Bin Laden Is Dead, Cheney Did It
FoxNews.com is trumpeting that “Gitmo Played Role In Bin Laden Death” and, “Cheney Says Enhanced Interrogation Probably Led to Bin Laden Death”. Sure, and Donald Trump’s hair is the key to our national security. Former co-president Cheney, if you recall, was clear in his assessment that Obama had made the United States less safe by ending the use of enhanced interrogation.
It isn’t immediately obvious how a practice ended two years ago could have led to an intelligence breakthrough last August. Gitmo is yet a better story, at least in the annals of tall tales, campfire mysteries, and fishing yarns. Only in the logic-proof echo-chamber of Fox News could the notion of prisoners in solitary confinement providing usable intel be a reasonable line of thinking.
The bottom line here, is that once again Fox News and the artists formerly known as Republicans have been caught with their pants down around their storylines. “Obama makes us less safe; Obama is a professor, not a Commander-in-Chief; Obama is weak.” President Obama didn’t disband the CIA unit tasked with finding Bin Laden, as George W. Bush did in 2006. President Obama ordered Bin Laden’s capture or killing be a top priority; our intelligence teams found him, and the Commander-in-Chief made an aggressive and thoroughly ballsy move and ordered Navy SEALs to get him.
If you think my contention hyperbole, just let yourself contemplate all of the potential blowback from a failed ground operation in Pakistan: Bin Laden laughing at America on Al Jazeera, the bodies of U.S. servicemen paraded on video. For President Obama, giving the order to execute this operation meant nothing less than his Presidency, and that risk was the least important consideration.
It is possible to overstate the value of killing Osama Bin Laden, as I discuss in today’s Rational Middle, but the consequences to the conservative rhetoric machine are catastrophic. If this president is able to pair this triumph, by the middle of next year, with troop withdrawals in the Middle East, at the same time as democracy spreads throughout the region, the debunking of the Bush Doctrine will be complete. If the 2012 election finds a functioning government in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and less than one third of the U.S. troops deployed who were there in 2008, conservatives will be forced to find a new collection of clowns to run in 2016.
It will be tough to find a group as entertaining as Trump, Palin, Romney, et al. Happy Monday working class America!
Great article–short, to-the-point and right-on!