Obama’s Moment

SEALs made it happen but so did the President May 3 2011

As President Obama said, in announcing the raid that took down the head of al Qaeda, "Tonight we are once again reminded that Americans can do whatever we set our mind to...We can do these things because of who we are".

It was the incredibly brave Navy's SEALs and presumed CIA operatives who risked their lives and conducted the raid, but citizens of all political persuasions should show their appreciation of the American president as well.

Watching and waiting in the White House Situation Room (Obama at left).

In a town hall style meeting during the 2008 campaign, a woman asked if we would go after bin Laden across borders, provocatively mentioning Cambodia, which we secretly entered during the Vietnam War. Candidate Obama made the non-diplomatically-correct pledge that:

"If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them [sic] out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out".

He did just that. While twice giving "thanks to the countless counter-terrorism professionals who have worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome" and "to the men who carried out this operation for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country", the President also said this:

Finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbotabad Pakistan.

What are we getting at? That as Commander in Chief he authorized the raid, he gave the order. Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan (a Bush holdover) said Obama's green light was "the most gutsy call of any president in memory".

Why?

First, Obama turned aside the alternatives of bombing the compound or using Predator missiles as leaving results in doubt and too likely to cause collateral damage, instead opting for the far more risky commando assault. Second, no one had ever seen bin Laden in that compound. So there was the chance of risking the lives of our military for nothing. "There wasn't a meeting where someone didn't mention 'Black Hawk Down'", said one adviser, referring to the loss in Mogadishu, Somalia, of 19 commandos in a 1993 helicopter assault. Third, the debate rages about whether the Pakistani military were complicit, looking the other way as four helicopters penetrated 35 miles into their airspace, but if they were not notified, as the President said, the higher risk was that the mission could have been intercepted by the Pakistani air force with possibly heavy loss of life. And finally, reports say that all except CIA Director Leon Panetta counseled that the mission was too risky, which tells us that this was Obama going it pretty much alone.

So, apart from the anguish of possibly sending men to their death (see photo), what makes it so gutsy is that the President was going all in, doubling down with his own presidency. "Victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan", John F. Kennedy said. No matter what might have caused this mission to go wrong, the orphan in defeat would have been Barack Obama.

As proof, all one need remember is the ridicule that befell Jimmy Carter when the mission to rescue the American hostages in Iran ended in fiasco. In this far more polarized country of today, Obama would have been vilified by our armchair heroes and the chattering commentariat all the way to the election.

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