Osama bin Laden is killed by U.S. forces

It's about time...

Osama bin Laden, the long-hunted al-Qaeda leader and chief architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, was killed by U.S. forces Sunday in what officials described as a surgical raid on his luxury hideout in Pakistan.

I'm not sure that this actually changes anything, but it had to be done. Really, if there were one outcome from the military action that the US began in 2001 that was essential, it was the death of Osama bin Laden. That has now been accomplished.

This does not stop those who are engaged in jihad. It may make some of them more eager to strike. It certainly doesn't end the conflict, and doesn't come close to ending the struggle between Islam and the west. But it was necessary, and it's great that it has been done. Congratulations to all involved, and some credit even goes to President Obama (albeit nowhere near as much as he'll try to claim) for not keeping his campaign promises to shut down Guantanamo (where the intel that led to this action came from) and pull out of the mid-east.

Some of Obama's promises should have been broken...

... and this was one of them.

President Obama on Monday ordered that military commission trials be resumed at Guantánamo Bay.

The move represents a defeat for Obama, who pledged to close the terrorist detention facility in Cuba within one year of taking office. The president had hoped to hold trials in federal court for many of the detainees, but ran into stiff opposition from both parties.

It's nice to see that at least one in a while, occasionally, reality is able to beat him over the head strongly enough to trump ideology, even if only for a little while...

Making choices

Great post from Andy McCarthy on Obama's abdication (or, to be more polite, delegation) of presidential authority with regards to national security issues.

the main problem with Obama's above-it-all, government-by-speeches approach, is that the job of a president is not to vote present, observe, and provide us with running commentary. He's not the play-by-play announcer of a game between arch rivals. He is the main participant on one of the teams, who actually has to make decisions. If he doesn't affirmatively make them, he makes them by default — meaning, the system's routine processes will carry on.

...

Then there's Obama — you know, the guy who actually has decision-making authority. (In the executive branch, all the power is reposed in the president. Everyone else, including the vice president and the attorney general, is just carrying our his policies.) What do we get from our president? We get his already tired routine: Some people say our criminal justice system is not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists. Others say you must give every arrested person Miranda rights and treat them just like shoplifters. I reject this false choice between terrorism and shoplifting.

Well, no, big guy, it's not a false choice. But it is a choice, it has to be made, and you have to make it. If you're going to use our criminal justice system because you think, as is, it is capable of safeguarding the country from terrorists, then, as the Attorney General argues, you have to give the terrorists Miranda warnings and be accountable for the fact that you will lose at least five weeks of actionable intel against people who are tying to kill us. If you think the justice system doesn't work for this class of offenders, then you have to try another approach, as VP Cheney urges, and be prepared for the inevitability of caterwauling from the Left (knowing it will be considerably milder than what Cheney had to deal with). But one way or the other, you've got to decide. And if you choose to stay on the golf course while the Attorney General handles it, that is a decision to do it the Attorney General's way. Obama's decision, not Holder's.

Read it all. And McCarthy is someone who knows what he's talking about on this subject, as he was the prosecutor who convicted the blinh sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, after the first World Trade Center attack.

Sunday Steyn

Steyn:

For three days, he had remained silent — which I believe is a world record for the 44th president. Since Jan. 20, 2009, it’s been difficult to switch on the TV and not find him yakking — accepting an award in Oslo for not being George W. Bush, doing Special Olympics gags with Jay Leno, apologizing for America to some dictator or other . . . But across the electric wires an eerie still had descended. And when the president finally spoke, even making allowances for his usual detached cool, he sounded less like a commander-in-chief addressing the nation after an attempted attack than an assistant DA at a Cook County press conference announcing a drug bust: “Here’s what we know so far. . . . As the plane made its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device. . . . The suspect was immediately subdued. . . . The suspect is now in custody and has been charged.” Etc, etc, piling up one desiccated legalism on another: “Allegedly . . . ” “suspect . . . ” “charged . . . ” The president can’t tell an allegedly alleged suspect (which is what he is in Obama fantasy-land) from an enemy combatant (which is what he is in cold hard reality). But worse than the complacent cop-show jargonizing was a phrase it’s hard to read as anything other than a deliberate attempt to mislead the public: The president referred to the Knickerbomber as an “isolated extremist.” By this time, it was already clear that young Umar had been radicalized by jihadist networks in London and fast-tracked to training in Yemen by terror operatives who understood the potentially high value of a Westernized Muslim with excellent English from a respectable family. Yet President Obama tried to pass him off as some sort of lone misfit who wakes up one morning and goes bananas. Could happen to anyone.

...

The real message was conveyed by Fouad Ajami, discussing the new administration’s foreign policy in the Wall Street Journal: “No despot fears Mr. Obama, and no blogger in Cairo or Damascus or Tehran, no demonstrator in those cruel Iranian streets, expects Mr. Obama to ride to the rescue.” True. Another Iranian deadline passed on New Year’s Eve, but the United States will set a new one for Groundhog Day or whenever.

And, just as the thug states understand they now have the run of the planet, so do the terror cells. A thwarted terror attack at Christmas is bad enough. Spending the following week making yourself a global joke is worse. Every A-list despot and dimestore jihadist got that message loud and clear — and so did American allies already feeling semi-abandoned by this most parochial of presidents. Expect a bumpy twelve months ahead. Happy New Year.

This guy is a treasure. Oh, not the President, of course, and obviously not the non-rotariann whose religious beliefs [whatever those might be - is he an Episcopal? A Methodist, maybe?] led him to set his crotch on fire on an international flight. No, the treasure is Steyn, the one-man global content provider. Fabulous. As always...

Cui bono? Obama thinks he does, but I think we all lose...

I'm going to let others address the decision to bring KSM and four others to New York for trial in the US criminal justice system, but I cannot conceive of a possible result of this action which justifies the risks of taking it.

To start with, consider this: you never know what a jury is going to do. After all, OJ Simpson was acquitted. What if, just theoretically, you get a whacked out jury, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is actually found not guilty. Are we then going to release him? Answering "yes" to that question is unthinkable, but what about "no?" It's one thing to hold him indefinitely as an enemy combatant, but after all the wailing that those on the left have done about our prestige overseas being damaged by detention, what's going to happen if we continuing holding someone that a jury has found "not guilty?"

The fact is, there is not possible benefit that accrues to the United States of America by the President and Attorney General taking this course of action. It's all downside for national security, for national prestige, for international relations. But they get to pander to their base while continuing to use the Bush administration as a bogeyman to frighten the children with. Short-term political gain for the Obama administration is the only benefit, and they're harming the country to do it.

Just a terrible idea...



I do love this comment from the Baseball Crank:

So, Barack Obama will be staging his own New York production of Chicago, with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as Roxy Hart ("You had it coming, you had it coming, you only have yourselves to blame....' ).

Are you a well-adjusted American? Take this quiz to find out!

Quiz - How well-adjusted are you to life in 21st century America?


Question 1: The democratically-elected President of a United States ally attempts, with the support of various Latin American Marxists dictators, to violate his country's Constitution and set himself up as a dictator. The Constitutional Authorities in that country legally remove him from office, and replace him. Everything is done according to the rule of law, in preparation for new elections. The United States should:

A) Support the people of Honduras and condemn the removed President for attempting to set up another Marxist dictatorship.

B) Join with the enemies of America in condemning the Supreme Court and the people of Honduras for following their laws and Constitution in attempting to maintain their constitutional Democratic Republic.

Question 2: The President of the United States gives a speech before a joint session of Congress during which he makes several false statements in an attempt to convince people to allow increased government intervention in the health care system. After one particularly blatant falsehood, a Congressman yells out, "You lie!" The correct reaction is:

A) It is particularly unhelpful and concerning that the President feels that he can repeatedly lie about situations, conditions and plans in order to increase the government's power.

B) How rude of that Congressman! Completely unacceptable!

Question 3: A group which has long been associated with the President of the United States, a group which is extremely partisan in nature yet collecting millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, is found, in a hidden camera investigation, to be giving tax advice to a "prostitute" in order to help her set up a brothel with underage girls smuggled illegally into the United States from Guatemala. The proper coverage in the media would consist of:

A) How is it that this group is getting taxpayer funding? What kind of training programs do they have for workers that interact with the public? If this is a case of a "few bad apples," how is that the undercover cameras found the same kind of advice in at least five different offices? Isn't this an example of a seriously corrupt organization?

B) Shouldn't we be concerned that the undercover journalist's father is a minister at a conservative Christian church, and a partisan opposed to the President?

Question 4: The United States has plans to put missile defense systems in former Soviet bloc countries which are now allies, and these countries want the systems. The Russians do not want the systems in place. The President of the United States should:

A) Maintain that the systems are defensive only, continue with their installations, and negotiate with the Russians in order to determine whether there are reasonable changes which could be made to the plan in return for reasonable Russian concessions.

B) Unilaterally stop the installations because the Russians don't want them, and maybe they'll help us out with something later.

Question 5: Some of your neighbors need to be at work before the bus arrives to pick up their children in the morning, but the woman who lives directly in front of the bus stop does not. She is happy to have two or three of the children wait in her house for 15-45 minutes before the bus comes. Your reaction:

A) What a good and helpful friend - it's refreshing to see that kind of neighborhood cooperation as people help one another out.

B) The state should step in and shut down this unauthorized, unregistered, non-tax-revenue-generating day care.

All finished? Good.

If you answered "B" to every question, congratulations! You are a perfectly adjusted subject of the United States of Obama American, circa 2009.

If you answered "A" to any question, you have problems. You are dangerously maladjusted to the current world, as you believe that the United States should promote the interests of the United States, or that residents should be able to help one another without government involvement, or that the President shouldn't be lying to the people, or that the media should be covering the important issues of the day. It may be necessary for re-education.

Sounded good at the time, right?

The pledge to close Gitmo was unrealistic, unnecessary and counter-productive.

The government...sees the terrorist threat every day and is under enormous pressure to keep the country safe. When one of its approaches to terrorist incapacitation becomes too costly legally or politically, it shifts to others that raise fewer legal and political problems. This doesn't increase our safety or help the terrorists. But it does make us feel better about ourselves.

Pictures? Why not!

Apparently, we've killed all of Al Qaeda's propaganda ministers, so the Obama administration feels that we have a moral obligation to provide propaganda and moral support for Al Qaeda to make up for it.

Jennifer Rubin:

John Kerry provides insight into what is going on. He concedes the release of the photos will hand our enemies a propaganda victory, but hastens to add that this is fine because it was on Bush’s watch. Are they so infantile as to believe it was not their country before 2009? Do they really believe that our enemies make any distinction based on who occupies the White House? If so, Americans have put in leadership individuals who are so egotistical and misguided as to believe their personal auras are more important than their country’s reputation.

Sad but true. And very well put.

Raising US prestige

President Obama: Winning new respect for the United States in Europe...

Watch out, France and Co, there is a new surrender monkey on the block and, over the next four years, he will spectacularly sell out the interests of the West with every kind of liberal-delusionist initiative on nuclear disarmament and sitting down to negotiate with any power freak who wants to buy time to get a good ICBM fix on San Francisco, or wherever. If you thought the world was a tad unsafe with Dubya around, just wait until President Pantywaist gets into his stride.

To quote Zell Miller, "spitballs?"

Professor Reynolds links to this YouTube video of former community organizer Obama talking "tough." Tough on America's military, that is. It's obvious that he thinks world peace can be achieved if we'll only unilaterally disarm.



I kept waiting for the "I'm John McCain and I approve of this message" tag...