Osama bin Laden, the terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands of American civilians, was killed yesterday in a raid by an American special forces team.
There is plenty of credit to go around. Osama's death was the result of years of effort by countless people.
First of all, the President gets credit. Barack Obama appears to have been involved in overseeing the details of the execution of the raid, from the time when the CIA obtained intelligence reports that Osama may be in that compound, up until the operation was completed. Without Obama's actions, Osama would be alive today.
I've already heard some people asking why Obama ordered Osama to be killed and his body dumped into the sea. Is he really dead? If he is not, he'll be on al Jazeera in June holding the front page of the New York Times with the headline "Obama says Osama Killed". Obama knows that this would be the result, so he can't claim credit if OBL is still alive. And we are far better off with OBL dead rather than captured, with Obama's base demanding that he face civilian trial in America, where a judge is likely to throw the case out for some technicality. And he is better off dumped in the ocean where no nut jobs of any variety can make a monument out of his grave. In all, I think that Obama handled the case very well.
But to an even greater extent, the American military gets credit. The exceptional men and women of our armed services have been working for years to bring bin Laden to justice, putting themselves at risk, dodging bullets, stepping over IEDs, spending months and years apart from their family to serve their nation so ably. To each one of you, thank you. We have not forgotten that last month, Obama was going to stop paying you to make sure that we continue subsidizing abortion.
Several specific individuals in the military deserve special recognition.
Team 6, the Navy Seals special operations team which actually went into the Bin Laden compound and killed this evil man showed amazing skill and preparation by carrying out their mission with such precision and effectiveness. I salute you.
The men and women working at Gitmo also deserve our gratitude. They have been much maligned, but without the intelligence they extracted from the heads of the terrorists in American custody, this victory could not have been won. Liberals want to take credit for catching Bin Laden, but without waterboarding, it would not have happened. Senator Dick Durbin said that the "enhanced interrogation" which Obama ended on his second day in office was responsible for producing the lead which led the CIA to discover the courier who led them to the OBL compound. And they did it at Gitmo, the detention center which Obama ordered to be closed down as his first executive order. Thank you Gitmo.
Next, the CIA and military intelligence officers deserve credit. The breakthrough which made it possible to bring justice to OBL was essentially accomplished by intelligence gathering. Our intelligence agents are among the best in the world, and they did their job tirelessly and with excellence.
Just as Osama would be alive without the actions of President Obama, he would be alive today without the actions of President Bush. For seven years after 9/11 Bush laid the groundwork for yesterday's raid, establishing a military presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and implementing the policies which Obama continued and which ultimately resulted in Osama's death. No one has called this "Bush's War" today. The Obama administration who have blamed their own dismal failures on Bush for two solid years didn't give a bit of credit to Bush for his part in accomplishing this mission. If Bush had shown the same level of resolve and leadership which Obama has demonstrated in Libya, Osama would never be brought to justice. Not by Obama. Not by anyone.
In the end, it was an American bullet fired from an American firearm by an American soldier who sent an evil terrorist to bow his knee before Jesus. All of those things are detested by liberals, but without them, Osama bin Laden would still be living high in northern Pakistan, and Obama would be watching his approval ratings drop as Americans face higher unemployment, soaring gas prices, record deficits, and ever-increasing government interference in their lives.
