Month: May 2011

Rush Limbaugh, going out of his way to celebrate Obama's singular role:

“President Obama has continued the Bush policies of keeping a military presence in the Middle East. He did not scrub the mission to get Bin Laden. In fact, it may be that President Obama single-handedly came up with the technique in order to pull this off. You see, the military wanted to go in there and bomb as they always do. They wanted to drop missiles and drop bombs and a number of totally destructive techniques here. But President Obama, perhaps the only qualified member in the room to deal with this, insisted on the Special Forces. No one else thought of that. President Obama. Not a single intelligence adviser, not a single national security adviser, not a single military adviser came up with the idea of using SEAL Team 6 or any Special Forces.”

Sadly, he uses this lionization of Obama to insinuate that the intelligence that led us to Osama was procured by torture. We have zero evidence of that.

Pretty nice for a cave.

David Frum hopes "we have at last seen the end of this ugly insinuation that there is something less than fully American about the black president with the exotic name":

President Obama has performed the first job of an American president: he has used the power of the nation well to defeat the nation’s enemies and defend the nation’s people. After an interval for celebration of yesterday’s accomplishment, it will be back to politics as usual. But let’s hope that this time, the usual will have this difference: that the administration can be criticized as “liberal” without being libeled as “alien.”

The Saudis, who gave us bin Laden, are relatively mute; Iran pivots:

"US and their allies have no more excuse to deploy forces in the Middle East under pretext of fighting terrorism."

Hamas, now in alliance with the Fatah, decries the assault:

We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.

"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," – Mark Steyn, on his usual form.

The right will do all they can to keep Obama distant from this remarkable achievement. We may soon be hearing requests for the long-form death certificate. I mean how can a terrorist Muslim like Obama have actually killed his buddy Osama? Over to you, Donald Trump, who has just had the pwning of his life.

Marc Lynch collects his thoughts:

The fact is, al-Qaeda had already been effectively marginalized within the mainstream of the Arab world long before bin Laden died. His death removes the only al-Qaeda figure still able to speak effectively to that Arab mainstream, and marks the end of an era of Arab politics which had already largely faded away. Al-Qaeda's marginalization in Arab politics has been developing for a long time, and will only be further advanced by bin Laden's death. How this happened, and how it matters for the rapidly evolving Arab world, are the questions which now need attention.

To have witnessed an Arab Spring that sidelined this monster and now to see the head cut off the rotting fish is a new day.

From a New Yorker, Rick Brookhiser:

We’re still here. You’re not. Go figure.

The amazing scene – and chant – at the US Naval Academy last night:

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, on the other hand, advocates muted celebration:

First there is recognition that even when our enemy falls, this does not signal an end to all our troubles.  Just because one enemy or one army or one threat has been removed does not mean we are entirely safe.

Second, we must acknowledge that the destruction of the enemy did not necessarily arise from our own merits.  We are perhaps not worthy of the good fortune that we have received and so we do not want to tempt God, as it were, or remind the Angel of Death of our own defects.

(Hat tip: Patrick Ishmael)