Obama, Osama, the Navy Seals, who deserves credit and who is ultimately responsible

Republicans are crying foul that President Obama is taking credit for the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, and that he should not run adds pointing out how Mitt Romney criticized in 2007 when then Senator Obama and candidate for the Democratic Party said that if the intelligence showed that Osama was in Pakistan he would go and catch him.

President Obama took a chance, as he had his vice-president, the secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State and the head of the joint chiefs of staff advising him not to go ahead with the mission, and the president went on his own on that. I said he took a chance because if the mission would have failed his head would have rolled. We know that the ultimately the ones who landed in Pakistan were the United States Navy Seal, an elite group of the brave armed forces of this country, but the president was the one who gave the order, and thus he is responsible for the outcome. So although we have to give credit where credit is due, we cannot take away the weight that the commander of chief has.

As far as the republicans I find all this hilarious. I say that because in 2004 then President Bush campaigned on the “failure” of the administration with the attack of 09/11, and why we should trust him on the war on terror on his “success” of 09/11. In 2008 more than one of the hopefuls during the republican primary also campaigned about 09/11 as if they should be proud of it, primarily Rudy Giuliani. I was under the impression that you can brag about your successes and not your failures, and 09/11 was a screw up of the Bush Administration, not a success.

I guess republicans, at the end of the day, are jealous that it was President Obama who put the Navy Seals in harms away for a sensible mission, and not like President Bush said in 2002, only a few months  after the attacks: “Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not. We haven’t heard from him in a long time. The idea of focusing on one person really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than one person. He’s just a person who’s been marginalized. … I don’t know where he is. I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.” President Bush had opportunities of catching Bin Laden but it was President Obama who gave the order.

Republicans will have to live with this.