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It's all about Pakistan now
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05-03-2011, 07:55 PM
cbelt3 wrote: Personally I think that the President Of The United States gets credit for making the decision, JSOC gets the credit for designing the mission, and the SEALS get the credit for completing the mission. I agree. I think you also have to credit the CIA.
05-03-2011, 07:56 PM
Technically you're correct cbelt, but I don't think had this happened under GW's watch, most Republicans would look at it like that. Having said that, I would find it hard to believe 'most Republicans' feel that way, just the extremists. I guess I have a hard time believing one or two polls.
05-03-2011, 08:45 PM
Dakota wrote: So you don't know the difference between military tactics and foreign policy? The US has a long tradition of using small, specialized commando units to do the most sensitive, high level missions. They report to the highest level national security officials and are often separated out of the usual chain of command. They were used in WWII, they weren't invented by Dick Cheney or George W. Bush. Apply all the whitewash and Lysol that you want, you're not gonna get the stink out of Bush's foreign policy disasters.
05-03-2011, 09:11 PM
Yep, kudos all round to the men and women who serve the Commander In Chief. Who made the right calls and stuck to doing what was RIGHT for the nation.
As a nation, America wanted this. Needed this. Demanded this. And.. finally got it. Yay !
05-03-2011, 09:15 PM
Grace, is your OP quoting from somewhere else? I don't agree with the main thrust regardless. In my view, killing OBL in Pakistan directly follows from the policies and tactics started by the Bush administration. Bush would have handled the situation in most likely the same way.
Obama did decide to take the high risk, high reward approach: going in with commandos on the ground instead of an air strike. But Bush would have probably done the same thing. This operation will be good for Obama politically, mainly because many had doubts that he would have the courage or conviction to pull it off. That doubt was of course wrong, and conflicts with what Obama has said he would do with this situation going back to the campaign and the debates. I agree with the point about Pakistan: the future from here is mostly all about Pakistan. But this is a complicated, difficult problem for them, and it has been clear and will continue to be clear that Pakistan is not, and cannot be, consistent as an ally to us or in the opposition to Al Queda. All we can do is try to continue to thread that needle through diplomacy and other means.
05-03-2011, 09:31 PM
That Mark Hemingway guy at the Examiner is one of those folks that find a couple of fanatics on the web and decides that everyone "on the left" (which is what he calls liberals) are of the same belief as this vocal minority. Anyhow, the Examiner isn't even a real newspaper, it's a glorified blog.
05-03-2011, 09:34 PM
michaelb wrote: In my view, killing OBL in Pakistan directly follows from the policies and tactics started by the Bush administration. Bush would have handled the situation in most likely the same way. I'd like to know what policies and tactics started with Bush. He didn't invent the black ops wheel. His policies and tactics were far more about nation building as opposed to black ops or international diplomacy. As already pointed out, we did launch missiles in Afghanistan under Clinton in an attempt to take out Osama.
05-03-2011, 09:37 PM
"Bush would have handled the situation in most likely the same way."
you just can't assume that... there are many ways this could have played out. Surely someone would have told Bush, 'you realize that if this fails, they will compare you to Jimmy Carter." I think he wold have opted for the safer bomb 'em from a save distance' option, but there is no way to know just WHAT Bush would have done. He might also have waited for proof that Bin Laden was there. The opportunity could have also been missed entirely due to waiting.
05-03-2011, 09:38 PM
Bush said "Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not. We haven’t heard from him in a long time. The idea of focusing on one person really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than one person. He’s just a person who’s been marginalized. … I don’t know where he is. I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you." So it's kind of difficult to believe that he was doing much behind-the-scenes prep work on anything like this.
Candidate Obama, on the other hand, promised that if elected he was going to "kill bin Ladin". And now he has. |
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