Home » Osama, Obama, and Bush: the left’s double standard on terrorists

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Osama, Obama, and Bush: the left’s double standard on terrorists — 28 Comments

  1. On the right, there was an almost universal willingness to give Obama credit for a “gutsy” move. The left NEVER gave Bush credit for anything. This is what keeps me with the right, in spite of occasional doubts. The right is about 68% more intellectually honest than the left, and 72% more principled. Where did I get those figures? I took a page from the leftish handbook and made them up.

  2. And in the interests of fairness, let’s ask the same question of the right: that is, if it had been Bush instead of Obama in charge, would their reaction have been different?

    Bush would never have acted in the fashion Obama did.

    The two have diametrically different psychological profiles, to the point where the quantum universe is changed by the bifurcating nature of their decisions and indecisions.

    The Left doesn’t wish to recognize reality. Thus they will protest to save a murderer from death row, in order to apply their Will to the world and remake it into their Utopia. The right recognizes reality, thus dead is dead.

  3. mizpants – hey, those are actually pretty good estimates. I suspect I would have made up the same numbers, give or take.

    In any case, what a great bumper sticker or T-shirt that would make:

    “Fact: the right is 68% more intellectually honest and 72% more principled than the left.”

  4. Right, mizpants.

    I was astounded that it seemed everyone on the right had been waiting for some reason to bestow good will on Obama. Before all the facts were out, almost all the pundits I read were praising a man whose one true label is “liar.” It shows to me an invalid burden is being carried by many. We will never win this war until a significant number of people are as convinced of our side as the left is convinced of theirs.

  5. I think Obama made the reight decision to:

    1) Go in with boots on the ground, not a bomb

    2) Do it!

    3) Kill Osama

    That said, his 16 hours of delayed decision was awful. He had at least a week of nights to “sleep on it”, while DEVGRU or Team 6 (or whatever their name is) ran dry runs.

    His 16 hour delayed decision resulted (as far as I can tell from the info I have read) in a 48 hour mission delay. If he gave the order 6 AM Saturday, he began his delayed pondering around 2 PM Friday, 11 PM PAK time. His 16 hour delay was necessarly a 24 hour delay minimum, and became a 48 hour delay due to weather. This might not be true if Friday the team was not ready to go, but the implication of the released information suggets this is the case.

    Further, Wikileaks realeased info that suggested Osama’s curior was in that Pak town. I believe that was part of the late April 2011 release. Since that release was Gitmo information, Osama and crew had particular interest in it, so we would have to assume they were reviewing the files and searching for key phrases. If Osama found info that indicated his cover was blown, what do you think he would do?

  6. To amplify my post above, consider that decision making is a key element of leadership. Leaders need to avoid making hasty decisions (when possible), but they must be prompt and decisive one the key information is in (and understand that they may not be able to get all relevent information, cloud of war and all that).

    We know that Obama rejected a bomb run, and the after he opted for a raid, the team has a week of dry runs. During this time, I assume all relevent issues were discussed, along with issues like PAK sovernty issues and other various risks. By Friday afternoon, all this was hammered out as well as possible, and what remained was a decision.

    But the decision was not forthcoming for another 16 hours. What pondering of actual relevence went on with Obama durign those 16 hours? Why couldn’t he cut a decision Friday?

    Consider the OODA loop, and it’s implication for combat leadership. Granted, it applies most neatly to the particular decision making matrix of the fighter pilot’s world, but it also applies more generally to most other types of competative decision making.

  7. YMarsakar: I agree with you. Had this opportunity come up on GWB’s watch, I very much doubt that he would have dithered for sixteen hours before giving the go-ahead. I also cannot imagine him announcing the results of the raid in a speech top-heavy with “me” and “I”.

    For President Bush, it was hardly ever about him. That’s part of what trust and faith in a Higher Power does for you. (I suspect it’s also a big part of what enabled him to endure eight years of horrible verbal attacks… something our current President could not handle for two days.)

    Another aspect of this is that President Bush was ex-military, meaning that he had thought carefully, over a long time, about what it would mean to kill. He had ample mental preparation that President Obama doesn’t have.

    (I’ve been asked occasionally if I would kill, or die, to protect my family; when I answer in the affirmative, I’m generally criticized for responding too quickly. But the fact is that I’ve thought deeply about such things, on a very personal level, for over 25 years. I once swore an oath to defend my country with my life if necessary; do I owe my family any less?)

    Finally: I would prefer not to believe this. But if there’s any truth to it, it would explain a lot. President Obama’s self-proclaimed decisiveness on this one issue stands in stark contrast to the way he usually makes momentous decisions — which is by dithering for months, or by delegating, or both.

    This also puts a new perspective on the President’s lambasting of Donald Trump on Saturday, which (we now know) was after he’d given the kill order. Was he mercilessly making fun of Trump because he was under stress from the mission? (Or was this his ordinary tendency to bully those who can’t answer back?) One wonders.

    respectfully,
    Daniel in Brookline

  8. Neo: to remove any lingering doubt about how it would have gone down…here is Sheryl Crow’s honest assessment about her “mixed emotions” of how she might have felt had anyone else but Obama been in charge of the Osama killing:

    “It’s just fascinating that we have a black man, who has Muslim ties with his father, even though he’s a Christian, it’s amazing how far our country has come, that that’s the man who took down Osama bin Laden. It makes you feel very patriotic.”

    “I do think that if it were any other president, I might feel different about it. But, he’s one of the most conscious people I’ve ever met, and I’ve met four presidents now,” said Crow. “He walks the walk.”

    One of “the most conscious” men she’s met. So basically, because of who Obama is, the killing of the biggest terrorist in the world is OK. But if someone else did the same exact thing, i.e., Bush, well then, it would have been different because he lacks the same amount of consciousness. I mean, she actually says this stuff out loud. Maybe she doesn’t fully appreciate that Obama didn’t actually pull the trigger, he just signed off on it.

    http://www.politico.com/click/stories/1105/crow_obama_walks_the_walk.html

  9. Agreed that the copter team was better than bombing the place.

    The only down time to the 16 hour delay was that it might have given more time for someone in the Paki government to sabotage the raid. And there were certainly some in the Paki government who would have sabotaged it if they had known about the raid.

    Agreed that the lefties would not have responded thusly if Dubya had been President when Bin Laden was killed. But this can also be interpreted in the lines of “only a right winger like Nixon could have gone to China.”

  10. Curtis:

    We will never win this war until a significant number of people are as convinced of our side as the left is convinced of theirs.

    I don’t think it’s a matter of being convinced of our own cause. What you’re describing is a willingness to give credit where credit is due, something the Left was hardly ever willing to do during the Bush Administration. I’m glad the Right is showing more maturity there.

    Given a choice, I would rather keep things civil on a personal level… but fight as hard as necessary on a policy level. It’s the difference between saying that the President is an idiot (which the Left did every day for eight years) vs. saying that his policies are idiotic (which they often didn’t bother to say, assuming it was understood).

    President Obama’s economic and foreign-policy choices have been ridiculous and catastrophic. I don’t need to enter into his motives and character to fight those policies; they’d be just as bad if he did them with the best of intentions.

    (That’s not to say I don’t call President Obama names on occasion. It’s tempting, and I do slip sometimes.)

    respectfully,
    Daniel in Brookline

  11. Daniel,

    Good points. I do hope you are right and that the immediate response so many on the right showed was more “giving credit where credit was due” than an urge to appease a totalitarian regime. We want peace and living in a continual conflict is unnerving.

    I look to the past and see that appeasement can present in many forms. That’s what I smelled: appeasement, not maturity. I already credit our pundits with maturity. I’d like to see them, and especially our politicians, develop a little testosterone. That’s what the Donald has. Too bad he doesn’t have the integrity too.

    I still don’t see anything which Obama did which deserves anything more than “you did your job.” In fact, it looks like he did his job rather poorly. We should have saved the body for demonstrable evidence to everyone. But King Obama doesn’t have to do that. And then the ridiculous Muslim burial at sea!

    As to the gutsy call to use Seals rather than bomb, I don’t know about that. Don’t have enough facts. Personally, I think he didn’t want to do it at all and he nixed the bombing–not for the planned snatching–but to delay or deny the end result. Then, the Intel was coming out and if he didn’t do it, he would have suffered a huge and regime ending PR nightmare.

    Then, to come out and heap praise on himself and continue to denigrate the very people who should be receiving the lion’s share of recognition. Frankly, I think Obama blew a huge opportunity. He had the event, but he could have appeared very magnanimous by acknowledging Bush and even Cheney. That would have been unifying. What a chance he blew! He could have appeared humble and unifying, but instead, created more division.

    Give Obama enough rope. He’ll hang himself. That’s probably how it’s going to get done. Obama’s pride will be his downfall.

  12. “It’s just fascinating that we have a black man, who has Muslim ties with his father, even though he’s a Christian, it’s amazing how far our country has come, that that’s the man who took down Osama bin Laden. It makes you feel very patriotic.”

    “I do think that if it were any other president, I might feel different about it. But, he’s one of the most conscious people I’ve ever met, and I’ve met four presidents now,” said Crow.

    The impossible has just been achieved. My opinion of this stupid b*tch just dropped even lower.

    1. Are we to understand that in the counterfactual case (i.e., Obama didn’t tag the identity politics bases), then she wouldn’t feel very patriotic?

    2. She judges actions by the identity of the actor, rather than on their intrinsic merit?

    3. Last, this moron has met four Presidents? Whyever did they waste their time on someone this profoundly stupid?

  13. The only down time to the 16 hour delay was that it might have given more time for someone in the Paki government to sabotage the raid. And there were certainly some in the Paki government who would have sabotaged it if they had known about the raid.

    Again, I disagree. Obama’s 16 hour ponder had to delay the raid 24 hours at least, and due to weather it delayed it 48 hours. At least this is my interpretation given the facts that were presented (other facts have changed, so now I’m taking it all with a grain of salt).

    Further, the wikileak docs released late last month could have provided a signal to Osama that it was time to flee.

    Given the above, the 16 hour procratination could have been a disaster, and shows a lack of leadership.

    However, still, Obama did make some rare good decisions on this.

  14. As to the gutsy call to use Seals rather than bomb, I don’t know about that. Don’t have enough facts. Personally, I think he didn’t want to do it at all and he nixed the bombing—not for the planned snatching—but to delay or deny the end result. Then, the Intel was coming out and if he didn’t do it, he would have suffered a huge and regime ending PR nightmare.

    I’m inclined to think the same thing (based on his history of timid decision making), but as it stands I will still give him credit. I can’t read his mind on this, and will give him the benifit of the doubt.

    I’m also not one to be critical of Carter for Desert One. Not that I know much about the operation, but to my knowledge it wasn’t a stratic blunder but more of a logistical and hardware related failure.

  15. Occam’s Beard: Not to linger on Crow’s comments, but this really is characteristic of how many people address politics and, in particular, how most of Obama’s supporters feel — they don’t know and/or don’t care much about the issues. It’s all about who is the advocate of the issues. We must give credit to the left for their accurate but low expectations of their voters. Sadly, an actor or rock star’s support of an issue is all they need. She literally admits that whatever Obama does she’ll support. She’s just smart enough to never get into a situation where she has to walk through her logic and defend her viewpoints. I wonder if she still limits herself to one square?

  16. I’m inclined to think the same thing (based on his history of timid decision making), but as it stands I will still give him credit. I can’t read his mind on this, and will give him the benifit of the doubt.

    My take exactly.

    In fact, I have the sneaking suspicion he secretly hoped that the decision would be taken out of his hands, by, e.g., Osama’s getting wind of the whole thing and splitting.

  17. From a public affairs/media rep point of view, how the White House has handled this since about Monday evening has been absolutely freaking horrible. Elements of the story are changing, and changing again, people answering media questions are contradicting other people – it’s as if no one realized that there would be a million questions and it would be important to get the answers right, and right the first time. You only have one chance to get your story out there, front and center — and your credibility takes a hit, every time some goes out there and wings it in front of the news cameras, rather than just say, “I don’t know, let me check and get back to you.” It’s as if no one in the WH anticipated that yeah, we’d like to see the documentary evidence that OBL was dead, that it was really his body tipped over the side of the Carl Vinsen. They didn’t care to take the time and work out the answers to and produce the documentation for what the public would want to know, and set up one go-to person to be the authoritative briefer — and it’s a huge black mark for the Obama administration. It’s like they just assumed that everyone would take their word for it. He blew it — but candidly, it was kind of what I had expected.

  18. Neo, I give President Obama credit. Credit for . . .

    – countenancing interrogations taking place in a “black” prison on foreign soil (not what Candidate Obama would have done);

    – . . . using “enhanced” interrogation techniques (not what Candidate Obama would have done);

    – not petitioning the “international community” for permission to take bin Laden* out (not what Candidate Obama would have done);

    * by the way, when did we get on a first name basis with “Osama” (or earlier with “Saddam”)?

    – not grieving over the USA assassination of a foreigner, an action thoroughly anathema to Obama’s base (not what Candidate Obama would have done) — or ^did^ he so grieve? Does he??

    Let’s all hear it for President Barack Hussein Cheney Haliburton!!

  19. And it seems that in an underreported fact, uberliberal Nancy Pelosi made a congratulatory phone call to the despicable Geo W Bush regarding the success of the Bin Laden mission. I suggest that this is a major event which may reflect an underlying paradigm shift slowly taking place in this country.

  20. Good post. What a stupid biyotch the “one-piece-of-ass-wiper-per-ass Crow is. Moore is beyond stupid and his morbid obesity drives him to say insane BS —just like Stone’s movies, Moore’s are stuck on stupid.

    The 16-hour delay was barely forgiveable, but Obama did make the RIGHT CORRECT decision unlike his cowardly Demonrat predecessor BillyJeff who nixed an operation that had Osama in ’98. Michael Scheuer gave Obama credit, but blamed Clinton for “the deaths of eight or nine of my friends.” At least President BJ didn’t stain the ceremonies in NYC today. And GWB was the guy who should get most of the kudos, as it was his tough interrogations that got KSM to sing.

  21. I just heard Oliver North [remember him?] opine that the assassination of bin Laden should have been kept entirely under wraps, even ^after^ the event.

    That way,

    – the SEALS involved (and their families) might be safer;

    – USA military people now held by the Taliban might be safer — we don’t want any more Daniel Pearls;

    – if the bad guys don’t know what that we have information such as is found on confiscated hard drives and all that, then the bad guys don’t know what we know, and consequently may not adjust their own actions accordingly.

    I have not been a fan of his, but in this instance, Col. North made his case well. I only regret that I am not able to present his case remotely as well as he did. Maybe it’ll show up on Al Gore’s wonderful internet eventually . . .

  22. Neo-neocon—I see you have Nick Gage’s wonderful book Eleni on your list of recommendations. My cardiac doctor Tom Bartzokis here in Boca is Eleni’s nephew, or great-nephew. Great and inspiring read.

  23. While I was initially disappointed that it was Obama, and not Bush, who got Bin Laden (petty, I know), it’s actually turning out to be the cherry on top of the Karma sundae.

    How many times has Obama blamed Bush, years after the election, for everything that is wrong with this country? And yet, when it comes to national security, Obama has either kept or exceeded Bush’s policies. The results? Obama’s most high profile accomplishment as president – eliminating Bin Laden – also completely vindicates all of Bush’s policies that the Left so loudly decried. That’s gotta sting!

    Yep, Karma’s a b***, Barry. You’ve just ensured that Bush’s legacy will include mention that the hotly-debated national security decisions – Gitmo, enhanced interrogation, etc – were right and effective.

  24. The Prog radio perspective: These events demonstrate how corrupt Bush was, for giving up on any vigorous Osama-hunting in order to go steal Iraq’s oil.

    Sheryl Crow is far from a lone voice…

  25. Don: Carter made some bad decisions in the Iran hostage rescue attempt, especially about crowd control. They never got to be implemented, because the mission never got that far. See this.

  26. helvetica, Iowahawk writes one fine piece of sarcasm. Thanks for that link. What other stance is more fitting?

    The part the military played: persistence, training, execution.

    The part Obama played: who really knows before the event. That info is going to be garbled and guarded. After the event, the whole thing was bungled.

    Two points:

    1. Doing a right thing for the wrong reason should garner no credit.

    2. An affirmative response to Obama should contain no element of submission.

    He has told us what he intends: fundamental transformation. To me and to others, this means he will become our law and it is morally wrong to oppose him. Subtle and constant, the Obama machine uses others to slander and destroy those who oppose him. Never before have we seen the politics of destructions used in this intensity. We have come to expect it as the norm. Obama, against all precedent, uses the Presidency to direct his troops. Just think of Wisconsin.

    On the other hand, a benign voice beckons “stop resisting and King Obama will take care of you. We don’t have to fight. Why don’t you see my good points?”

    It is that voice, the beckoning voice, to which I see many are willing to listen to because they grow weary of the fight or are ignorant of the underhanded tactic.

    Obama is an enemy. Anything he does should be investigated and analyzed. His fundamental transformation of America is a program of devastation and tyranny. Obama has no good points. People with a civil and liberal nature will be fooled. Obama has learned the techniques to bypass your judgment. He is an enemy who fights with deception and lies.

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