If Obama Says Osama Isn’t Important Then He Isn’t Important

• January 16, 2009

One of the constant cries from the left about Bush’s efforts in the war on terror had to do with Osama bin Laden not getting captured. Obama himself promised during the campaign to “kill bin Laden” and “crush al Qaeda.”
Now that Obama actually has the job of waging the war on terrorism, and crushing al Qaeda/killing or capturing bin Laden, suddenly he’s not quite as certain that it can be done. The media is spinning this walk-back with misleading headlines like “Obama: “Capture Or Kill” Bin Laden” and “Obama pledges to succeed where Bush failed on bin Laden”, but the truth is that Obama suddenly doesn’t think Osama is all that important any more:

Barack Obama suggested last night that removing Osama bin Laden from the battlefield was no longer essential and that America’s security goals could be achieved merely by keeping al-Qaeda “on the run”.
“My preference obviously would be to capture or kill him,” he said. “But if we have so tightened the noose that he’s in a cave somewhere and can’t even communicate with his operatives then we will meet our goal of protecting America.”

What’s sad is that the left excoriated Bush for not getting bin Laden. They accused him of letting bin Laden get away. They passed sanctimonious resolutions and amendments in Congress demanding the death or capture of bin Laden. But now that Obama is saying Osama doesn’t matter any more, suddenly that’s ok.
The whole “get Osama” thing was only useful when it was a rhetorical tool to be used to undermine our mission in Iraq.
What’s sad is that Obama is right. Osama has been marginalized (thanks to Bush), and even he wasn’t marginalized he was just a part of the international terrorism problem. Putting all our eggs in one basket to “get Osama” would never have been good policy. I’m glad that Obama understands this, but his doing so exposes a lot of people on the left as hypocrites.

Tags: Domestic Issues, Politics, War On Terror

http://Array robert108

Fact: The 9/11 hijackers entered the country and trained for their mission during the Clinton administration. OBL planned the mission during the Clinton administration. The entire 9/11 operation took advantage of both the “wall of separation” policy of the Clinton administration that kept the FBI and the CIA from sharing and coordinating information that might have exposed the operation. Clinton failed to respond to OBL’s first attack on our soil, the WTC bombing in 1993, instead treating it as a street crime, thus allowing AQ to grow and develop unhindered during the Nineties, which facilitated their second attack on 9/11.
jk

PAUL SAID:[His clear priority was, rightly, to get OBL. He failed.]

And Clinton was OFFERED OBL and said “no thanks.
gustave776

POR (Pelosi, Obama and Reid) wanted to set a date for pulling out of Iraq when it would have just set goals for our enemy. Hannitzed has a very short memory, or now when the shoe is on the other foot, it all of a sudden matters if the enemy is surprised or not. Flip-Flop-Flip-Flop. First you were for loosing the war against terror, and now you want to win the war against terror. Which is it?????????????
Hannitized

Gustave,

Hannitzed has a very short memory, or now when the shoe is on the other foot, it all of a sudden matters if the enemy is surprised or not. Flip-Flop-Flip-Flop. First you were for loosing the war against terror, and now you want to win the war against terror. Which is it?

It’s not that I have a short memory, it’s that you are confusing issues.

When I spoke of warning OBL that we would be coming after him, you compared it to pulling out of Iraq??? What?

And what is this nonsense that i was for losing the war? I supported the surge and I was against Obama on pulling the troops until the job was done.

You have a weak argument to suggest that pulling troops by a certain date is warning an enemy as to our tactical plans.
http://www.valleydeals.com/cgi-bin/board2/YaBB.pl Kevin

Did the dirt bags plan 9/11 after president Bush took office?
How long did algore hold up President Bush from taking office?
Mickey

Obama and Osama have something in common. They both have friends who bombed the Pentagon.
robert108

Further, you don’t announce your plans and keep your enemy on his toes. You try to catch them by surprise.

Tell that to the NYT, hypocrite.
robert108

My statements stand unrefuted, while your attempts at nitpicking are noted.
http://bopl.samharris.us/ Paul

Thanks robert108, I’ll take that as a ‘no’ to my request.
robert108

President Bush has marginalized OBL; the only reason to devote assets to him is symbolic. The real fight right now is in Iran.
http://bopl.samharris.us/ Paul

robert108

Lie number 1: Please explain the deaths of Robert Stevens, Thomas Morris Jr., Joseph Curseen, Kathy Nguyen, and Ottilie Lundgren.

Lie Number 2: The Council on Foreign Relations thinks the Taliban are still active in Afghanistan. Searching Fox News shows several dozen stories about “Taliban Afghanistan” from this year alone. Even the Defense Department thinks they’re active there (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/27/asia/taliban.5-294825.php)

As to your questioning how stupid I can be, I’ll reply by asking when you hope to learn how to read. I didn’t ask the question you posit, I asked what Bush did to defend us against the clear and present danger bin Laden presented before 9/11. I guess there was a mathematical possibility he could have actually stopped the attacks, but I don’t think that’s a vaguely reasonable expectation. But if Clinton did such a lousy job on the most important issue facing the country, what did Bush do that was so much better before he was forced to deal with it?
robert108

“There have been no terrorist attacks on US soil since the Clinton-enabled
9/11″ – WRONG

Lie number one.

“Furthermore, we got rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan” – WRONG

Lie number two.

–

The real question is: How could President Bush undo, in eight months, the damage Clinton did in eight years? How can you be so stupid as to even ask such a ridiculous question?
rocksandbroncs

God damn you to hell, forever, Paul, you ignorant, liberalist, Godless, lying, zealot. I wasted 15 minutes of my life under the misguided assumption that you might actually be disseminating factual data instead of mindlessly spewing the hatred, bigotry and intolerance of your faith based belief system.

LIE NUMBER 3 YOU VERMINOUS SCUM:

From that liberalist bastion Wikipedia:

* August 3, 2008 – DNA evidence links the anthrax strain used by Ivins in his Fort Detrick laboratory to the strain used in the attacks. [137][138]

* August 6, 2008 – The FBI concludes that Ivins was solely responsible for the attacks and suggested that Ivins wanted to bolster support for a vaccine he helped create and that he targeted two lawmakers because they were Catholics who held pro choice views.

Keep pushing, child, and you’ll force us conservatives into having to destroy you and all your ilk. This is war and you’re gonna get whipped. But that’s your choice not ours.

I’m not gonna waste any more of my valuable time addressing your other group think ~~comments~~ propaganda. Please. Just. GrowTFU.
bill-tb

I guess bombing Pakistan is off now too.

Better brush up on your jive talking, we are going to get a few years of it. BTW, jive talking means talking in lies, it’s a ‘hood thing.
http://bopl.samharris.us/ Paul

robert108: That looks like a fun game!

Fact: Bush was warned that Bin Laden was determined to strike the US shortly before the attacks. The FBI warned that there were people training to fly, but not land, planes. Clinton had done all those terrible things you mention to the gasping astonishment of the Republicans. And yet Bush decided that the best way to defend the country was to vacation in Crawford, and the attacks happened.
http://bopl.samharris.us/ Paul

My memory is hazy, but as I recall Bush said something about “wanted: dead or alive”, but I don’t think there was a third option of “or occupied with admin and stuff”. His clear priority was, rightly, to get OBL. He failed. Obama has made a similar commitment, though with less of a rhetorical flourish – we’ll now get to see if he fails as well.
robert108

In this isolated case, PEBO is actually telling the truth, for once. President Bush marginalized OBL soon after 9/11, and OBL has only been of symbolic importance to the lying lefties since then. The real mistake would be to claim that “getting” him would make any difference in world terrorism. Since President Bush marginalized OBL, he has been of only propaganda value, nothing more.
Wasting resources on him is basically a “snipe hunt”.
robert108

Not a game; a deadly serious and widely fatal mistake by Clinton to ignore AQ for eight years, facilitating the international terrorist organization we have today.
I repeat, Clinton allowed the hijackers to enter the US, train for the mission and plan the operation, but you want to blame the guy who just took office and hadn’t even passed a budget yet. Clinton dropped the ball, and people all over the world have died as a result, including the 9/11 casualties.
A general statement is not actionable intel, but a bomb in the basement of the WTC in ’93 should have been actionable, but Clinton chose to ignore it.
http://www.valleydeals.com/cgi-bin/board2/YaBB.pl Kevin

What happened to Barry’s plan to go into Pakistan and kill him?
robert108

PEBO was against the surge in Iraq, but wants one in Afghanistan, which is of no strategic value. Another leadership failure.
robert108

Paul: Again, what was President Bush supposed to do in eight months, along with everything else he had to deal with, that would have prevented what Clinton had facilitated for eight years? Clinton was the cause, and bears the responsibility. There were lots of Clinton messes to clean up, like restoring the military and intel assets he had gutted, plus the Dems were trying to undo a legal election through endless court challenges. President Bush should be admired by all Americans for minimizing the tremendous damage caused by Clinton’s corruption, including the tremendous esclation of world terrorism he facilitated.

The Taliban no longer rule Afghanistan, and are no longer executing women in soccer stadiums.
There have been no terrorist attacks on our soil since 9/11; there have been crimes, but you continue to lie.
rocksandbroncs

Paul, you’re booooring and grotesquely immature. This is not ad hominem. I submit as evidence your posts. Any reasoned analysis can only support my conclusions.

“I refer you to the top…” That’s why it’s generally a good idea to read an entire article and not stop gathering input when a tenet of your belief system has been allegedly proved.

“This is demonstrably wrong.” No, your assertion is demonstrably wrong. You choose to divert attention from your lie by all of a sudden getting hairsplittingly technical as to the definition of terrorism. Clearly the general use is a reference to Islamofascists not one Timothy McVeigh wannabe.

“I forgot to add a brief correction.” The only correction that needs to be made is for you to take an honest look at yourself in the mirror in the morning. Perhaps some of the comments on this thread will help you defog that mirror and help provide you a clearer image.

“liberalist – there’s my ignorance”…” Learn something new every day don’t ~~you~~ we?
http://bopl.samharris.us/ Paul

rocksandbroncs – thanks for that balanced and reasoned response. I don’t usually rely on Wikipedia for information on terrorism, but if that’s what we’re doing then I refer you to the top of the article, where it says “Attack type: Bioterrorism”. That’s a big word, so let me break it down for you: Bio = life (in this context, a biological poison), and terrorism = terrorism. Robert claimed that “There have been no terrorist attacks on US soil since the Clinton-enabled 9/11″. This is demonstrably wrong.

jk – Here’s an article that refutes that, including comments from the 9/11 commission (http://mediamatters.org/items/200407230005). We now have a he said/he said situation, so I eagerly anticipate the evidence that Sudan offered bin Laden to Clinton.

robert108 – I’ll try just one more time. I don’t think Bush could have stopped 9/11, nor could anyone else had they become president. But if, as you say, the errors of the Clinton administration were so obvious and dangerous, then surely Bush came into office hitting this issue hard, putting in place all the measures that Clinton should have. I’m just asking you to tell me a few of the many things he was doing that Clinton didn’t.

A quick reminder: You said “Furthermore, we got rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan.” We removed them from government, but we sadly haven’t removed them from Afghanistan, as the 1,000+ soldiers who’ve died there can attest.
ellinas

If Obama Says Osama Isn’t Important Then He Isn’t Important

What’s sad is that the left excoriated Bush for not getting bin Laden. They accused him of letting bin Laden get away. They passed sanctimonious resolutions and amendments in Congress demanding the death or capture of bin Laden. But now that Obama is saying Osama doesn’t matter any more, suddenly that’s OK.

By Rob on January 16, 2009 at 08:23 am

What will be sad is that if the right does not excoriate Obama for not getting bin Laden. You will have to accuse him of letting bin Laden get away. The right should pass sanctimonious resolutions and amendments in Congress demanding the death or capture of bin Laden. Now that Obama is saying Osama doesn’t matter any more, it is not so. I for one disagree with him.
http://bopl.samharris.us/ Paul

jk: “And Clinton was OFFERED OBL and said “no thanks.”

It’s hard to believe Clinton was stupid enough to turn down the man behind 9/11, isn’t it? Imagine, someone came to him and said “we’ve got the guy responsible for the death of 3,000 Americans”, and Clinton said no. Hard to believe, isn’t it?

btw, I’d be interested in the source for this claim.
http://bopl.samharris.us/ Paul

That was rather my point, gustave776
gustave776

Am I missing something?
Didn’t 9/11 happen after Clinton was out of office? Not to stick up for Clinton, but the 3000 had not been killed yet.
Paul set me straight.
http://bopl.samharris.us/ Paul

rocksandbroncs – I live in a country that was subject to several decades of terrorist attack, and am very aware that ‘terrorism’ isn’t just shorthand for ‘islamofascist terrorism’.

You’re right that the couple of points I labelled as wrong were minor. That’s why I said they were minor. English isn’t as complicated as some people make out, you’ll crack it eventually.

everyone – I haven’t denied any of the mistakes that Clinton made. I’ve said several times that I don’t think he could have stopped 9/11. I’ll go further; I don’t know how much credit should go to Bush for the almost complete lack of terrorist attacks since then (I tend to to think that’s more down to a million individual decisions taken by policemen, FBI agents and others than a handful of decisions by any president), but whatever he’s due I’ll give him ungrudgingly. All I asked is what he did *before* 9/11 to start the process of correcting the mistakes Clinton had made. If Clinton’s mistakes were ones that were as obvious and as serious as has been implied here, then Bush must have been working frantically to correct it.

For the record I think bin Laden should be found and killed. I don’t think it would make a massive difference to the fight against terrorism, but the symbolic value is enormous. I criticize Bush for not having done that, most noteably at Tora Bora, and I’ll criticize Obama if he doesn’t fix that.

A final point: I understand that I’m a ‘leftie’ as well as a liberalist from this thread. Given that I think taxes and spending should both be cut, that the prescription benefit plan should be abandoned, that private accounts are an essential part of the ‘fix’ for Social Security, and that the current bank bailouts are an obscene waste of money, it would appear the Republican party lies somewhere to the left of leftist me. That must be quite unnerving to most of the readers here.
http://bopl.samharris.us/ Paul

robert108 – Let me know anything that I made up.

rocksandbroncs – I forgot to add a brief correction. You called me “ignorant, liberalist, Godless, lying, zealot.”

ignorant – possibly; I know much more than average, but way less than I’d like
liberalist – there’s my ignorance, I’d never heard that word before, but “emphasizes individual rights and equality of opportunity” doesn’t sound too bad, though I’m more interested in the former than the latter
Godless – absolutely
lying – I sometimes tell lies, but not enough to be called a liar, and certainly not in this thread.
zealot – I’m much too lazy to be zealous about anything, except perhaps my family.
robert108

Take it any way you like; you’re just making up your own stuff, anyway.
robert108

Clinton could have prevented 9/11 if he had tracked down the terrorists who masterminded the first WTC attack in ’93. AQ was fairly small then, and a very large number of lives all over the world would have been saved, had he the courage to do the right thing. Trying to contextualize it as “stopping” 9/11 is a nice dodge, though.
robert108

He has cleaned up Clinton’s mess quite well, actually. There have been no terrorist attacks on US soil since the Clinton-enabled 9/11, and his tax rate cuts helped lessen the impact of Clinton’s collapsing economy and the financial blow of the 9/11 attack. Furthermore, we got rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and so there have been no further beheadings in soccer stadiums. Iraq is free from a murdering dictator who was able to pull the wool over Clinton’s eyes with the oil for food scam, thus funding terrorism all over the world. President Bush has also repaired the damage Clinton wreaked on our military and intel assets. Unfortunately, he hasn’t completely undone the Kosovo boondoggle. Clinton promised to bring the troops home, but he was lying about that.
http://bopl.samharris.us/ Paul

None of that answers the question: Clinton screwed up royally and obviously, the issue facing the country was huge and pressing, so what did Bush do before 9/11 to kill bin Laden and defeat AQ?

A couple of minor points:
“There have been no terrorist attacks on US soil since the Clinton-enabled 9/11″ – WRONG

“Furthermore, we got rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan” – WRONG
robert108

Actually, it’s good that PEBO is telling the truth about OBL. I was thinking he would announce OBL’s death, and use that to claim that the war on terrorism was over, which would have been extremely dangerous for us. At least he’s telling the truth about something. Even a blind squirrel…
http://bopl.samharris.us/ Paul

You’re right, it’s not a game, it wass apparently the single most important challenge facing the nation at the time by some distance. So why don’t you give us the big list of everything Bush had done to fix the many and manifest wrongs of the Clinton administration regarding bin Laden, given that what should have been done is so obvious?
robert108

rocks: It’s always interesting when lefties make up their own definitions, then move the goalposts, just to try to discredit President Bush and deny his accomplishments for this country. Pure BDS.
jk

http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowledge/Clinton_let_bin_laden.htm

HERE’S THE LINK TO AN ARTICLE IN THE L.A. TIMES. SUDAN OFFERED BIN LADEN, CLINTON …WELL HISTORY SPEAKS FOR IT SELF, SO DOES THE ARTICLE.
Hannitized

But now that Obama is saying Osama doesn’t matter any more, suddenly that’s ok.

That is a lie Rob.

Obama said his preference is obviously to catch and kill him.

Your reading comprehension has never been your strong suit and now, in this article, you have denied the very sentence you have highlighted in bold. Strange you are.

Further, you don’t announce your plans and keep your enemy on his toes. You try to catch them by surprise.

It would be one thing if Obama actually said OBL didn’t matter, but he didn’t say that. It is obvious that OBL matters if he is planning attacks and taking action to put them in place. Noting that marginalizing meets our goal of protecting America is not the same as meeting our goal of capturing and killing him.

Two separate goals. Nice try.
jimmypop

how is this prudent? the wars stop when barry takes office. just like they stopped two years ago when the liberals took over DC.

SayAnythingBlog.com

If Obama Says Osama Isn’t Important Then He Isn’t Important

Create a SAB Readerblog

Recent Comments