I have seen people call Obama courageous and gutsy for making the call to go ahead and take Osama bin Laden down and while I will give credit where it is due and say straight up, Obama made the right call, I do not put that call under the heading of gutsy or courageous.Imagine for a minute that Barack Obama did not give the go ahead for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden? Then the world finds out that bin Laden was there all these years and Obama didn't act on the information.
Imagine the headlines!!!
Stories eventually would have reached the light of day claiming Obama gave up the chance to capture or kill bin Laden just as stories came to light about former president Bill Clinton turning away from the opportunity to kill or capture bin Laden after the al-Qaeda leader declared war on America but before 9/11.
Headlines such as Forbes, stating "Bin Laden Lived To Fight Another Day–Thanks To Bill Clinton."
That headline is just one of many.
So, had Barack Obama not given the go ahead, he would have been skewered in the press and in the minds of Americans.
Sure, people can debate all year round about whether bin Laden should have been taken alive or killed on sight, but the raid itself, to take information on hand and go in, bypassing Pakistan officials for fear of a leak warning bin Laden and the possibility of his escaping, was a judgment call.
Even being a critic of Barack Obama's policies, 100% on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Obama, I can back this decision and say good job.
Criticize the White House and Obama's actions after the raid, the ever changing stories and accounts, the official line changing over and over again, the bungling of the subsequent public relations.
Fine. Go for it. They deserve it, but unless you are someone like Rosie O'Donnell or Michael Moore, you are not crying over the death of Osama bin Laden nor using whatever method necessary to take him alive or dead.
9 of 10 of Americans, back the bin Laden mission and 60 percent preferred to see him dead rather than captured. (Gallup)
More from that Gallup poll:
Still, 84% of those who say it would have been better to capture bin Laden alive still say they approve of the military action overall. This suggests that the preference for his capture is not held so strongly that it dampens support for the mission as executed.
So, I see headlines today which leave me simply shaking my head at the thought that anyone considers Kooky Ron Paul a serious presidential contender and yes, I remember well those Paul supporters and their crazy online antics.
The Politico headline: "Ron Paul wouldn't have approved Osama bin Laden operation"
"I think things could have been done somewhat differently," Paul said this week. "I would suggest the way they got Khalid [Sheikh] Mohammed. We went and cooperated with Pakistan. They arrested him, actually, and turned him over to us, and he's been in prison. Why can't we work with the government?"
Then he goes further:
"I don't think it was necessary, no. It absolutely was not necessary," Paul said during his Tuesday comments. "I think respect for the rule of law and world law and international law. What if he'd been in a hotel in London? We wanted to keep it secret, so would we have sent the airplane, you know the helicopters in to London, because they were afraid the information would get out?"
FFS
Are you freaking kidding me????
I'll let Hot Air's Ed Morrissey take it from here:
For one thing, had we found him holed up in London, we would have been able to trust the British intelligence service to cooperate. MI-5 didn’t spend more than a decade helping to build up the Taliban and playing footsie with radical Islamists the way Pakistan’s ISI did, primarily as a bulwark against India. Moreover, as Paul should know, we tried trusting Pakistan once before on an opportunity to target bin Laden when Bill Clinton had a chance to target his compound. The ISI warned bin Laden, and to paraphrase President George Bush, we wound up sending a $10 million rocket into a ten-dollar tent to hit a camel’s butt.
I would have had no problem with capturing Osama bin Laden, or with killing him. He declared war on the United States and continued to pursue it until his last breath. Furthermore, I have no problem with us conducting a military mission in Pakistan to get him. Pakistan has proven themselves unreliable on high-level intelligence matters in the past, specifically on OBL, and we have had little cause to put any more trust in the Pakistani ISI ever since.
The very fact that Ron Paul would have trusted Pakistan officials should automatically disqualify him in the minds of many Americans.
The 2012 presidential election will be Ron Paul's third attempt. He ran as a Libertarian in 1988 and as a Republican in 2008.
For the record- I have a very good friend who is a Paul supporter and we have discussed him at length, she has never shown the online mentality we saw in 2008 around the blogosphere, and while we disagree we always manage to remain respectful of each other and those discussions have always been fun and insightful. She also provided me the opportunity to see some of Paul's fiscal ideas in a whole new light.
Should she ever decide to write up a guest post in favor of Ron Paul, I will happily publish it here unedited.
(Yes KP I am talking about you!!!)
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