Politics and war in America

By Richard K. Barry


Republicans are landing on President Obama with full force for having the audacity to claim credit for killing Osama bin Laden as a part of his re-election bid. How dare he politicize one of the signal events of his administration. That's not how politics is played. Certainly a Republican president wouldn't do anything like that.

I'm not suggesting there is nothing unseemly in crowing about killing another person, even if it is bin Laden, as part of a political campaign. I'm only saying that a GOP president would have created a national holiday to commemorate the event had he or she been able to get it done. 

Republicans are pissed off about this because they didn't get it done and a Democratic president did. That's all this is. When Obama's campaign team runs on the suggestion that Mitt Romney might not have made the same decision, it's silly politics, but it's only a fraction of how this would have been played if the situation were reversed.

When I think of George W. Bush's ridiculous moment aboard an aircraft carrier in full military regalia to announce "mission accomplished" in Iraq, I really have to wonder how stupid Republicans think the American people are. So, that wasn't "policitizing" killing people? And let us not forget, it was politicizing killing people based on a lie, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and the suggestion that they were somehow involved in 9/11.

I think what really pisses Republicans off is the effectiveness of the Democrat's slogan: “Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” It's a keeper.

More than that, though, Republicans hate it when anything runs against their understanding of the world, especially on military matters. President Barack Obama wasn't supposed to be the one to kill bin Laden, and they can't stand it. It wasn't supposed to be that way.


(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)