Just to show you how the brains of Obama-haters get all tied up in knots when they are forced to utter one syllable of praise for our president, here’s a comment Sean Hannity made yesterday as part of his attack on Obama for making a “political” and “spiking the football” trip to Afghanistan on Dead bin Laden Day:
So, we got the one-year anniversary of the killing of bin Laden and I, I, I do give Obama some credit. He made a pretty gutsy decision. Although I don’t really see it as that gutsy because I think any president would have done it.
Yep, any president would have done it because all presidents are equally “gutsy” or, uh, not.
Gotta appreciate the mind that hatched that piece of dazzling commentary.
Speaking of Obama’s Dead bin Laden Day celebration, how can Americans of all stripes not admire the give-’em-the-finger attitude of President Obama, who traveled to Afghanistan—where a breathing Osama bin Laden first met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and heard about and then later approved his plan to train pilots to crash planes into American buildings—to sort of rub it in a little bit.
Now, that’s proper American chutzpah.
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
ansonburlingame
/ May 2, 2012Any President that makes a decision to send American’s into harms way in a military engagement is making a “gutsy” decision. Every President since ??? has made such decisions.
Carter was “gutsy” but it was a bad decision, given the state of our military readiness to perform the mission assigned. Obama made a good decision to go after OBL. Give credit where credit is due.
But such decisions rarely win or lose Presidential elections, alone. Carter lost because of the economy as well as his “blaming Americans” speech commonly called the “malise speech”.
Now let’s see about the economy and Obama “blaming the rich” and how that all plays out in November. For sure I make no predicitions, yet. Unless of course something happens in say Iran with some hostage situation, etc. Then all bets are off for sure.
Anson
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Jim Wheeler
/ May 2, 2012The assertion that any president would have made the same call as Obama’s OBL call just doesn’t ring true, especially for Romney who stated publicly in 2007 that he didn’t think it worth the risks. This compares well with Romney’s reputation which is the opposite of a risk-taker. It is well documented and contrary to public perception that Romney ensured that he was well protected from both liability and personal financial risk before he entered with others to create Bain Capital, advantages no impecunious young man would never have had. Romney is no paragon of capitalist risk-taking.
All that said, the OBL call has to stand as one of the most gutsy of all presidential calls. After all, Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation. One might compare it to Truman’s call on the A-bomb, but that would be apples to oranges – we were in a fight to the death with a million troops at risk.
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R. Duane Graham
/ May 2, 2012Jim,
Your assessment of Romney is right on. Don’t forget he sat out the Vietnam war in France doing Mormon missionary work for two and a half years. But we will have a test of your theory when he picks his VP. I say Portman, the safest pick out there in his party.
Your apples-to-orange comparison between the OBL killing and the A-bomb came with an excellent reason why Obama’s decision was not just a run-of-the-mill presidential decision: we were not in a fight to the death. That’s the point, right? People had pretty much given up on getting bin Laden, including Bush. The safest thing for Obama to do was to listen to some of his staff who were telling him to wait until there was more certainty, or just send in a missile or two, etc. Obama didn’t have to go after him the way he did, which besides the obvious threats to the troops involved, also involved a very serious, likely fatal, political threat to himself.
And that is why Republicans are so darn upset that the campaign pointed it out, especially highlighting Romney’s 2007 stance.
Duane
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ansonburlingame
/ May 3, 2012If you want to compare apples to apples pick the same generation, Clinton and Romney as far as “serving” in Vietnam. I suspect Romney could have qualified as a consciencious objector during Vietnam based on his faith and occupation, a missionary, at that time. Clinton had no such excuses yet neither served during Viethnam. But then Clinton did not “inhale” that which I am sure Romney has never “tried”. He won’t even drink coffee!!
As well, have you dredged up any “womanizing” on Romney’s part, yet? Wonder what HE might do in the WH in that regard?
Now you want to compare Obama’s decision to send 40 men in 4 helos in for a one hour firefight to Truman’s decisions related to the use of atomic weapons???
Just how far are you willing to go to build up your guy and tear down the other? The above is such a ridiculous extreme in “political grasping” that I just have to laugh.
Anson
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ansonburlingame
/ May 3, 2012I just came across the full Romney reply to a question asked in 2007 that has prompted the “Romney would not have gone after Bin Laden” rants going on today. Consider the below and then tell me he would NOT have authorized the mission, once the chance presented itself.
LIZ SIDOTI: “Why haven’t we caught bin Laden in your opinion?”
GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY: “I think, I wouldn’t want to over-concentrate on Bin Laden. He’s one of many, many people who are involved in this global Jihadist effort. He’s by no means the only leader. It’s a very diverse group – Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and of course different names throughout the world. It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person. It is worth fashioning and executing an effective strategy to defeat global, violent Jihad and I have a plan for doing that.”
Remember that quote was in 2007, the same time Obama was advoctaing pulling out of Iraq immediately.
Anson
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