Illusion of Leadership

Dear
Friends;

Here we go again with the mainstream
liberal media amplifying President Obama’s every action into something that
makes him into decisive leader. I am sure most all Americans are glad to see
that our efforts to hunt down and kill Usama bin Laden have finally succeeded.
If nothing else it reflects a persistence and long term commitment to achieve a
goal that few in the world would have given us credit for. Most think of the
general American public as impatient and not having much of a stomach for a
really tough long fight (ex. Viet Nam).

Well we just told the world,
through our actions, that they were wrong. Furthermore, any terrorist
organizations who think they will escape our wrath now know that this line of
think is not valid.

However, I have two problems with
what I have witnessed in the aftermath of this great achievement.

First, I don’t like the celebration.
In my opinion, there is no cause to celebrate! It is not as if bin Laden’s death
actually marks the beginning or end of anything noteworthy except that he is
dead. I realize that those who lost loved ones either directly or indirectly as
a result of bin Laden may emotionally feel some benefit and there is also a
justifiable sense of pride that our intelligence and military may take. However,
celebrating in the streets like you home team just won a championship shows no
class!

Second, Obama did not have a hard
decision to make. He simply made the only decision he could possibly make. Let’s
look at President Obama’s options:

1. Send in a drone
   with a bomb – Obama could not send in a drone
   with a large bomb because they had no proof that bin Laden was in the compound.
   Given that we were invading a sovereign country’s territory without their
   knowledge we would have made a tenuous public relations situation with
   Pakistan all but impossible.
   Furthermore, if the complex were destroyed sufficiently to ensure everyone
   inside was killed, we may never have been able to prove bin Laden was actually
   ever in the compound.

2. Do
   nothing – intelligence is fluid and the
   information changes minute to minute as do people’s movements. It had taken us
   almost 10 years to identify bin Laden’s courier and track him movements. The
   slightest leak or accidental operational misstep could lead to tipping off bin
   Laden or his courier and he would have vanished – maybe forever. The fact that
   we thought we had him and didn’t do anything would have inevitably been leaked
   to the press. The CIA and other’s would have made sure that President Obama’s
   leadership was called into question with a simply rumor to the right sources.
   This would have immediately called up a similar situation where ex-President
   Clinton decided to not “arrest” bin Laden when the CIA had him because he was
   embroiled in the Lewinski scandal and impeachment proceedings. Usama bin Laden
   was not such a perceived threat that Clinton couldn’t pass on him for fear of an
   international incident if we failed or international outrage because we
   sanctioned an assassination without “due process”. You may have forgotten this
   fact!

3. Send in the Seals
   – this was the high risk choice, but
   it was high risk only to the Seals that were on the mission. If the mission
   failed, it was just another mission to try to take out high value terrorist
   targets and we make a bad political within Pakistan over
   allowing drones to attack over their soil a little more volatile. In the best
   case, the failure is silenced by the Pakistani and it never makes it into the
   media domain at all. If the mission is a success, then President Obama has duped
   the American public into thinking he is a leader that can make hard decisions.
   

So not tell me how President Obama’s
decision was so difficult. It was really his only option! In contrast with
Clinton, at
least we know that Obama is capable of making a good decision for his political
career.