On spiking the football

I have been somewhat critical of the way Obama has handled this Osama bin Laden killing.  It began with all the celebrations of his killing, it seemed to stand all the rhetoric about "we're not that kind of people" sentiment on its head.  Then there was the way they seem to hem and haw their way around showing bin Laden's picture while saying there was no need to "spike the football", all due to this heightened sensitivity that they claim to have.  If he handled things so well, why dispatch somebody to smooth over the ruffled feathers of the Pakistanis?  Did he not needlessly introduce complications in our relations?

First of all, Obama and his minions are not being quite accurate, they are indeed spiking the football.  After all, why mention the killing at all, except to politicize it in just the way that they are doing.

If Obama continues to mention Bin Laden’s death, he may face his own accusations from Republicans that he’s politicizing 9/11. But as long as Obama refrains from spiking the football, so to speak, they won’t have anything to complain about.

He is spiking the football.  But he is doing it for the sake of domestic politics.  Just the mentioning of the operation risked the delicate Pakistani relationship.  Maybe we don't care about that, but we ought to wait at least until our troops are out of harms way.  He has jeopardized their position there for the sake of his own poltical future.

You can tell that that his friends in the media are doing some damage control.  They are invoking the old argument about Iraq v Afghanistan.  There is the either-or fallacy.  Bush's Iraq war v Democrats advocacy of killing leaders.  Since when is it either or?  Why can't democracy be promoted along with going after the likes of bin Laden?  And besides, this is just what Bush was doing anyway.  Why claim this either or when in fact, it was Bush who was going after Al Qaeda with a vengeance himself.  This entire article here is to promote the idea the it should have been Obama's strategy instead of the one Bush took.   But does killing bin Laden really take care of terrorism?  Is the war now over just because bin Laden is dead?  Or has it entered an even more dangerous phase?  Could Obama be placing his own interests ahead of the country's interests, and thereby placing the country in greater danger?

So, what could he have done differently?  Why publicize the killing?  If the interest was in getting bin Laden, why spike the football and risk damaging relations to those in Pakistan who up to now were willing to help us, even if it was grudgingly given and not necessarily what we would have liked.  It was better than nothing, which is what we may now get because of this.  Could it have been done secretly?  No, not exactly.  We did lose a helicopter, so you couldn't keep that a secret.  But you could have notified the Pakistanis and let them find a way to save face.  This is a relatively low risk way of handling the matter.  Why?  Well, the backup plan would have been to release all the details about the killing.  Instead, we could have given them a discreet way to handling the situation on the ground there and spared them the humiliation that they now have to endure because of Obama's grandstanding.

It is his grandstanding for public opinion back here that is endangering the interests of America.  So all the talk about not spiking the football is just as much baloney as his claiming that we are not that kind of people.  If we weren't, he would have brought Osama back here for trial, just like Michael Moore says.  But, the reality is that he couldn't risk that.  Just imagine holding an OJ Simpson type trial for Osama here in the USA.  Imagine what that would have meant if we lost that trial.  He would have had to be set free.  Obama could never risk that.  In the end, Osama was killed in order to help Obama in the polls.  And that, my friends, is spiking the football, against the Republicans and the Pakistanis, and it isn't good diplomacy.  But it may be good politics, at least for awhile.