Neptune Spear, Politics, and the 2012 Election

The Osama bin Laden killing is an absolute net positive for the Obama administration and should be highlighted as evidence of President Barack Obama’s leadership on national security matters. After all, Republicans and the Republican primary candidates have been criticizing Obama’s foreign and national security policy for months and it is appropriate for the Obama campaign to respond to those attacks. What better way to do this than to show a contrast between Obama and GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney using Romney’s own words against him?

And to the complaint by Republicans that the Obama campaign is “turning a unifying event into a divisive political attack”: in 2004, the Bush reelection campaign did not hesitate using the events of 9/11 for campaign purposes. Who can forget Vice President Richard Cheney warning that a vote for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry was asking for another 9/11: “It’s absolutely essential that…on November 2nd, we make the right choice, because ifwe make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again.” And perhaps the most powerful ad of the 2004 campaign featured President George W.Bush hugging and comforting Ashley Faulkner, an Ohio girl who lost her mother in the attack on the Twin Towers.

So, yes the Obama reelection campaign should milk the very successful bin Laden killing for all it’s worth. The fact remains that after eluding justice for almost a decade, it was President Obama who made the difficult call to green-light Operation Neptune Spear. Not all commanders-in-chief would have made the same tough decision.

Details, Details

Politico Arena Topic: Lasting Damage From Shifting Bin Laden Details?

Did the administration jump the gun on releasing details on the killing of Osama bin Laden? Of course. Given the inaccuracies and number of facts the White House has had to walk back, it is clear that in the rush to inform the public, the administration did not get its facts totally straight.

In the end, however, it will have little impact on the public’s judgment on the mission—a judgment that is overwhelmingly positive. President Obama was able to accomplish what his two predecessors were unable to do: eliminate the world’s most feared terrorist.

In the short term, the “bin Laden bump” is a real boost to the Obama White House. And of course President Obama’s harrowing words in his 60 Minutes interview that the world “will not see bin Laden walking on this Earth again” will forever remain true regardless of the quality of the information that was released in the mission’s immediate aftermath.

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The Bin Laden Nightmare is Over

Politico Arena Topic: Osama bin Laden Killed

To paraphrase and slightly alter the words of President Gerald Ford: Our decade-long national-nightmare is over. This is an unexpected but very positive development in the War on Terror or War on Al-Qaeda as President Obama would say. The killing of Osama Bin Laden is a symbolic blow to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups bent on harming America and other Western countries. I’m sure that there will be negative reaction in some parts of the world—but those parts hate the United States and the West anyway.

Kudos to President Obama and his national security team who made the decision to press ahead and kept the mission from leaking. Kudos also to the intelligence community who finally solved this difficult puzzle and the American military who carried out this dangerous mission and never lost sight of the goal, even after ten long years.

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