Freedom Line Blog

After a stunning recitation of the facts of the Bin Laden raid culled from interviews with Seal Team 6 members who participated in it, a former team leader (Pfarrer) says that the reason the Seals are breaking their customary code of silence is the gross misrepresentations propagated by the Obama Administration.

What infuriated the Seals, according to Pfarrer, was the description of the raid as a kill mission. “I’ve been a Seal for 30 years and I never heard the words ‘kill mission’,” he said. “It’s a Beltway (Washington insider’s) fantasy word. If it was a kill mission you don’t need Seal Team 6; you need a box of hand grenades.”

Add military terminology to the litany of policy subjects the president and his liberal cohort are jarringly unfamiliar with.  “Beltway fantasies,” indeed.

Note: A previous version of this post contained a broken hyperlink.  Google “Bitter Seals tell of killing ‘Bert’ Laden.”  Great stuff.

For John McCain — who has never met an evil anywhere on earth that doesn’t require Spartanesque military might from the U.S. — Republicans that question America’s role in Libya and the continued need for a large footprint in Afghanistan are part of a worrying trend. As the Los Angeles Times reports:

“There has always been an isolationist strain in the Republican Party,” McCain said on ABC’s “This Week,” “but now it seems to have moved more center stage…. That is not the Republican Party that has been willing to stand up for freedom for people all over the world.”

McCain is engaging here in the logic fallacy known as “hasty generalization”. Just because some Republicans question the utility of some military missions, it doesn’t follow that they have a principled and categorical objection to America acting overseas. Tony Blankley makes the point with his trademark gusto in his column in today’s Washington Times:

… Almost two years ago, I was one of the first GOP internationalist-oriented commentators or politicians to conclude that the Afghan war effort had served its initial purpose, but it was time to phase out the war. As a punitive raid against the regime that gave succor to Osama bin Laden, we removed the Taliban government and killed as many al Qaeda and Taliban as possible.

But as the purpose of that war turned into nation-building, even GOP internationalists have a duty to reassess whether, given the resources and strategy, such policy is likely to be effective (see about a dozen of my columns on Afghan war policy from 2009-10).

Now many others in the GOP and in the non-isolationist wing of the Democratic Party are likewise judging failure in Afghanistan to be almost inevitable. That is not a judgment driven by isolationism. Neither are we – along with Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and almost the entire uniformed chain of command – isolationist when we see no national interest in Libya.

This is not isolationism. It is a rational effort at judging how best to advance American values and interests in an ever-more witheringly dangerous world. The charge of isolationism should be reserved for the genuine article. Such name-calling advances neither rational debate nor national interest.

Bravo to Blankley. McCain is an honorable man — but one who ought to be a little more careful when throwing around ideological labels.

In an interview with CFIF, Jed Babbin, foreign policy expert and former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, discusses what’s next in the global war on terrorism following the death of Osama bin Laden.

Listen to the interview here.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has had an uneven tenure at the Pentagon. In his time serving both the Bush and Obama Administrations, Gates has often been a voice of prudence. At other times, however, he has sounded like a facile opinion columnist, as when he paraphrased Douglas MacArthur to a group of West Point cadets earlier this year, saying, “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.” Defense secretaries craft policy in reaction to specific conditions throughout the world. As such, it’s unwise for one of them to opine in such absolute terms — particularly when their words could be used to unjustly assail one of their successors.

Gates is right, however, about the aftermath of the assasination of Osama Bin Laden. As Politico reports today:

The amount of information released about the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound has raised concerns about jeopardizing future missions, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Wednesday.

“My concern is that there were too many people in too many places talking too much about this operation. And we [had] reached agreement that we would not talk about the operational details,” he told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. “I am very concerned about this, because we want to retain the capability to carry out these kinds of operations in the future.”

The code of silence shouldn’t be limited to operational details, however. In the aftermath of Bin Laden’s death, it would have been best for the military and intelligence community to act as if there was little real intelligence to be gleaned from Obama’s Abbottabad hideout, thus keeping from the enemy the fact that our knowledge of terrorist identities and operations was growing exponentially.

Since that cat’s already out of the bag, it’s essential that no information of a more specific variety gets out. The intelligence we collected represents a great asset. But keeping members of a worldwide terrorist network on the run because they’re unsure about what we know is an even bigger one.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Hillyer:  To Run DNC, Wasserman Schultz Be Illin’
Ellis:  Gunrunner Scandal Beating a Path to AG Holder’s Door
Lee:  U.S. Tipping Point: 51% of Households Now Pay No Income Taxes
Senik:  Bin Laden and “The End of the Beginning”

Freedom Minute Video:  Justice, At Last
Podcast:  Early Predictions on the 2012 Presidential Field
Jester’s Courtroom:  Momentary Baby Switch Not Grounds for Lawsuit

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino comments on the death of Osama bin Laden.  “Bin Laden’s death is a truly momentous moment in American history,” says Giachino. “But while we should all celebrate his demise, we must also remain vigilant in our continuing war against Islamic extremists.”

The New York Daily News carries a shameless story today seeking to sow controversy over President Bush’s decision not to join President Obama for today’s ceremony at Ground Zero:

WASHINGTON – George W. Bush won’t be at Ground Zero with President Obama Thursday in part because he feels his team is getting short shrift in the decade-long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden.

“[Bush] viewed this as an Obama victory lap,” a highly-placed source told the Daily News Wednesday.

Bush’s visit to the rubble after the 9/11 attacks was the emotional high point of his presidency, but associates say the invitation to return with his successor was a non-starter.

Those of us who served President Bush know that the NYDN’s account has nothing to do with reality. The former president’s ethos, particularly in retirement, has always been to put the needs of the current president — and the nation — above his own. His decision not to attend the ceremony was a gesture of respect toward the president who caught Bin Laden, not a snub born of petulance. The Daily News’ anonymous source is unnamed for a reason: he or she is unreliable. The paper should be ashamed.

As President Barack Obama meets with family members of 9/11 victims in New York today, I hope his press operation back in Washington, D.C. is deciding how to get out of its own way.

Since news leaked of bin Laden’s death on Sunday, the White House communications shop has had to revise, rephrase, and walk back several details of the raid.

Was Osama using one of his wives as a human shield?  No, apparently she voluntarily rushed a Navy SEAL and was wounded.

Was Osama waving a gun at the SEALs?  No, he was unarmed.

Then, pictures of the dead Osama were promised to prove his demise.  Now, we’re told that no pictures will be released and to focus instead on “[t]he broader point…that a group of extraordinary US personnel flew into a foreign country in the dead of night and…flawlessly executed a mission…”

Had fumbling White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and the rest of the Obama Administration focused themselves on such a tight version of events, we probably wouldn’t be distracted with all the post-op corrections.

This kind of ineptitude not only makes Team Obama look incompetent; it makes them look like they can’t tell a good story without ham-handedly putting themselves in the middle of it.

In the wake of Osama Bin Laden’s demise, it may be all too easy to forget about the other poweful madmen who continue to be the authors of human suffering throughout the world. One prime example: the leaders of North Korea. Slate reports the disturbing news from the hermit kingdom:

Former Department of Justice official John Yoo is helping set the record straight on how much credit the Obama Administration should be sharing with its predecessor.

Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, Yoo makes the case that the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound would have been impossible without Bush era policies such as warrantless wiretapping and enhanced interrogation techniques – both critically important to finding the terrorist mastermind.

And the credit-shifting doesn’t stop there.  When asked by NBC News’ Brian Williams whether waterboarding was used to extract information from detainees, CIA chief Leon Panetta evaded answering.

Here’s the relevant excerpt, courtesy of RealClearPolitics:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: I’d like to ask you about the sourcing on the intel that ultimately led to this successful attack. Can you confirm that it was as a result of waterboarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after bin Laden?

LEON PANETTA: You know Brian, in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information, and that was true here. We had a multiple source — a multiple series of sources — that provided information with regards to this situation. Clearly, some of it came from detainees and the interrogation of detainees. But we also had information from other sources as well. So, it’s a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got.

WILLIAMS: Turned around the other way, are you denying that waterboarding was in part among the tactics used to extract the intelligence that led to this successful mission?

PANETTA: No, I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I’m also saying that, you know, the debate about whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always going to be an open question.

WILLIAMS: So, finer point, one final time, enhanced interrogation techniques — which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years — that includes waterboarding?

PANETTA: That’s correct.

President Barack Obama may not have to defend the chasm between his campaign rhetoric denouncing the Bush Administration’s policies and his use of those same tactics to find and kill bin Laden.  Don’t expect Panetta, his nominee to be the next Secretary of Defense, to be so lucky in his Senate confirmation hearings.

In a new commentary on the death of Osama Bin Laden out today, I wrote:

Bin Laden’s death also reminds us of just how intemperate the climate is amongst our fair-weather friends in the War on Terror. Consider: Pakistani officials were not notified of the operation until its completion, despite the fact that American forces were opened up to the prospect of attack as a result. The only calculation that could justify such a risk? That elements within the Pakistani government may have tipped off Bin Laden if they had the relevant intelligence.

No sooner had the piece been published than Politico reported this nugget from Langley:

The Obama administration didn’t tell Pakistani officials about its plans to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound out of fear that they might warn the Al Qaeda leader or his supporters about the mission, according to CIA director Leon Panetta.

Early on in the planning of the attack, “it was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission” because “they might alert the targets,” Panetta told Time Magazine, which on Tuesday morning published Panetta’s first interview since bin Laden was killed.

For the past decade, America has spared the rod in its relationship with Pakistan because of the conviction that the country’s shortcomings were outweighed by its partnership in the War on Terror. If the leadership there couldn’t be trusted to assist tracking down the biggest target in that war, it would represent a failure. But if it was actively abetting the enemy, it represents a betrayal. America should respond accordingly.

President Obama’s address to the American people on the death of Osama bin Laden.

Say what you will about Gary Brooks Faulkner’s quest to find and kill Osama bin Laden in the region between Pakistan and Afghanistan; at least the terminally ill man has a bucket list.

According to reporting by Fox News, Faulkner suffers from an incurable kidney ailment that left him wanting to go out with a bang before he died.  This from his brother:

“Now that he’s on dialysis he realized that this is going to be his last hurrah,” said Dr. Scott Faulkner, an internist in Fort Morgan, Colo. “One way or the other he knew — if his kidneys failed him, he could die on the mountain, he could take a bullet, or he could get bin Laden.”

Faulkner is trained in the Korean martial art of hapkido, was on his seventh trip to execute America’s #1 enemy, and was armed with a pistol, 40 inch sword and night vision equipment.  He’s also savvy enough to get dialysis treatment for his ailing kidneys in between scouting remote forests and mountain ranges.

It’s unclear whether Faulkner will be returned to America or stand trial in Pakistan.  Either way, that the Pakistani government would arrest him for doing what it’s failed to do since 2001 seems counterproductive.  After all, if a highly motivated foreigner wants to risk his life in Waziristan attempting to kill Pakistan’s – and America’s – most lethal enemy, why not let him die trying?  Let’s let Gary be a force multiplier and see if he can at least spook bin Laden out of hiding.

Taking a bit of time off from his day job as Iran’s Centifuger-in-Chief, the ever lovable and always insightful Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has confided to ABC’s equally cuddly George Snuffleupagus that he’s been hearing Osama bin Laden is living in Washington.

At least it’s not Lindsay Lohan or John Edwards. 

Someone please tell Janet Napolitano to send a memo suggesting that Osama be kept off White House guest lists.  Since she’s having so much trouble over other lists, she may have missed that potential embarrassment.

In his book “America Alone”, Mark Steyn discusses the “strong horse, weak horse” theory of foreign affairs. When terrorists like Osama bin Laden see a strong horse and a weak horse, they will necessarily like the strong horse. Traditionally, weakness was shown by the absence of power. Among many modern nations, it is evidenced by the refusal to use power. In either case, weakness is a provocation to those seeking to do harm.

And, as Ivan Krastev describes in today’s Washington Post, President Obama’s weakness on foreign affairs – silence on the killings of Iranian dissidents, making nice with dictators, bowing to the Japanese emperor – is signaling an over matched man in critical times. The Russians are familiar with a leader whose celebrity masks his country’s drop in prestige.

Obama himself is largely viewed in Russia as the American Mikhail Gorbachev, but Russians are less impressed than other Europeans have been with Obama’s brilliance and rock-star popularity. They remember the Gorbi-mania that conquered the globe at the moment the Soviet Union was about to crumble. Russians are tempted to view Obama’s global reformism and his progressive agenda as an expression of American weakness and not as an expression of America’s regained strength and legitimacy.

What does all this mean for the “reset” policy? First, it means that Russians will not be in a hurry to respond to the positive signals coming from Washington, and any perception of Washington weakness will diminish Moscow’s willingness to cooperate even in areas of common interest and common concern. It is not Obama’s deference but his strength that can persuade the Kremlin to cooperate with Washington. Simply put, to persuade Russians to join him, Obama must first demonstrate that he does not need them. He needs a clear victory, whether against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear ambition or Beijing’s habit of devaluing its currency. Obama must show strength for the “reset” policy to succeed.

Chances are Obama’s decision tonight to send less than the requested amount of troops to Afghanistan will do nothing to achieve either a clear victory in Afghanistan or more esteem for the Russians (or anyone else for that matter).