President Obama deserves praise for acting on intel that led to locating and killing Osama Bin Laden. That is what Presidents do as Commander-in-Chief. They make decisions, sometimes right and sometimes wrong, with only the available intel and their gut feeling. President Obama made a great decision based on overwhelming evidence gleaned over nearly 10 years, and it paid off in the successful operation that avenged 9/11 by executing its chief architect.
As new details emerge over the coming days and weeks, it will become increasingly clear that this operation's success hinged on key decisions made by two very different Presidents. President Bush assured Americans and the world in the wake of 9/11 that America would bring al Qaeda and Bin Laden to justice. He issued an Executive Order on 9/17/01 authorizing US troops and intel assets to assassinate Bin Laden. Wanted: Dead or Alive was Bush's doctrine, and his later decision to capture terrorists as enemy combatants and hold them at Guantanamo was grounded in a strategy of ferreting out information about al Qaeda's leaders and their locations. Take the fight to the terrorists and disrupt/destroy their infrastrructure. Remove their safe havens. Put them on the run or in hiding.
Interrogations at Gitmo produced the first-known references to a trusted Bin Laden courier. Bush-Era Interrogations Provided Key Details on Bin Laden's Location - FoxNews.com Interrogations then led to further intel regarding the location in Pakistan where the trusted courier was operating. Intel obtained during the Obama administration finally provided the courier's true name and facilitated surveillance and the remainder of the necessary details to launch this week's successful strike operation. Clearly, without the information gleaned from Gitmo detainees through the interrogations so harshly criticized by Obama and his party, Bin Laden would still be haunting America today, living in luxury, free to run his terror network behind the wilfully blind eyes of Pakistan's military, intelligence, and government.
President Obama's deliberateness in not acting on intel until the CIA was highly confident Bin Laden was at the Abbottabad compound seems to have been a blessing to this operation. The decision to not share key intel about the planned operation with even our staunchest allies was also wise. Although Andrea Mitchell and other media figures have mocked Bush by hinting that Obama got the "mission accomplished" celebration that Bush dreamed of, Obama's classy action to call Bush and Bill Clinton to tell them the good news before announcing it to the world was a recognition on his part that he could not have succeeded in finding and killing Bin Laden without the tireless fight carried on by Bush/Cheney and to a much lesser degree, Clinton.
It is time for Republicans to be generous in their praise for President Obama's handling of this matter, in which he has been more Presidential than at any time since being elected. It is likewise time for Democrats to cease their derision and apoplectic hatred for George W. Bush, who made decisions based on available intel, launched a war on al Qaeda, authorized interrogations that made Obama's successful operation possible, yet receives only spite and irrational loathing for his efforts to protect America and its allies from vicious terrorists. It took the best qualities of Bush and Obama to bring Bin Laden to justice. The two Presidents can stand side by side, join hands, and raise them together in this important victory. Both men also know that we won a battle, but not the war. Yet.
