Reason #15: Theft Of the Accomplishments Of Others–Stolen Valor
Categories: Lying to the public; unwarranted self-aggrandizement, narcissism of epic proportions
If the accounts of Mr. Obama and his sycophants are to be taken as truth, Barack Obama is the most courageous, brilliant, daring and accomplished Commander In Chief the nation has ever been blessed to have. I speak, of course, of the May 08, 2011 raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. Vice President Biden was most impressed:
You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan.
Mr. Biden’s historical gaffes are the stuff of legend, but this particular whopper is amazingly foolish, primarily because Mr. Biden is suggesting that Mr. Obama bears primary responsibility for the plan and its success. The most dim-witted student of military history can easily come up with extraordinarily audacious plans and raids, even in the last half century, such as the raid on the Son Tay prison camp (11-21-70), the raid and hostage rescue at Entebe (07-04-76), the raid on the Iranian Osirak nuclear reactor (06-07-81), and the whole of Operation Desert Storm that in 100 hours of the ground campaign (02-24-2000), defeated the fourth biggest army in the world. Of course, Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden have never allowed the truth to get in the way of a good progressive narrative, nor have they failed to employ even the most outrageous lies for the same purpose.
During my police service, I worked with an officer infamous for spiking footballs others carried. His most predictable method involved missing children. Whenever a missing child–particularly an infant–was found, he would intercept the officer returning the child to its parents at the sidewalk, snatch the child from the officer’s arms, and present it to the grateful parents, the better to bask in the glory of acts he had no part in. Those that make the plans, take the risks, accomplish significant, meaningful things, tend not to blow their own horns. They have nothing but contempt for cowards and slackers that take credit for valor they have not earned.
Senator John McCain can certainly speak to issues of honor and valor. On the April 30, 2012 edition of The O’Reilly Factor, McCain, speaking of Mr. Obama’s bragging, observed that any president would have authorized the raid:
‘[Any president] obviously under those circumstances would have done the same thing. And to now take credit for something any president would do is indicative of the kind of campaign we’re seeing.’
He went on to say, ‘I’ve had the great honor of serving in the company of heroes. And you know the thing about heroes? They don’t brag.’
Just so, Senator McCain, just so.
In a May 02, 2012 MSNBC article followed by a prime time NBC interview, Mr. Obama doubled down on the narrative, casting himself as even more brilliant and heroic than is likely possible for mere human beings to be. The interview and story are full of the hallmarks of any Obama utterance—”I,” “me,” and “my”—because any topic, any bold and heroic action, is by definition all about Mr. Obama.
Following are a representative sampling of comments from the article and interview:
President Barack Obama describes the killing of Osama bin Laden as the ‘most important single day’ of his presidency and said that the decision to carry out the raid was one that he had to ultimately make alone.
Really? That’s not what he told Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), as reported by the Weekly Standard on March 20, 2012:
‘Last time I saw the president I asked he what he was most proud of…I didn’t know what he was going to say…He said he is most proud of having passed health care and providing health care to 40 million Americans who didn’t have health care in 2014.’
I suspect this is one time that Rep. Maloney, and the American people, can take Mr. Obama at his word.
‘I did choose the risk,’ the president said in an exclusive interview with Rock Center Anchor and Managing Editor Brian Williams.
There are inherent risks in virtually every decision made by the President of the United States. Commenting on it is rather like observing that one chose to chew their food when sitting down to eat. And of course, it’s all about Mr. Obama. It was his momentous choice that made all glory possible, and it was risky. Didn’t anyone tell him being POTUS would be, you know, kind of–hard?
There is, in fact, substantial evidence to suggest that Mr. Obama was incapable of making a decision, and that his primary advisor, Chicago slum lord Valerie Jarrett, would not allow him to give it in any case. CIA Director Leon Panetta, acting in concert with the military assets, including Admiral McRaven, reportedly actually did an end run around Mr. Obama. Without their manipulations, the raid probably would not have occurred.
‘Even a breath of this in the press could have chased bin Laden away,’ Obama said.
One week later, it looked like weather conditions in Pakistan would be perfect for the raid — a moonless night with clear skies. If the raid didn’t happen that night, it could be months before weather conditions would be appropriate again for this high-risk operation.
It is little known and seldom commented upon, but even in the bold and heroic White House narrative, Mr. Obama was in no hurry to make the decision. In fact, despite the fact that this mission was being planned and discussed for months prior to Mr. Obama making the final decision, his indecisive, last-minute dithering, set the mission back by two days.
During the meeting [the afternoon of 04-28-11], the president never indicated which way he was leaning. After the discussion, he dismissed his team and said he’d have a decision in the morning. He had dinner with his family and then went to his study after his wife and daughters went to bed. The next morning, in the Diplomatic Room of the White House, he told his national security advisers that the mission was a go.
Again, Mr. Biden was very, very impressed.
‘It is one of those rare moments when you know that the man you’re watching is putting everything on the line,’ Biden said. ‘Everything on the line. Not only risking the lives of these incredible, incredible warriors, but also knowing that if he’s wrong about this man, he’s going to pay a very, very high price for it.’
Uh, Mr. Biden, don’t we pay the POTUS to make those kinds of decisions? Don’t we expect him to do what’s right for America first, and to consider his political fortunes second, if at all? It’s big of Mr. Biden to mention the SEALS, but notice gentle readers, what are Mr. Biden’s first priorities, and those of the Obama Administration.
During the afternoon of April 28, 2011, Mr. Obama met with the principals involved. The troops were ready to go. Rather than making a decision, he told them he’d sleep on it. Consider that: on the other side of the world, the troops are ready, in the newest version of his heroic decision making, he knew the decision had to be quickly made as bad weather was forecast, everything was in place for a mission months in the planning and rehearsing, and he slept on it. He was actually considering not authorizing the mission!
On the morning of April 29, 2011, he authorized the mission. By that point, the man worried that a breath of the raid in the press could have chased Bin Laden away, had already unnecessarily wasted a day. His indecision cost an additional day. The forecast bad weather arrived, and the raid had to be postponed until May 01, 2011. The man supposedly concerned about leaks and security cost two additional, completely unnecessary days because he was actually considering not authorizing the mission.
The killing of the 9/11 mastermind had been years in the making, a mission that Obama’s two predecessors had been unable accomplish. President Bill Clinton fired 75 cruise missiles trying to kill bin Laden while President George W. Bush was frustrated by the al-Qaeda leader’s ability to evade capture.
It was only the infrastructure and planning put into place by President Bush, and the hard work of our military and intelligence assets over many years that made the raid possible. In fact, the enhanced interrogation techniques stopped by President Obama were instrumental in obtaining the most important piece of the puzzle in 2007: the identity of Bin Laden’s personal courier. Mr. Obama has consistently blamed Mr. Bush for his (Obama’s) failings, and he compounds his dishonor by refusing to give Mr. Bush the credit due him.
In March of 2011, the president ordered Admiral William McRaven, then commander of Joint Special Operations, to outline a possible raid on the suspected bin Laden compound.
‘I remember the moment in the Sit Room with General McRaven,’ [Hillary] Clinton said, ‘and, you know, someone said, ‘Well, this sounds really dangerous and we’re going to expose our guys and what do we know is going to happen?’ And he said, ‘Well, with all due respect, we’ve done this hundreds of times.’
The Commander In Chief and his top advisors—including the Secretary of State–have no idea that SEALS and other SF operators do dangerous things? They have no idea that our military trains to go harm’s way, and that they live for that opportunity? Obviously, we wouldn’t have been any better off with Hillary Clinton answering that 0300 phone call in the White House.
The larger question is whether this suggests genuine concern for elite members of our military and intelligence agencies, or where this reflects far less noble political concerns.
There is also significant evidence to suggest that Admiral McRaven was set up by Mr. Obama to take the fall if the raid failed. As Ben Shapiro at Big Peace noted:
Only the memo doesn’t show a gutsy call. It doesn’t show a president willing to take the blame for a mission gone wrong. It shows a CYA maneuver by the White House.
The memo puts all control in the hands of Admiral McRaven – the ‘timing, operational decision making and control’ are all up to McRaven. So the notion that Obama and his team were walking through every stage of the operation is incorrect. The hero here was McRaven, not Obama. And had the mission gone wrong, McRaven surely would have been thrown under the bus.
Well, there would certainly be a great deal of bad company there, people like Mao-loving Anita Dunn, Communist Van Jones, the racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright and EPA crucifier Al Armendariz.
[Mr. Obama said] A lot of them [Navy SEALS and associated SF operators] had as much gray hair as you and me and, you know, if you had passed them on the street, you might have – and if they were in civilian clothes – you might have thought they were accountants or doctors or, you know, worked at Home Depot.
Mr. Obama is comparing himself–in a very strange way–with SEALS. Gentle readers, can you think of a more bizarre thing for the POTUS to say about the operators that executed the mission? What random thoughts rattle around in the empty, cobwebbed chambers of Mr. Obama’s mind? And notice, once again, how he worked himself into the comment. A strange, sort of backhanded, pseudo-compliment to the military has to reference, first and foremost, Mr. Obama.
‘The only thing that I was thinking about throughout this entire enterprise was, ‘I really want to get those guys back home safe,’ he [Obama] added. ‘I want to make sure that the decision I’ve made has not resulted in them putting their lives at risk in vain, and if I got that part of it right, if I could look myself in the mirror and say as commander in chief I made a good call.’
Of course. Mr. Obama wanted the troops to come home safe, but because it would reflect poorly on him if they did not. “I was thinking,” I really want,” “I want to make sure,” “”the decision I’ve made,” “If I got that part of it right,” “I could look myself in the mirror,” “I made a good call.” I don’t know about you gentle readers, but I’d be hard pressed to make so many references to myself in a 2000 word article, let alone a single paragraph, even if I was trying to do it.
‘At this point, I think all of us understand that we’re a long way to go before the night is done,’ Obama said. ‘And, you know, I’ve said this was the longest 40 minutes of my life.’
I suspect, Mr. Obama, that the 40 minutes were a bit more intense for the SEALS and other troops on the raid, and for their support in the intelligence community. Perhaps we should check with Rep. Maloney to see what Mr. Obama really thinks. My favorite in this category is Mr. Obama and his advisors biting their nails when Obamacare was being shot down in flames before the Supreme Court.
We can do no better than letting SEALS, present and past, deliver the final words in this article:
Ryan Zinke, a former Commander in the US Navy who spent 23 years as a SEAL and led a SEAL Team 6 assault unit, said: ‘The decision was a no brainer. I applaud him for making it but I would not overly pat myself on the back for making the right call.
I think every president would have done the same. He is justified in saying it was his decision but the preparation, the sacrifice – it was a broader team effort.’
Mr Zinke, who is now a Republican state senator in Montana, added that MR Obama was exploiting bin Laden’s death for his re-election bid. ‘The President and his administration are positioning him as a war president using the SEALs as ammunition. It was predictable.’
A serving SEAL Team member said:
‘Obama wasn’t in the field, at risk, carrying a gun. As president, at every turn he should be thanking the guys who put their lives on the line to do this. He does so in his official speeches because he speechwriters are smart.
‘But the more he tries to take the credit for it, the more the ground operators are saying, “Come on, man!” It really didn’t matter who was president. At the end of the day, they were going to go.’
The American military sniper with the highest number of kills also weighed in:
Chris Kyle, a former SEAL sniper with 160 confirmed and another 95 unconfirmed kills to his credit, said: ‘The operation itself was great and the nation felt immense pride. It was great that we did it.
‘But bin Laden was just a figurehead. The war on terror continues. Taking him out didn’t really change anything as far as the war on terror is concerned and using it as a political attack is a cheap shot.
‘In years to come there is going to be information that will come out that Obama was not the man who made the call. He can say he did and the people who really know what happened are inside the Pentagon, are in the military and the military isn’t allowed to speak out against the commander- in-chief so his secret is safe.’
Final Thoughts:
If Mr. Obama had refused to authorize the mission—and he was plainly considering it—that would have been not only remarkable but probably treasonous. Authorizing the mission was the least any POTUS should have done. What American president would have even thought about not authorizing the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden? What American president with America’s best interests at heart…oh.
Honorable men expect no praise for doing what they are expected to do, for doing their jobs. At best, any praise directed toward Mr. Obama should be with the understanding that he was actually considering not doing the mission. We are, in effect, praising him because he didn’t obstruct a mission any other president would have authorized in a heartbeat.
What a small, unjustifiably arrogant, anti-American man we’ve elected to rule us.
Stately McDaniel Manor 
Obama’s part was a no brainer. Even on its face, the 9/11 attack was more audacious for those carrying it out than this raid was for Obama.
You know what was a really audacious risk for a politician in the last 500 years? When John Hancock wrote his name extra large so King George could read it without his glasses. When a small region defied the world Superpower of the time.
Obama would have never signed the Declaration of Independence. Obama isn’t John Hancock — he’s Thomas Hutchinson.
You right-wingers would like to see our country attacked again just so you can politicize it and say it was Obama’s fault. Reagan created Al Qaeda in the late 1980s. Bush allowed us to be attacked and let Bin Laden get away. Republicans are miserable failures when it comes to security so the only thing you can do is whine about petty crap like this. You didn’t have a problem with Bush raising the terror threat level for political purposes just before the 2004 election.
Dear Ben Hoffman:
You’re kidding right? I want to see America attacked and Americans killed? I don’t recall writing anything like that, ever. I can’t speak for others, but I want precisely the opposite, and as weakness invites war, I’d very much like Mr. Obama and his “smart diplomacy” and leading from behind, that has greatly worsened things in the Middle East and elsewhere, given the opportunity to do really important things such as play golf.
The genesis of Al Qaeda preceded Mr. Reagan and can properly be placed in the Carter Administration when the Iranians declared war on us, and killed more than 80 Americans around the world prior to 9-11. Mr. Bush, as you may recall, was in office only a matter of months prior to 9-11 and was working to rebuild the intelligence and military capabilities that Jimmy Carter and then Bill Clinton greatly diminished. Sorry, but he didn’t “allow us to be attacked,” and as to Bin Laden getting away, finding one man in a large world is a difficult task. It was the programs, policies and enhanced intelligence assets Mr. Bush put into place, most of which were continued by Mr. Obama despite his rhetoric to the contrary, that eventually allowed us to find and kill Bin Laden.
As to republicans being failures at national security, I suggest you do a bit more reading as, since at least the Carter Administration, Democrats have constantly sought to diminish our intelligence gathering abilities and degrade our military capabilities. I believe those two issues have a somewhat significant impact on national security.
As always, I’ll rely on my readers to determine whether this series constitutes “petty crap,” or whether my writing amounts to “whining.” And I’m afraid I’m not aware of your assertion that Mr. Bush “raised the terror threat level for political purposes…” Proof, please.
Thanks for your comment.
No, rather than look at facts objectively, you simply look for ways to blame Democrats and repeat right-wing propaganda. You people are destroying our country with your bitter partisanship and lies. There’s no doubt in my mind that you’s would indeed like to see our country attacked if it would get your party back in power. You’re nothing but a little sheep following your political party blindly.
Dear Ben Hoffman:
For one who knows nothing about me, you make many assumptions. I simply provide facts–and the resources to prove them such–and venture analysis. If you believe I’m factually incorrect, I always welcome information to the contrary. If I’m wrong, I’ll promptly correct it. If you believe my analysis is illogical, please explain why you think that to be the case. I’ll be happy to discuss it with you or any reader.
But accusing me–and “you people,” whoever they might be–of destroying the country and lying, without providing any examples or proof of mendacity doesn’t meet the minimum standards of this site. For your information, my “party” is the Constitution. Three times in my life, I’ve sworn an oath to uphold and defend it, and I served in the military in that pursuit.
If you continue to read this scruffy little blog, you’ll discover I take to task bad ideas and policies, regardless of who is pushing them. In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you’d engage the ideas and propositions presented here rather than expressing anger or engaging in name calling.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.
Ha! Now you’re blaming 9/11 on Carter? That’s a riot. In just the “few months” that Bush was in office before the attack he had bombed Iraq, got his reckless tax cuts passed that paved the way to our nearly $16 trillion in debt, canceled the space shuttle replacement, and had taken a month long vacation. But yeah, he was still unpacking. He didn’t have time to look at all the warnings.
Dear Ben Hoffman:
No, I didn’t blame 9-11 on Jimmy Carter. I merely pointed out the indisputable facts that the modern Jihadist movement can be traced to his administration and to policies during his term in office–and that of Bill Clinton (who had several chances to have Bin Laden on a silver platter but refused them)–that weakened our intelligence capabilities and our military.
A few other facts:
(1) Mr. Bush put into motion long term plans to cancel the space shuttle program–the technology was ancient and wearing out–and replace it with another system that would accomplish the same tasks. Mr. Obama cancelled that replacement program and now we have to pay the Russians–whose safety record is abominable–for passage into space.
(2) Hostilities toward Iraq occurred after 9-11 and in response to it.
(3) Mr. Bush began and fought the war on terror, an expensive proposition. It was the democrat controlled congress—people forget they were in charge for years before Mr. Obama–that spent the money. Presidents can only suggest spending. The House spends it. Even so, Mr. Obama holds the all-time record for amount and speed in encumbering debt.
I’m unfamiliar with this “month long vacation” to which you refer. Mr. Bush took occasional vacations–at his own home in Texas–where there were more than sufficient facilities for him to simultaneously work, which he did. Again, if you have evidence to support this contention, please provide it.
By the way, why are you so angry? I’ve treated you with kindness and respectfully answered you. Is this worth nothing to you?
No, Bill Clinton did not have several chances to get Bin Laden, you brainwashed little sheep. That’s why you can’t find any legitimate source to back up that ridiculous statement. You lie to defend your political party, which makes you anti-American.
Dear Ben Hoffman:
“Brainwashed little sheep?” I’m sorry, but you’ll not be commenting on this site in the future. I’ve treated your comments sincerely and civilly and never engaged in name calling. You have your own site and those who appreciate this kind of incivility and anger can read you there.
But just for your information, here are five separate citations regarding Mr. Clinton’s failure to capture Bin Laden:
Newsmax: http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/9/10/181819.shtml
The Telegraph (not exactly a right wing publication): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1440359/Clinton-missed-chance-to-get-rid-of-bin-Laden.html
Newsbusters: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/04/28/media-miss-hypocrisy-clinton-claiming-romney-wouldnt-have-killed-bin
LATimes (again, not exactly a right wing publication): http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowledge/Clinton_let_bin_laden.htm
Accuracy In Media (Buzz Patterson): http://www.aim.org/aim-column/interview-with-retired-lt-col-buzz-patterson-on-obama-clinton-and-national-security/
The most interesting is Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson (USAF Ret.). Col. Patterson was the liaison officer that carried the nuclear “football” in the Clinton White House. In other words, he was actually there and has direct knowledge about this and other issues, including the time Mr. Clinton actually lost the cards with nuclear launch codes every president is required to carry. He didn’t tell anyone and Col. Patterson only found out when it was time for a scheduled check. The cards were never found.
Again, thank you for your comments, but we require polite discourse here.