In his Aug. 29 acceptance speech, Barack Obama told 70,000 Democrats gathered in Denver:
“John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell - but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives.”
And at the Oct. 7 presidential debate in Nashville, Obama said:
“If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority. …
“We rushed into Iraq and Senator McCain and President Bush suggested that it wasn’t that important to catch bin Laden right now and that we could muddle through, and that has cost us dearly.”
No priority? Throughout his campaign, Obama regularly referred to the conflict on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border as the war we should win, even if it meant invading Pakistan to get bin Laden, while he dismissed as unimportant the fight for democracy in Iraq.
But now, less than a week before he is sworn in as president, it appears Obama no longer views killing or capturing bin Laden as his “biggest” priority. He told CBS two days ago:
“My preference obviously would be to capture or kill him. 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. …
“I think that we have to so weaken [bin Laden’s] infrastructure that, whether he is technically alive or not, he is so pinned down that he cannot function. And I’m confident that we can keep them on the run and ensure that they cannot train terrorists to attack our homeland.”
Bait and switch? That sounds an awful lot like the “it wasn’t that important to catch bin Laden right now” policy that Obama chided McCain for three months ago. In the political season, it seems, the Democrats allowed for a “good war” only to make President Bush’s liberation of Iraq look like the “bad war.” Now it almost looks as if the Democrats won’t fight for anything.
Could it be more of the old politics? In the campaign, look tough if you’re not. If you win, do something reasonable. Yes, I was counting on Obama to abandon his goofiest campaign promises when I voted for him, but it’s almost breathtaking to watch him actually get real.
Frank Warner
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Update, May 1, 2011: Osama bin Laden is dead and gone to Hell.
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