Republicans play defense on defense
I’ve been covering politics for a long time but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a role-reversal quite as stark as the one that’s shaped the news cycle over the last few days.
At issue is national defense and in particular the Obama campaign’s questioning of whether Republican leaders — including presidential candidate Mitt Romney — would have taken the steps necessary to kill Osama bin Laden.
What’s interesting here is that this is a debate over national security and defense. Typically it is the GOP side that moves aggressively to define the terms of engagement.
Anyone who remembers the last decade knows that George W. Bush was quite comfortable using war-time theatrics — remember “Mission Accomplished”? — to boost his political fortunes. 9/11 featured prominently in some of his 2004 campaign ads.
One conservative attack ad in 2004 openly questioned whether John Kerry, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, was tough enough to go face-to-face with terrorists.
But drawing on lackluster statements about bin Laden made by Romney, former President George W. Bush, and others, Mr. Obama and his surrogates questioned the GOP’s willingness to hunt and kill the terror leader.
Naturally, the notion that Republicans might be soft on terror triggered a firestorm of condemnation on the right, with conservatives blasting the White House for “politicizing” and “cheapening” the killing of the 9/11 mastermind.
But in politics, turnabout is widely seen as fair play.
This campaign season, Mitt Romney has insisted repeatedly that Obama is “weak” when it comes to foreign policy and national defense and has “apologized for America.”
That’s how the GOP tried to frame the campaign. But the last few days, it was Obama who forced Republicans to respond and react.
And in elections, when you’re counter-punching rather than playing your own game, it’s not usually a good thing.
Republicans obviously have a factual point that much of the groundwork for killing bin Laden was laid during the Bush Administration. Wartime victories are, by their very nature, bipartisan.
It’s also difficult to imagine a President Romney not ordering the Navy SEALS to move forward with the mission in Pakistan. Suggesting otherwise, as the Obama campaign has done, is speculative at best and far-fetched at worst.
Yet the simple fact is that this debate refocuses voters’ attention on the fact that bin Laden was, in fact, killed on Obama’s watch. This commander in chief gave the right order, overriding the advice of two of his closest advisers. It was a gutsy move.
The dust-up will also likely draw attention to the fact that by any objective reckoning, the Obama administration has moved effectively to sharpen the war on terror, using drone strikes and other “surgical” tactics to eliminate terror leaders, while minimizing the exposure of American ground troops.
More broadly, this chapter of the campaign suggests that Obama plans to fight back against what some pundits, including Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson, have described as an early effort at “swift boating.”
Kerry may have been Swift-Boated, but Obama is not going to be SEALed. Republicans are used to calling Democrats cowards and worse. Not this time.
Complicating the GOP’s effort to get back on the offense when it comes to national defense is the fact that Romney has no experience in military affairs. He’s no John McCain. He’s not even George W. Bush.
Romney can’t just assume that his side owns this issue. He’ll have to convince Americans that he would make a better commander in chief than the guy who pulled the trigger against bin Laden.
Tags: analysis, election12, politics
It doesn’t seem like this election will be determined on foreign policy. Romney would do well to stay on message of the economy.
Obama has to be careful not to overplay his Osama hand, as well. After all, it was one year ago. Before November, it is likely that world events will give Obama other make or break moments in foreign policy.
Romney’s credentials in foreign policy in 2012 compared to Obama’s credentials in foreign policy in 2008. There’s the real comparison.
Remember Hillary’s 3:00am commercial?
Yes, it really makes me angry when Obama uses the Republicans’ own dirty tricks against them, but with class.
Regarding Brian’s observation that questioning Romney’s willingness to make the decision to send the Seals may be “speculative at best, far-fetched at worse” , and Obama’s more or less laughing-off Romney’s outrage , it reminds of that good old Republican slogan, “Never apologize, never explain.”
From a campaign point of view, it must also increase the Romney campaign’s anxiety, knowing that anything he said in the past, which is a lot, on many sides of many issues, can and will be used against him.
Kind of reminds of the great scene in “Patton”, where George C. Scott says, while crushing Rommel’s Africa Corps, something like. “How do you like it you S.O.B.? You see, I’ve read your book!”
Can anyone cite the actual quote by Romney that the Obama campaign used to assert the speculation that Romney might not have given the order? I can’t find it.
“It’s also difficult to imagine a President Romney not ordering the Navy SEALS to move forward with the mission in Pakistan. Suggesting otherwise, as the Obama campaign has done, is speculative at best and far-fetched at worst.”
Brian, I think you’re generally pretty sensible but I think you have that statement exactly backwards. It was more than just a “gutsy move” and it is preposterous for Romney to say, of course I would do the same thing.
There were other options besides sending a secret mission into a nuclear armed country on a high state of alert to a target near military bases and for anyone who did not make that decision to say “I would do the same thing” is completely disingenuous. The decision was Obama’s and Obama’s alone. Maybe in some parallel universe Mitt Romney got to make that decision, but in this universe he should just say “good job, Mr. President” and let the subject drop.
It is what it is. It (killing Osama bin Laden) happened.
“It’s also difficult to imagine a President Romney not ordering the Navy SEALS to move forward with the mission in Pakistan.”
No it’s not!
I was listening to npr just yesterday afternoon and learned that the CIA really had very little evidence that Bin Laden was in that compound in Pakistan. In fact, they lowered the estimated “chances” significantly just a day or two before President Obama gave the go ahead. Evidently President Obama is also the one that gave the order to add an additional helicopter to the operation and gave the order that the troops were to fight their way out if confronted by the Pakistani’s.
It appears that a Democratic President isn’t allowed to use the same political tactics used by the Republicans.
Pleas for additional contributions to Democratic coffers lead me to believe the “Ragin Cajun”, James Carville, is playing in the game again this election which may account for the turnabout is fair play temper of the lead in to the frivolities of this election. This does please me, exceedingly.
The fact is Obama has it all over these guys on defense. The vast majority of Americans want to get out of Afghanistan, the vast majority of Americans are very happy that the Iraq war for the US is OVER AND we want to kill terrorists.
Obama his showing that he succeeded in dismantling and killing Al-Quida where Bush failed, its pretty simple really.
The entire point of all of these wars was supposedly to stop terrorism, not to occupy, control and nation build, in fact the Republicans before they lost their way used to talk about the danger of nation building about being the world’s police. Yet now we see how utterly incompetent they were.
These drone strikes are very effective the point is to kill those people who have declared war on the US, that would be mainly al-quida and Obama has done that.
How many people are sitting around wringing their hands over what is happening in Iraq right now? Civil war is part of Democracy and we need to let them happen. If our civil war of independence against our own country (England) for example had been stopped by an outside occupier such as France or Germany; would not be a nation today.
Regarding drones, I wonder if anyone has factored them in as bargaining chips regarding negotiating with the Taliban over our withdrawl from Afghanistan. Conventional wisdom sees a rerun of Saigon, 1975, with the Taliban as the North Vietnamese a short time after our departure. Certainly there are clear similarities between the competence, reliability and honesty of the S. Vietnamese of that era and Afghan government and military of today.
So why should the Taliban not simply wait for us to leave, and then move in? Perhaps the prospect of, whatever their success on the ground, having to witness the constant interruption of public fatwa readings, beheadings, woman-whippings, and other favorite Taliban pastimes by drone strikes upon the readers, behaders and whippers, for the next generation or so might be an encouragement to negotiate in seriousness. More likely it will not, and events will run their course, but hopefully we will continue killing these turbaned bugs, regardless.
The other big advantage to Obama of this whole controversy is that it forces Romney off message (the unemployment figures). It’s win win. (JDM’s point).
Ross Douhat, a NYT conservative writer, has a sensible column today: http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/boasting-about-bin-laden/?hp
If the Afghan people choose the Taliban to lead them that is their choice, just as people in Egypt are supporting Islamic parties. It seems to me they all hate us, time to go.
Many Americans have a short attention span. It’s May. Alot can happen between now and November. The bin Laden thing will be a faded memory by then.
If the economy, unemployment, and gas prices are what they are now, Pres. Obama will be packing his bags. If the predicted suicide terrorists attacks occur, along with other volatile global situations coming to a head, he’ll more than likely have another 4 years.
He’ll have another 4 years because of how he is being portrayed re: bin Laden; not because I think he’s such a great leader.
Kathy, killing bin Laden is important because, as Brian and about a million others have said, appearing weak on terrorism/national security has been a major problem for Democrats and tool for Republicans, and it is now a dead issue for them. In other words, killing bin Laden will not win the election for Obama, but not killing him might have lost it.
Mervel, they don’t all hate us.
Whoever it is that “they” are.
“Republicans obviously have a factual point that much of the groundwork for killing bin Laden was laid during the Bush Administration.”
Bush de-prioritized the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Do you remember that press conference of his where he famously said he didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t spend that much time on him? That he truly was not that concerned about him?
When Obama got into office one of the first things he did was re-focus our efforts on bringing Bin Laden to justice. He made it a priority.
So while we might be able to say that any president would have made the call to send in the SEALs that night… what we can not say is that any president would have put us in the position to make that call in the first place.
THAT is what Obama deserves credit for, in my opinion.
Who could have predicted that O’Bama would be forced to run on an anti-terrorist platform for lack of any other basis for re-election?
funny but i think we should be comparing obama in 2012 to romney in 2012.
seriously, what dave said. everyone, go re-read his comment at least three times.
Knuckle, no they don’t all hate us, but NO ONE likes to be occupied and treated as a basically incompetent child, which what you are saying when you occupy a country for 10 years or 9 years as we are doing in Afghanistan and did in Iraq.
But look at the polls about Americans they have done in places like Pakistan, Egypt Afghanistan, Iraq, we are NOT well liked. They don’t hate the Germans, and today today Germany has a median income higher than the US and great health care. We get to be hated and spend a trillion or so on occupying these countries and the honor of having our young people die there.
None of this makes any sense, we cannot police the world, we make things worse. Our role is exactly what this President is doing, killing non-state actors who have declared war on the US regardless of where they live.
Romney wants to re-invade Iraq, that alone should make most people not want to vote for him, and I say that as a conservative.
Vietnam is just fine, in fact doing much better than many other countries in the region.
Iraq and Afghanistan will also both be fine, if everyone just leaves them alone.
“It’s also difficult to imagine a President Romney not ordering the Navy SEALS to move forward with the mission in Pakistan. Suggesting otherwise, as the Obama campaign has done, is speculative at best and far-fetched at worst.”
It is pretty far fetched if you ask me.
You should check out this piece at the WP written by a 30 year veteran of the CIA:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-path-to-osama-bin-ladens-death-didnt-start-with-obama/2012/04/30/gIQAfFmdsT_story.html
A key point:
“With some trying to turn bin Laden’s death into a campaign talking point for Obama’s reelection, it is useful to remember that the trail to bin Laden started in a CIA black site — all of which Obama ordered closed, forever, on the second full day of his administration — and stemmed from information obtained from hardened terrorists who agreed to tell us some (but not all) of what they knew after undergoing harsh but legal interrogation methods. Obama banned those methods on Jan. 22, 2009.”
Now as you usually see here some will try and go after this comment as some sort of support for how things were done by me. All I am doing here is illustrating that if Obama had been president for say the past 7 years we might not even be having this discussion. Maybe that is good maybe that is bad but it is what it is.
“If the Afghan people choose the Taliban to lead them that is their choice”
That is true. I know that I would “choose” to vote for the guy pointing a gun at my kids head.
“Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives” by Rodriguez doesnt really have a very accurate title.
Actually, the title of the book would be more accurate if you change the word “aggressive” to “illegal”. Yeah Jose, let’s still refer to torture as “enhanced interrogation”.
And now we hear that John Yoo, author of the torture memo, is protected from lawsuits. American exceptionalism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/02/john-yoo-torture-bush-administration-jose-padilla_n_1471587.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003
So Paul if someone is pointing a gun at your child’s head who has the responsibility for standing up to that person?
The fact is the Taliban have a lot of support in Afghanistan, if they didn’t they would have been defeated by now, come on 10 freaking years with us training the afghans and fighting them and they still control a good portion of the country? How do they do that, are they superhuman fighters??? No they have the support of a good portion of the countryside, it is almost exactly like Vietnam where a good portion of the South supported and helped the North Vietnamese. Did all of the South like them? No they were certainly not angels, but if you go to Vietnam today things have worked out pretty well.
Time for us to go. Does anyone wish we could go back to Iraq or Vietnam for that matter? We have never been SORRY we have left one of these occupations.
Daves’ comment of 12:24 pm nails it. Also Brian you say it’s hard to imagine Romney(if he was commander in cheif) to not order the raid into Pakistan. Just go to the old video tape of him in the 08 Pres republican debates. He pretty much said he would not do exactly what Obama did do. Of course today it’s “me too, me too” of course I would have ordered the raid, Yeah right. The hypocrisy is beyond belief.
Mervel, the irony is that Afghanistan was the war that the Neocons really wanted–the war in which we came in as conquering heros to set an oppressed people free.
The Afghans were prepared to throw roses at our soldiers’ feet. There were many Afghans who were thrilled and thought that since their country had been captured by America that they would become a part of the American empire. Many Afghans at the time fell in love with George Bush and would have elected him to their presidency if they could. It’s really too bad that Bush couldn’t accept victory and leave well enough alone.
Totally agree. I mean you are right in 2001 we really had things going there, we drove out the Taliban, we were working with the Northern alliance etc. things seemed on the right path. I wonder what would have happened if we would have just provided $ support at that time and pulled out then?
I really feel for the Afghan people, they have been USED by everyone.
I find it interesting that people think of the Afghan government as corrupt and completely incompetent while at the same time thinking of the Taliban as some sort of fanatical unstoppable super-force.
The Taliban and the Afghan National Army and the Afghan Police are all the same people. They are all the people who ground down the Soviet Occupation.
The media needs to make up their mind. Either Afghans are unstoppable super-warriors or they are super-corrupt villains.
There are ways to wage counter insurgency and win, really win, but we don’t have the stomach for that, and I am glad we don’t have the stomach for that. Sri-Lanka just fought and won an insurgency against the Tamil Tigers, they won by essentially committing genocide, there are none of them left and the population that supported them were killed. But the insurgency is over.
I agree, but either way it seems to me that we don’t know what we are doing, and if we don’t know what we are doing we should not be killing people and letting our own people get killed.
khl, maybe the Afghans are unstoppable villainous super-corrupt super-warriors. At least some of them are. Unmentioned here is the fact that much of the money we spend there gets corruptly channeled to the super-warriors, thus helping them substantially in their efforts to be unstoppable.
Walker, in the past there was a lot of our money that went to the worst of the worst, and probably some of our aid to Pakistan gets sent to groups that fight us in Afghanistan, but most of the aid money we send to Afghanistan (and most other countries) is spent on US and foreign contractors, private security, military suppliers and the like.
As for villainous super-corrupt super warriors, yeah, the CIA trained them well.
“most of the aid money we send to Afghanistan (and most other countries) is spent on US and foreign contractors, private security, military suppliers and the like.”
Knuck, I’ve read that the military contractors have to make substantial payments (read “bribes”) to local warlords in order to get anything done. Guess where much of that money goes next?
I don’t accept that military contractors “have” to pay bribes to local warlords.
If you go back and read the history you will find that the US actually brought many warlords back into the country or did not stop them from re-entering the country.
At the Loya Jirga in which the present government was founded the warlords were prohibited from being present by agreement of the Afghan nationals, but representatives of the US government seated former warlords in the Loya jirga.
Abdul Rashid Dostum entered the country from Turkey during the last Afghan presidential election in order to muster support for Karzai in the election. It was in the evening news. Dostum is a war criminal and doesn’t hide his whereabouts like bin Laden and yet American forces made no effort to capture him. Someone with deep knowledge could go through a list several dozen of the top warlords and capture or kill them with ease, but it hasn’t happened. Granted some are government ministers or even the vice-president.
Why would we kill our allies?
mervel says: “Vietnam is just fine, in fact doing much better than many other countries in the region.”” Iraq and Afghanistan will also both be fine, if everyone just leaves them alone.”
I have never been to Iraq or Afghanistan; but, I have been to Viet Nam and from what I have read and heard the people of Iraq are far more similar to the people of Viet Nam than the people of Afghanistan are to either of the other two countries. The Vietnamese I met were very intelligent and since I was there early in the war the society had not suffered as much at that point and most could read and write. As the war dragged on I imagine the education of children suffered considerable; however, I worked with a number of Vietnamese, men and women, in the US, who would have been very young during the war, and found them well educated and very intelligent. It appears that during Saddam Hussein’s rein he also considered education important for both boys and girls; unfortunately, since we removed him it appears that education in Iraq has definitely taken a step backwards.
Afghanistan appears to be about a step and a half from hell. Women who are raped are subsequently murdered by family members to save face for the family. Girls who are lucky enough to be educated are done so in secret. Their largest export is heroin, some 80-90% of the worlds supply. Today on NCPR I heard an interview which took place in Afghanistan discussing the likelihood that the Afghans would be prepared to provide their police and military defenses when we leave in 2014. Good luck. I didn’t catch the relationship of the person being interviewed to the US military; but, he had some starling things to say. The US military is attempting to bring the average Afghan soldier up to US grade 1, yes first grade, reading and math levels and their officers up to US grade 3, third grade, reading and math levels. The interviewee talked about Afghan commanders who could not count the number of soldiers in a formation so as to determine if they were all accounted for and were being taught to draw a box drawn about the soldiers such that a full box would indicate that he had most of them. Boggles the mind.
I reckon it is not only the girls in Afghanistan who are not being educated. This revelation helps me understand the stories we hear about Afghan soldiers going and coming at will and their commanders either not caring or possibly not knowing.
The Iraqis and the Vietnamese are definitely doing much better since we stopped the bombing of their two countries. I don’t know how many tons of bombs we delivered onto the Iraqis but the estimates are we delivered roughly 4 times as much ordinance, 8 million tons, on Viet Nam, a country roughly 80% the size of California, as was delivered by all of the combatants in WWII. I have a sneaking suspicion that had we not bombed the hell out of Viet Nam and Iraq they would be getting on much more nicely than they are now. Afghanistan . . . . . . . . I am not so sure it would have had a positive effect for us not to have gone there. Will Afghanistan get along just fine when we leave? I fear not.
So much for my Firefox spell checker it obviously does not know the difference between “starling” and “startling”.
KHL writes “I don’t accept that military contractors “have” to pay bribes to local warlords.”
It’s not so much that they have to pay, it’s just good business practice– the cheapest way to get the job done so you get yours.
From the Huff Post
Taxpayer funds have even wound up in the hands of enemy fighters — despite efforts undertaken by top military officers such as Gen. David Petreaus, who warned in an August memo on counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan that “money is ammunition; don’t put it in the wrong hands.”
“Without good subcontract control by prime contractors and good oversight by the government,” Michael Thibault, co-chair of the Wartime Contracting Commission, said in a written statement, “we risk not only wasting money, but also depriving our troops of support they need, overlooking misconduct that alienates local populations, and even handing funds to violent insurgents.”
…An investigation by the House oversight subcommittee on national security found that multiple private security subcontractors were warlords, strongmen, commanders, and militia leaders — adversaries who are “in fundamental conflict with U.S. aims to build a strong Afghan government,” according to a subcommittee report, “Warlord, Inc.”
Knuck, if you google “u.s. military contractors bribes afghanistan” you get a million plus hits; lots of them detailing U.S. military taking bribes as well as paying them. Our contracting and subcontracting military puts huge amounts of loose cash out there, and a lot of it flow into the wrong hands.
Walker, I don’t dispute that it happens. The funny thing is that the Americans have been the ones who started the large scale bribery business and then they blame the Afghans for being corrupt.
The foreign aid industry is itself corrupt, if you are going to deal with these sorts of situations you will end up paying those who control access and hold the local power.
Just another reason for us to go.
Ken yes I think that Afghanistan is far behind, I think it is the third poorest country in the world. I just feel that if foreign powers such as Pakistan, the US, the old Soviet Union and of course before that the British etc, have never let them alone. I don’t see what we are doing as worth the cost.
“Actually, the title of the book would be more accurate if you change the word “aggressive” to “illegal”. Yeah Jose, let’s still refer to torture as “enhanced interrogation”.”
PNElba, call it torture if you like but it was legal. It may be wrong but that is a different question. And don’t blame this guy this was all authorized by the folks at the white house AND on capital hill. They gave it the name not him. Sure they are running for political cover now. The senate committees knew everything that was going on. In fact they asked the CIA why they couldn’t do even more. When all these documents are declassified these folks who now criticize all these things that they supported are going to look pretty foolish.
Let’s call the Taliban and all other terrorists what they really are. They are just a bunch of nuts who would rather kill than work for a living. If they cared a hoot for their country, they would make it a better place for the women and the children. They would do real work for a living. They would be in favor of education all of their people. These aren’t men. They are little boys with guns.
Pete, the funny thing is that many people who could be called Taliban really are in it because they need a job. A few years ago Sarah Chayes, the former NPR correspondent, was reporting that the Taliban was offering $25 a week in Kandahar for laborers to harvest opium in Helmand Province. The response was so overwhelming that they later dropped the wage to $20 a week. You have to remember that the average wage in Afghanistan is $3 per day. While Blackwater/Xe may offer salaries of $200,000/year for mercenary work and charge our government for it the Taliban only needs to offer a few thousand dollars a year for what have proved to be some of the best fighters in the world.
Also I don’t think that we can always equate the Taliban with terrorism. They have never been overly interested in international Jihad like al-quida was, they mainly want to control Afghanistan and are indeed extremist in their application of Islamic law. I would say they are pre-modern and brutal in that application.
But there are many brutal regimes out there, China for example and in general we put up with them just fine.
I believe Pakistan is the most dangerous country on earth and is our enemy, al-quida ran to their paymasters when the going got tough, and it was not the Taliban it was the secret security forces for Pakistan, who I believe was heavily involved in 9/11. We invaded the wrong country.
The leader of Al-quida would not have lived for that long safely and essentially openly in Pakistan without assurances and help, that help was not something new, it was well established.
Interesting how the two countries probably most involved in 9/11, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are also our allies in the region. I am glad Pakistan is mad at us and Obama, it shows Obama did stand up for us and take a stand.
Anyway the other thing Obama should claim credit for is how he handled the Arab Spring. The uprising of democracy in Arab countries is the best chance for true change in the region, not our various invasions and occupations. I mean would Bush have supported the Egypt uprising? I mean these guys were our friends and I remember all of the neo cons all worried that the Islamist movement would take over. Well they might, but that is the will of the people not these thugs who run these places.
Pretty much all true Mervel. Except, as bad as the Pakistani ISI is I don’t believe even they would have helped with the 9/11 attacks.