Justice may have been done, but the Islamic war on the West is unceasing — it started centuries before bin Laden and it will continue.
Thomas Joscelyn at The Weekly Standard:
The press has been quick to highlight every reported instance of abuse (most of them fiction) and every case where an innocent was detained (comparatively few). At the same time, our leading press organizations, including the New York Times, have either ignored or downplayed the value of the intelligence learned through interrogations at Guantanamo. Yet, it was that intelligence that ultimately led to the death of Osama bin Laden. Yes, it took time and additional intelligence to piece together the whole picture. But the initial lead came from detainees at Guantanamo – and what a lead it was!
If it wasn’t for Guantanamo Bay, it seems highly unlikely that the government would have been able to uncover this information. We can thank the counterterrorism policies put in place by the Bush administration—and President Obama’s savvy decision to continue them—for leading intelligence officials to bin Laden.
Michael Potemra at National Review:
Most Americans, myself very much included, have been unhappy with President Obama’s performance in office in a number of regards. But on this day, I join everyone in saying, “Good work, Mr. President, thanks — and we’re proud of you.”
Now that Bin Laden is dead, the anti-war crowd, Congressional Democrats, and isolationist Republicans are probably going to demand that the United States pack up in Afghanistan and go home, perhaps even before 2014. This would be a huge mistake. If there’s one lesson that we can immediately glean from bin Laden’s death, it is that Pakistan is not a true ally in the war on terror. If we leave Afghanistan now that bin Laden is gone, Pakistan will move in and fill the vacuum—with his fellow-travelers.
Get ready, this is not over. … Americans need to understand that while this is a significant day, this is by no means the end of the war. We can expect al-Qaeda to seek revenge and we need to be very vigilant and maintain our diligence.
The fact that President Obama did not, by all accounts, flinch from authorizing a high-risk mission (high risk politically if not tactically) shows how much the strategic and political environment has changed since 9/11. In the 1990s, recall, Bill Clinton’s administration nixed various proposals to capture or kill bin Laden, preferring to send cruise missiles flying—a low-risk, low-reward approach. … Indeed Obama has vanquished the very phrase “war on terror” but he has kept much of the practice the same. This is a triumph for continuity in American politics, displaying the high degree of bipartisan consensus on how to fight terror.
I am a staunch critic of Obama's] policies in the War on Terrorism. Like many civil libertarians, I sometimes regard his actions to be unconstitutional, criminal, or both.
In this moment of triumph, none of that changes. But it ought to be an awkward moment for Obama critics who say he is afraid to take unilateral action against America's enemies. And the embarrassment they feel should pale in comparison to those who've implied that he is somehow on the enemy's side.
The quintessential example is Andy McCarthy, whose scurrilous attacks on American attorneys I recently criticized. His bestselling book asserts that "the left" is allied with our Islamist enemy in "a grand jihad" against America. "By the Left, I mean the modern hard Left led by President Obama," he explained to National Review. "And when I say Islamists and leftists work together, I mean they have an alliance, not that they've merged." This thesis has always been nonsense. But in this moment, Barack Obama having presided over military operations that killed Osama bin Laden, can we agree that any critic who insists the president leads an alliance with our Islamist enemy to sabotage America should be a universal laughingstock?
It’s hard to imagine the sense of relief and satisfaction George W. Bush must feel, after weathering undeserved and vicious criticism throughout his presidency, to see American deliver justice to the greatest evil-doer of them all. It is also regrettable, but not unexpected, that President Obama would mention Bush only in passing and fail to specifically credit him with eight years of tireless work that contributed to this victory.
All other factors aside, a real monster has been removed from the face of the Earth. It’s a damn good day.
If ever there was a moment for the commander-in-chief to be real, plainspoken and off his glassy-eyed follow-the-bouncing-ball routine, this was it. It’s as if nobody around him knows how to write except in the one tinny key. Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to rally round the flag, and rally round the President, but rally round this speech? No thanks.
That OBL was hiding in plain sight next to a Pakistani military academy demonstrates the complicity of the Pakistani government. An embarrassed Islamabad will scramble to excuse its hypocrisy. This allows the U.S. military, if the White House seizes the moment, to step up attacks against other terrorists inside Pakistan, especially along the Afghan border.
It is ironic that the man who rose to the presidency in large measure on the strength of his critique of George W. Bush’s war on terrorism will now be remembered as the one who presided over a great victory of that war.
I feel strangely low key about the news, to my surprise; since it broke a few hours ago, I’ve been thinking of the sound the second plane made when it hit the second tower. Nothing will undo it, not even this. But it’s rewarding to know that Bin Laden spent 10 long years hiding his face from the world and that, when the moment of truth came, he had to look Americans in the eye. It’s better than a happy ending. It’s a just one.
Michael Rubin, like others, draws a wider lesson about Israeli tactics:
No terrorist deserves diplomatic immunity or legitimacy’s embrace. All terrorists deserve death. Perhaps it is time for Americans, Europeans, and their media elite to reexamine their most glaring double standards: If Americans can kill a master terrorist targeting civilians then Israel too should be able to target Hamas leaders in Gaza, Damascus, Oslo, or Dubai, wherever they may be.
Limbaugh has no mention of it on his site, and is still leading with the birth certificate.
(Image: via I Heart Chaos)
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