Libya and Osama bin Laden

DESPITE THE FACT that thousands of Libyans, in support of the United States, publicly protested Ansar al-Shariah's recent killing of the American ambassador and three other Americans during the Benghazi assault, opponents of President Obama and his campaign for reelection point to the event as an example of the White House administration's incompetence and deception.  It's all his fault, they say, going so far as to hint that something more sinister is at work.  Governor Romney even accused the Obama administration of "sympathizing" with the Benghazi attackers.

Popular Libyan protests on behalf of the United States, however, put the event in a different light.  The NATO intervention in Libya is an American foreign policy success. Led by the United States, it created good will for America among Arab people after the invasion of Iraq, which did the opposite.

President's Obama's enemies will blame him for the smallest things and refuse him credit for the greatest.

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"Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden" is a docudrama film about the 2011 Abbottabad raid to get Osama bin Laden.  It will be broadcast on the National Geographic Channel just two days before the election.

National Geographic Channel, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, says the decision to broadcast the film produced by Harvey Weinstein (an Obama supporter) isn't political but business-related because another movie about the assault, "Zero Dark Thirty," is scheduled for cinema distribution in December.  National Geographic claims to want to beat the theater movie to the punch, but it's a sure bet that the TV movie will put President Obama in a flattering light as the author of the successful commando operation.

Controversy still swirls around the history behind the raid.  During the Democratic Party's nominating convention, Vice President Joe Biden quoted Governor Mitt Romney talking in 2007 about Osama bin Laden and the war on terror: "It's not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."  Romney's words were uttered in the context of the war on terror being bigger than bin Laden himself, and that he, Romney, would focus on the big picture as his chief priority.  His point wasn't that he would ignore bin Laden.

Fact-checking organizations have rated Biden's Romney quote as baloney based on their assumptions about what he meant by using it, but not that the quote isn't accurate, because it is.

When Romney said what he did, it revealed a blindness to bin Laden's symbolism.  Maybe he wouldn't have moved heaven and earth to catch bin Laden.  He seemed to be saying as much, but that's what it took.  Success made it worthwhile.  Today, the statement summons Romney's judgment to question as to how he might assess national security priorities in the war on terror.

Isn't it fair to point that out?  Especially when Republicans want to make such a political issue out of Benghazi?

Whenever Romney says something that doesn't play well, he simply reverses himself, then expects and receives a pass from the press.  But just because he won't hold himself to his own words, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't either. 

Former president, George W. Bush, said something very similar to what Governor Romney did: "The idea of focusing on one person really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission."

President Obama has never said anything like that.  He put the priorities of fighting al-Qaeda and finding bin Laden to the top of the list from the beginning even if it meant invading Pakistan, and he said as much.  In 2007, Romney criticized him for that, too: "I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours."  However, in spite of Romney's wisdom, the plan payed off.

On 2 June 2009, President Obama authored a memo to Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, stating: "In order to ensure that we have expanded every effort, I direct you to provide me within 30 days a detailed operation plan for locating and bringing to justice Usama Bin Ladin."  The rest is history.

"Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden" is scheduled on the National Geographic Channel for Sunday, November 4th.