Maybe I am alone, but I hardly view this as a test of the President. Unless I am mistaken, all he had to do was sign off on rules of engagement and stay out of the way, and I don’t mean that to denigrate Obama, but because that really is all any President could do. We have a massive Navy with several hundred ships, highly trained professionals in the SEALS, highly trained professionals in the FBI and in the crews of the naval vessels tailing (and in one case towing) the raft, and you just need to let them do their job. This didn’t happen because heroic efforts by Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod in consultation with Obama produced a dashing plan a la the The West Wing. This happened because our very entrenched military and national security apparatus can handle little things like this without flinching.
And here:
Anyone who thinks that several most likely illiterate Somali thugs, armed with AK’s and probably geeked to high heaven on khat, decided to attack a flagged American container ship as a test because there is a perception that Obama is weak, is just a full-fledged idiot and should be institutionalized.
It had never made much sense to me that the failed attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran reflected so badly on Carter.
ReplyDeleteAgreed with you and Balloon Juice; this WaPo article is just embarrassing.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand, Carter was much more involved in the logistics of the Iran hostage rescue -- which were really complicated -- than Obama was in sorting out how to get a single guy back from a few thugs. So it makes more sense for the failure to reflect poorly on Carter than for this success to reflect well on Obama. However, one could say that without Carter's failure, we might not have today's success; the failure of Operation Eagle Claw, due in part to problems in communication among the various moving parts, led to the creation of the United States Special Operations Command.
Every cloud has its silver lining.
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