I don’t fault him for it.
Osama wasn’t going anywhere, and this is an insertion mission over a mountain range into a very tentatively allied country . A whole bunch of things could have gone wrong mechanically(we lost a helicopter), tactically and politically.
If you think a leader ought to okay a world-changing action in a few minutes’ time, you haven’t ever been in those shoes.
Heaven forbid it.
But we're talking about Obama here.
I was thinking the same thing. This wasn’t an easy call. And didn’t we have eyes on the target? So I don’t think he was going anywhere.
Oh, please. Do tell, your majesty...
I understand what you're saying. And, if this was Obama's first encounter with the plan, "sleeping on it" would be totally appropriate.
But isn't it evident that the planning for this operation has been going on for months? And that the President has been advised at every step? Indeed, has expressly approved of the planning's progression?
In other words, all of the reservations and second thoughts and concern for a "world-changing action" should have already been weighed and put behind him.
Strikes me that this particular session came under the heading of "we're ready, the training is complete, the subject is confirmed to be present, the circumstances are ripe". Time to go/no go -- since conditions could only deteriorate from that point.
That's not the time to "sleep on it". It's time to make a decision.
Well I sure as hell fault him for it. if the military ok’d it it would have taken me one second to approve. This should have been the easiest decision for a president to make. Easier than selecting a tie for a presser.
A LEADER _can_ make those decisions in minutes.
It’s not like he wasn’t given prior notice that the opportunity may arise. Heck, he claims HE gave the project top priority as soon as he took office; no reason one of his staff couldn’t walk in with “80% odds we can kill OBL within 24 hours, here’s the issues...” and walk out with “do it” in minutes, if not seconds. We’ve overthrown two countries and spent hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade to kill this guy - it’s no time to “sleep on it”.
What world changing action took place? Just how has the world changed? Though this was a fantastic act of revenge, one that was going to happen sooner or later anyway, nothing in Islam has changed. Terror will continue on as before, until we go to war in ernest to defeat all these scumbags.
And he was asked to make "a world-changing action in a few mintues time"? hehehe Obambi himself said they'd been planning and following this raid for a long time. Obama just plain sucks, I give all the credit to the U.S. military, special forces and Marines who did the job, and CIA and other planners. Obama knows only one thing about military operations, he hates them. He dithered on Afghanistan too, waiting FIVE MONTHS to decide if General McCrystal should get the troops he requested. After 5 months Obambi gave McCrystal 30,000 troops, even though McCrystal publicly stated he needed a bare bones minimum of between 40,000 - 80,000 troops, "or else the war could be lost". NOTE that the war in Afghanistan is not being won, and that Olama has revealed to the enemy that we'll be withdrawing in just a few months. Great leader, yep.
When I held a leadership position in our military, one thing I did was to make decisions in advance when a situation seemed likely to arise. We all knew this one was likely, in particular that Osama could be well inside Pakistan. That way I didn't need more thinking time than the situation permitted when that situation came up. Anyone who belonged in our White House (including most or all of the custodial staff) had probably already reached the correct decision, and Obama hadn't even considered the question? Pathetic.