The audacity of congressional Republicans to suggest that President Barack Obama is politicizing the death of Osama Bin Laden is beyond the pale.
This is the party whose president gave enemies of the U.S. nick-names from a poker deck. He accompanied such crassness with the bravado of a cowboy with the first show of unrestrained Hollywood when he proclaimed, on a battleship, “Mission Accomplished,” way back in the first months of a 10-year war. So little did he know.
President George W. Bush is also the guy who gave us such jewels as these:
• “There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring ’em on.” That was on July 2, 2003, just after launching the war in Iraq and having lost just a little over 200 soldiers in Iraq at the time. That number would grow many fold.
• “If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier – just so long as I’m the dictator,” said not long after his election in 2000.
• “I’m the decider, and I decide what is best,” he said in April 2006, about keeping discredited Don Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. Rumsfeld was credited with making significant mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In comparison, President Obama was reflecting on the one-year anniversary of a daring military maneuver that swooped into Pakistan and deftly took out bin Laden. It was fraught with risk, military and political, but he made the decision and, at the one-year anniversary, he gave credit to the professional soldiers who carried out the mission.
On top of that accomplishment, President Obama announced an organized plan to pull American troops out of Afghanistan in a way that gives that country’s nascent police and military force the hope of being able to maintain control of their destiny.
As an incoming president, Obama was dealt one of the worst hands in presidential history, including trying to wrap up American involvement in two major wars while still declaring victory. That he stakes some claim to success and accomplishment on this one front is more than just politics, it is justified and will go down in history as such.
Republicans and president candidate Mitt Romney have very short memories, and forget just how bad their party leadership was.
Angelo S. Lynn