Say what you will, but make no mistake about it. The true heroes in the Pyrrhic victory America has just pulled off against global terrorism with the decapitation of that movement are the 24 Naval Seals who flawlessly executed the mission they were assigned by the President.
Say what you will, but make no mistake about it. The true heroes in the Pyrrhic victory America has just pulled off against global terrorism with the decapitation of that movement are the 24 Naval Seals who flawlessly executed the mission they were assigned by the President.
The other winners of course was the American Military as a whole and their courageous Commander-in-Chief who ordered the mission because he was convinced it was a risk worth taking for the greatest nation in the world.
The 10 year delayed annihilation of Bin Laden cannot be attributed per se to the water-boarding and the other obnoxious coercive techniques used or those who authorized them. To give more credit to President Bush for the successful mission like the Republicans are attempting to do now is clearly an act of desperation and a disservice to America. Just like capital punishment has never been known to serve as an ultimate deterrence or outright or fool-proof solutions to crimes like murder, coercive interrogative techniques like water-boarding and other dehumanizing techniques have also been known to make some criminals admit under pain of torture or death to some of the crimes they never committed, to begin with. The interrogation may have helped in a very remote way but if you factor in the years that elapsed between those illegal investigations and the final blow to Bin Laden, it would be pushing the envelope to attribute the success mainly to those obnoxious investigations which compromise the reputation of Americans as moral leaders who would not condone the fundamental human rights of their prisoners of wars or the criminally accused who should be presumed innocent until proven guilty under the rule of Law championed by America as leader of the Free world.
No matter how the Republicans spin or twist the well-deserved death of Osama Bin Laden, they are never going to succeed in taking the credit away from the first black President it has pleased God to bestow on America. Whether or not this amazing victory and the elimination of Ghadafi which must come within a few weeks or months of the exit of Bin Laden may eventually catapults Obama into a second term still remains to be seen. I say that because I know for a fact that unless the development dramatically alter the economic stagnation of America as we get close to 2012, there is still a chance that Obama could lose by a narrow margin if a more compelling and persuasive candidate could emerge from the Republicans. I cannot see any candidate with that kind of stature among all the candidates showing any interest in the presidency right now in the Republican party. The Obama of 2008 is not the Obama of 2012. Barack Obama is one quick study who will use his power of incumbency, experience and oratorical power, charisma and positive track record in office to outperform his challengers Mark my words.
Killing Osama Bin Laden may be good in galvanizing national pride for some time, but that popularity may quickly wane and fizzle out if it does not bring the bacon to the table or provide more jobs for the millions of the unemployed in America. That has always been the pattern and the national trend in America. If gas is still selling at 5 or 6 Dollars per gallon a few months to the election, Obama could still lose by a narrow margin but I can tell you that is not going to happen because God loves this President too much and will find some ways to rescue him. The coalition of voters that put him in the White House will do it again by a slightly narrower margin this time around.
Jimmy Carter, you will recall, was able to beat George Bush the First despite his quick victory in Desert Storm and the humiliation of Saddam Hussein. The same phenomenon has informed the amazing landslide defeat of the Republicans by the least likely of all the democrats running for office in 2008. History might repeat itself again but I doubt if it will, with Obama who I see now as the anointed of God who will win again miraculously like he did before because the guy is razor-blade sharp and smart as hell, if you see all that I see.
I now want to zero in, first and foremost, on how the marathon military strike near Islamabad would have been perceived, characterized, castigated and disowned and condemned by the Republicans in particular had it miserably failed like Jimmy Carter’s courageous but ill-fated attempt to free the American hostages from Iran. Luck and not ability and competence alone as I have always emphasized has become a necessary requirement for anybody who will be President in America or anywhere in the world.
Jimmy Carter was a veteran and a Naval officer in a Nuclear submarine, a nuclear physicist and one of the most educated Americans to ever win the presidency but it was a movie actor and cow boy who did not have Jimmy Carter’s national security credentials who humiliated the Lieutenant turned Governor and Peanut farmer out of office in a landslide victory that made Jimmy Carter a miserably weak one term President who first created the general perception with the great majority of Americans that Democrats in comparison with the Republicans are generically weaker on Defense and the management of the Nation’s economy until Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama came on board as I would show in this article.
It was true that Ronald Reagan was a tough talking Presidential candidate and communicator with his “morning in America” speech who benefited from the Hostage Release agreement Jimmy Carter had tirelessly and painstakingly worked out with Ayatollah Khomeini. Where luck came into the picture was because the very first act of Ronald Reagan as President on his taking the oath of office, was to welcome the American hostages back home while he himself and the Republicans then put their own propaganda and positive spin on it as if Ronald Reagan was actually the one who made the hostage release possible, to begin with.
If one of the helicopters carrying out the mission in Teheran had not malfunctioned putting the entire mission in jeopardy, Jimmy Carter would have emerged a big winner and he arguably would have ridden that horse to victory in his encounter with Ronald Reagan. The victory would have been a victorious moment for Jimmy Carter as President and ultimately for America as a whole. That did not happen and we all knew what happened.
In actual fact, Ronald Reagan had very little to do with the hostages release but he took all the credit as he rode that popular wave to a landslide victory against Carter winning 49 out of 50 states as he and the Republicans made Jimmy Carter look like a pussy cat Commander-in-Chief. It is very disappointing that Democrats as a whole are very shy or naive about not knowing how to blow their own trumpet like the Republicans always do better. They could not even effectively defend one of their greatest achievement in Government, the Health Care Reform Bill and some of the great things they have done. I seriously regret or lament that.
It is hypocritical that the Republican who adored Ronald Reagan for merely looking like a winner against Jimmy Carter are now trying their worst to diminish or discredit Barack Obama for showing the nation that security and the management of the nation’s economy are not the exclusive preserve of the Republicans in much the same way like Bill Clinton has done in 8 glorious years of his presidency minus the little set-back he got with Monica Luwenski.
President Obama has shown courage and presidential leadership in the way and manner he has led and managed the mission to go get Osama Bin Laden precisely like he said he would do when he was running for the presidency. That he did it and the first word to come from a Nuclearized Pakistan was to congratulate Obama for a job well done was in, of itself, a miracle. The President had done it in less than 40 minutes without losing a single soul and his operatives had left the scene with the dead body of Bin Laden and tons of Intelligence documentation and materials, computer hard drives tapes and documents that could give America a more informed insight into the past operations and the future plans of Al Qaeda. Even though trillions of Dollars have been spent and a lot of American blood has been shed since Osama Bin Laden brought the War to America by attacking the World Trade Center as the very symbol of Capitalism and the American way of Life, the capture of Bin Laden is good atonement for all those expenses long term. No money is too much to be spent to buy global peace and stability in a world led by America. That is the powerful message to come from Bin Laden’s capture.
I think Barack Obama has been a rock of stability for America and the whole world and he truly deserves to be reelected without any question. If he were born in Ghana his name would have been changed to “Osagyefo” meaning the victorious leader with immediate effect. He is not only a pride to Americans, black and white, but to the whole black race and all colored people of the world. Americans couldn't be more proud of him as he broke the news to the world in a prepared speech which would go down as one America’s finest moments for a long time to come.
The victory has immediately perforated the hot air balloon that Donald Trump had been flying for weeks to open a window for the Republicans even though he has done more to damage the Republican Party after all is said and done. All the nonsense Donald Trump has been talking about the President’s birth certificate and whether or not he attended two of the Ivy League institutions America could offer has been taken off the radar with the news of Bin Laden’s death. I am talking of Columbia and Harvard.
The President was so unflappable, solid and impressive in the way and manner he has handled the mission to demystify Osama Bin Laden without antagonizing Islam. His decision not to release the picture of Osama after his execution was the right decision because it might endanger American troops serving in Muslim countries. Two of my sons are currently serving in the US Navy and one of them is in fact a Naval Seal. I agonize about their safety as a father. I applaud the President’s decision to not release those gruesome images. It was a very smart move by the President. The Republicans would have been happy to change the intense focus on the Osama’s assassination if the release of those images would lead to some problems and distraction for Obama down the road. Obama must not allow that to happen. The Republicans are very unhappy that Obama has scored this game changer and they are looking for a way to diminish it or rubbish it before it damages then irredeemably. That's what it is!
It was a virtuoso performance that would not be forgotten by the American voters in 2012.. The only point that the Republicans had thought they were going to effectively use against him in 2012 was the fact that he was weak in Defense and the management of the economy, and that he never served in the Military. That charge has been debunked forever and ever. Obama does not only know what he is doing as Commander-in-Chief, he is without any doubt the best candidate to vote for in 2012. His competitors and rivals are all Lilliputians as far as I am concerned.
If American voters would put racial sentiments aside and vote their hopes and not their fears, it is a done deal that Obama would win again and win big. That would be my prediction. The horse that the Republicans are hoping to ride to victory against Obama in 2012 has been badly crippled and compromised. It’s victory all the way for Obama and Biden again in 2012.
I rest my case.
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