I was greeted this morning as I fired up my computer with an image of OBL on my political blog (my homepage), put there by one of my co-bloggers. My immediate reaction was that he had pulled off another huge attack, as I was busy working/sleeping last night while the news of his death was announced. Quickly moving to other sources, I realized that he had been killed.
There will of course, be a great deal of analysis flowing from this event by those much smarter and closer to the issue than I, but for now, here are some thoughts:
1. The President is to be commended for the courage to order this mission. Others like it in the past are reported to have been scrubbed, and while it turned out to be a success, it could easily have turned into a couple of dozen dead special operators. I remain awed by the responsibilities of that job, and think about the President at the White House Correspondents dinner Saturday night--coolly delivering his routine--knowing all the while that a team of special operators was moving into position to potentially carry out this mission. Most of you know I'm not a big fan of our President--today, I cannot help but be.
2. Obviously, the rough men who carried out this mission are great national treasures. Where do we find them?
3. I imagine the mission orders are supremely highly classified. But a couple of things seem to likely. First, there was no way OBL was coming out of that compound alive. Whether he was killed in a firefight or executed up close and personal we will likely never know--but taking him alive was out of the question. Good call on the Administration's part. As for "burying the body at sea" (in accordance with Islamic rites), I again think this was a good decision. We could have displayed the body atop a catafalque on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the theorists in the conspiracy friendly Islamic world would believe it a fake. That there is no place for them to gather and worship the body of the martyr is a good thing. All in all, it looks to me like this operation was thought through end to end in a very thorough and effective manner.
4. That this man could have lived such a normal life (not in a cave) in an inhabited part of Pakistan in the vicinity of one of their military academies raises a number of very interesting questions. Our relationship with Pakistan may be stressed by this event--and that is not a bad thing.
5. The reaction of the Arab and Islamic worlds to this event will be worth watching.
Bryan McGrath
No comments:
Post a Comment