We interrupt this disgustingly useless news cycle about Fairytale Weddings, Child Molestation Enabling Saints and Presidential Campaigns by Bankrupted Reality Television Hosts to bring you some news that actually matters: Osama bin Laden is dead. And no, he wasn't found in Iraq.
I'm not one to get wrapped up in the flag or get all wet at the sound of Toby Keith. I've also never bought into any of America's recent boogeymen, be it Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Mullah Omar or Trans Fats. All they do is serve to cheapen the dialogue and debate. Osama bin Laden's death does not restore all that is right in the world, and if you knew on September 12th that he'd live another 9.5 years later, you'd probably be pretty damn pissed.
What the operation has proved however - and this clearly isn't the first time - is that the grown ups are in charge now.
During the Presidential campaigns - both Primary and General - Barack Obama was resolute in stating that should unmistakable intelligence arise that Bin Laden was in Pakistan, he'd go right in and take him out. First he was killed by Hillary Clinton, John Edwards (remember him?) and Chris Dodd. Then he was killed by John McCain - who also said he'd walk through the gates of hell to get him.
Not a peep of criticism for the action from any of them today.
We suffered through 8 years of George Bush's cowboy talk. We were going to get Osama "Dead or Alive". We were going to "smoke'em out of their holes". Allegedly we had him trapped in the mountains of Afghanistan, but then we decided "Fuck it, let's go get Saddam".
We watched President Bush mock the inability to find those WMD during a photo slideshow at the White House Correspondents dinner. We watched President Bush tell Mike Brown he was doing "A heckuva job" as New Orleans drowned. We watched him walk hand-in-hand with Saudi Royalty as gas prices rose. We watched Dick Cheney out CIA agents who disagreed with his assertions about the WMD, then watched President Bush pardon the man found guilty of the leak.
We watched a draft dodger paint a war hero as a coward. We watched rednecks burn Dixie Chick records. We saw the Senate have an emergency session to intervene in the case of a woman suffering through a 2 decade coma. Bush's press secretary said we need to "watch what we say". We had the "Terror Threat Level" raised right after the 2004 Democratic National Convention. We had to deal with Rudy Giuliani. Oh, and despite all of this, we saw the global economy crumble.
I have many disagreements with President Obama. Primarily because he's not anything like the monster that his detractors claim. He's not socialist enough. He tries too hard to work with his opponents. He's too pro-business.
Sometimes I think liberals like myself try to make Obama into something he's not. He never campaigned on Single Payer health care. He promised to escalate the action in Afghanistan. He made a pledge to work together in a bipartisan factor. Is it his fault for not being Che Guevara? Or our fault for falsely expecting him to be?
Most refreshingly, Obama doesn't resort lowbrow tactics to get the job done. I heard more times than I can count that I was "hurting the troops" when I criticized the President, but you don't hear that emanating from the left these days. Nobody's telling the Teabaggers to "Love it Or Leave It".
Dan Rather lost his job for reporting on the shadiness involving Bush's records from his days in the Texas Air National Guard - a unit reserved for the sons of Texas' richest to avoid service in Vietnam. Yet every news organization under the sun openly reports on Obama's fucking birth certificate.
The goal posts are continually moved back for this guy. Some of it is from the left. But most of it is from the main stream. If George Bush saved the American Auto Industry from extinction, prevented a Recession from a Depression, enacted Bob Dole's healthcare reform and by the way, captured the most wanted man in history, we wouldn't be asking for his Birth Certificate. We'd be trying to repeal the 22nd Amendment to make him president for life.
I told a friend earlier today that I don't want to get into the dangerous territory of using Bush as a point of comparison. That's setting a bar too low to be effective. But for all the times I bitch about what Obama isn't politically, I need to take time to appreciate something else that he's not: A petty childish pissant.
George Bush was great at talking the talk. Barack Obama's more than content to simply walk the walk. Just ask Bin Laden.
