Posted by
Bill Crawford on Monday, May 02, 2011 7:19:00 AM
And the good news is, Obama has obviously learned the power of Special Ops. If the President was the junior Senator talking in 2007, this could not have happened. This was a planned raid, and it's success is clearly a trophy for the White House.
They not only did that right, but they gave him his Muslim respects and buried him at sea. No trophy, no shrine- a very good move.
In his TV address, he did his best to portray this as a byproduct of ally outreach in Pakistan. Really? If that is the case, how the hell did he end up residing in a large house in the middle of a military garrison town? Did I say large? It was one of the largest in town, with eighteen foot walls. Like the locals didn't know. No matter. This operation was run out of Afghanistan, and that is the first good reason I've gotten out of anybody for being there again.
One other note: evidently, one of the intel pieces that led to this was the nickname of one of Usama's couriers- which came out of a Gitmo interrogation of KSM. Imagine that.
I'm enjoying the resurgence in patriotism that this brought. The one in our cities that lasted a few months after 9/11 will be shorter now- if it weren't a reason to crow about Obama, it would last one news cycle. I'll take what I can get.
This war is not over. In fact, it is still going to get worse before it gets better. Bin Laden was a central figure, but Al Quaeda has long since realized that grandiose projects like 9/11 were now near impossible and they were left to little pesky things.
I hope this leads to a rethinking of why we got into this mess in the first place. Any resurrection of the memory of 9/11-01 is a good thing.
Enjoy the victory, Barrack. You deserve it.