering the loss of one of our helicopters, and accomplishes exactly what it was supposed to.  It took a while, but our boys found that rat bastard, snuck in, took him out, and took him with them.

Naturally, there is a cacophony of controversy, as there with pretty much anything that happens any more.  Here’s what people are fussing about…

Osama was unarmed and killed in cold blood. 
I don’t have a problem with this.  Everyone on those planes and in the twin towers were unarmed too and killed in cold blood. 

Good riddance.  His death saves us the trouble of deciding what to do with him.  Remember the other guy, Khalid “You want fries with that?” Sheikh Mohammed?  The guy that actually thought up the 9/11 plan and had it carried out?  Osama merely gave his approval; KSM was the guy that got it done and we have had him in custody for years.  First they were going to try him in New York, but they did an about-face and redecided on a military tribunal.  No matter which way you go with this guy, there are problems.

There are no such problems with bin Laden.

I also don’t have a problem with the quick burial at sea.  Makes sense to me not to leave a future shrine for our enemies to rally around.  And the hell with whether all the proper Muslim rites were done.  Again, there were almost 3000 people that weren’t interred at all, let alone with any rites.

The Pakistanis are pissed because of the unauthorized mission in their country. 
Tough shit.  If they were anything resembling competent as allies, we wouldn’t have had to go in ourselves.  They want to prevent more unilateral attacks on terrorists, start doing a better job of finding them themselves.  If I’m the Prez, I tell them they’re on the clock right now.  Start handing over al-Qaeda terrorists or we’ll use some of that intel they took out of Osama’s compound and go get a couple more.

Conspiracy theories about whether he’s really dead, because there will not be any pictures released. 
At first, I was sure some pictures would leak out or be released and I thought it was a good idea, as so to prove it was Osama.  But the more I thought about it, I realized it would prove nothing.  If the Birthers have shown anything it’s that nothing can “prove” that a crazy idea is crazy to the crazy person.  The conspiracy nuts would claim it’s a fake, just like they’re doing with the long-form birth certificate they’d been clamoring for. 

And after all that, the picture itself would be used to incite the radical Muslims who are already looking for reasons to blow shit up.  We release the pictures and we lose on both ends.  People still think there’s a conspiracy, and we have an even larger wave of people vowing vengeance upon us.  So keep it under wraps.  Who in their right mind would assert that the President, the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs, Congressional committees and the CIA would stage an elaborate hoax like this?

Rush Limbaugh asserts that bin Laden has been dead for some time. 
Never mind about the end of that previous paragraph.  After stating this week that he thought bin Laden was actually killed at Tora Bora, he later backpedaled on that claim.  He did was he usually does… he makes some outlandish claim that gets picked up and repeated everywhere, but then says, “Oh, I was just kidding…” Meanwhile, his quote is being dittoed by his dittoheads all over the country.

But this does put the Republicans in a spot.  They have to choose between their knee-jerk reaction to criticize whatever Obama does, or try to claim credit for it.  Right now I’m seeing more of the credit-stealing.  The sad thing is that it will no doubt work on the people that want to believe it.  But it shouldn’t. 

I’ll grant that the military apparatus is essentially the same, between the 2 Presidents.  Neither one re-invented Special Ops.  However, there are some differences.

Bush had 7 years to find Osama and didn’t.  OK, they may have “found” him at Tora Bora, but they were not properly equipped to capture him, what with Rumsfeld’s “light footprint” army.  Obama had him found and taken out in 2 and a half.

Bush took the focus off Osama and Afghanistan to go to war with Iraq.  Bin Laden was nothing but an afterthought for the last half of the Bush presidency.  Obama refocused resources specifically to find and kill al-Qaeda leadership, including bin Laden.  The CIA pays attention to what the White House tells it to pay attention to.  They’ve pounded the crap out of terrorist hiding places in Pakistan with drone bombers, and when the Pakistanis objected, he basically told them to go pound sand, which they seem to have in abundance.

Remember all the rhetoric the Republicans used against Obama, both before the election and after?  He dithers… can’t make the hard decisions… he makes America weaker… he keeps America from leading… he relies too much on other nations… he’s too close to the Muslims…

I think the President answered his detractors this week:

Fuck yeah.

17 comments:

bluzdude said...

Director's DVD Commentary:
This was supposed to be another piece of Tuesday's Odd Bits post. I was going to combine it with the other omitted item but again, I ran long and thought it best to stick with a single subject.

So that just means I have more post ideas circling the drain... I mean... ready to go!

Cassie said...

I didn't find out until the next morning when my Mom sent me an email saying, "So, wow. Osama's dead? Neat." I looked up at Matt who had just gotten home from the gym (he goes at 5 AM. And you think I'M crazy,) and he said, "Oh yah, did you hear?" Apparently my face said it all.

I don't need to see pictures. I made the mistake of watching the Berg beheading. That's enough violence to last me a lifetime.

Although, the first thing I thought? "I wonder how Jack Bauer did it?"

bluzdude said...

Cassie,
I purposefully avoided the Berg beheading. No way I wanted to see that. I couldn't even watch Saving Private Ryan because I knew that shit was real. THIS shit was really real.

I was on Twitter Sunday night, once the networks broke into programming, but before they said why. Twitter not only had the topic, but "Jack Bauer" was trending. An awful lot of people thought the same way you did.

sherry stanfa-stanley said...

I'm relieved about all of this, of course. Thank God we have one less evil person in the world.

But what also strikes me is Obama's handling of the whole situation. For example, not wanting to showcase gruesome photos because not only could it incite further terrorism but also because, "We don't trot out this stuff as trophies."

Talk about someone who has his eye on the mission AND has class?

Trump that, Mr. Comb-Over.

Sweet Lily said...

Wow! Yeah!

bluzdude said...

Sherry,
"There's no need to spike the ball." Classic. And classy. Such a refreshing change from the rampant hubris so often found in such situations.

Cher Duncombe said...

Super post, Bluz! So Limbaugh really said that Bin Laden was already dead? Is he taking those 'diet' pills again? And...I loved that Trump's show was pre-empted. Who got fired? Trump! That's what I call poetic justice.

Anonymous said...

Your summary of these issues is so wonderful to read, Bluz. Great job!

I agree that it speaks volumes for this administration's sophistication in defense and warfare that Bush started two wars with thousands of troops to accomplish what Obama has done with intelligence, special forces and diplomacy. I hope people remember the impressive difference in strategy (& cost) at voting time next year.

Jessica R. said...

Love the body bag cartoon.

Also, I found out at 2am after it happened when I got up with the baby and everyone on Facebook was talking about it. Seems I'm a little out of touch these days.

Gina said...

I love how the right wing want Obama to take responsibility for all the shit Bush left (the economy/deficit, unemployment, etc), and yet they refuse to give him any credit for bin laden. Fuck that. Fuck them.

bluzdude said...

Cher,
I have to admit that I was a little ticked when Celebrity Apprentice was pre-empted, because I was watching it, rooting for my main man Meat Loaf, and the yummy Marlee Matlin. It got more irritating when the President didn’t actually come on until 11:30, meaning they cut into network programming just to fill time by yakking about what he might say. They could have easily waited until 11:00.

But later, in looking at the big picture, I just had to laugh. Not even The Donald can compete with POTUS for air time.

Cristy,
It’s funny how people are nit-picking about who got killed and how, and what was necessary. They should keep in mind that it would have been much easier to just bomb the shit out of the place with drones and obliterate every living thing in the compound. They’ve done it before… But instead, we sent in an elite team, who killed a minimum of people and came out with verification that they got the right guy, PLUS all the data in the place. Those PC, thumb drives and DVDs are going to pay off later; just watch.

It could have been a bloodbath that included all the women and children.

Jessica,
You have a pretty good reason to be out of the loop, news-wise… Higher priorities.

It kind of reminds me of something my Mom told me about when I was a baby. You and I may have the same birthday, but in 1961, right after I was born, the famous Missiles of October crisis was going on. Mom was scared that war with Russia over Cuba was going to break out any day. And there was no internet to keep up to date… only the network news.

Gina,
That's the thing... the bend over backwards trying to disavow the economic mess left by 8 years of kowtowing to the rich and deregulation of the financial markets, and pretend that it all happened on Obama's watch. But this... oh yeah... taking down bin Laden due to the Bushies...

Nice try, douchebags...

Justin said...

I'm not kidding bluzdude, your posts rock! Thanks for commenting on mine and I hope you visit and comment often! I'm stealing the Obama flip off pic BTW!:):)

bluzdude said...

Virgil,
Thanks. And now that I've found your site, I'll be back. Help yourself to the flip-off pic... I stole it myself. And I have a feeling it'll come in handy in the future, too.

injaynesworld said...

First of all, oh yeah -- I'm am totally stealing the Obama flip-off photo, too.

I can't think of a thing to add here. You've covered it all in great form, as usual, and also as usual, I'm in complete agreement.

bluzdude said...

Jayne,
One thing I like so much about you, Jayne, (besides the old size 4) is that you so often agree with me. That's the sign of someone with good sense!

Mrs. Bachelor Girl said...

You better believe I listened to some Team America THAT VERY NIGHT!

"BASEBALL! SLAVERY! FAKE TITS! TACO BELL!"

bluzdude said...

MBG,
Oh, I LOVE the ending chants to America, Fuck Yeah!

The beauty of it is that you can put most anything in there...