Refuting the new spin

Now that we're in a post-bin Laden world, a new meme is growing up that the war on terror is over or was a distraction. In fact, the argument goes, we didn't need the whole apparatus established by President Bush that liberals have long criticized. Charles Krauthammer takes a metaphorical hammer to this emerging spin.

The bin Laden operation is the perfect vindication of the war on terror. It was made possible precisely by the vast, warlike infrastructure that the Bush administration created post-9/11, a fierce regime of capture and interrogation, of dropped bombs and commando strikes. That regime, of course, followed the more conventional war that brought down the Taliban, scattered and decimated al-Qaeda and made bin Laden a fugitive.

Without all of this, the bin Laden operation could never have happened. Whence came the intelligence that led to Abbottabad? Many places, including from secret prisons in Romania and Poland; from terrorists seized and kidnapped, then subjected to interrogations, sometimes “harsh” or “enhanced”; from Gitmo detainees; from a huge bureaucratic apparatus of surveillance and eavesdropping. In other words, from a Global War on Terror infrastructure that critics, including Barack Obama himself, deplored as a tragic detour from American rectitude.

Even the war in Afghanistan that Democrats thought was the essential war when they could use it to oppose the war in Iraq now is being portrayed as unnecessary to the task of taking down bin Laden.

Really? We could never have pulled off the bin Laden raid without a major military presence in Afghanistan. The choppers came from our massive base at Bagram. The jump-off point was Jalalabad. The intelligence-gathering drones fly over Pakistan by grace of an alliance (unreliable but indispensable) forged with the United States to fight the war in Afghanistan.

There is a reason why it is so important to push back on the argument that we can now declare victory and go back to a pre-9/11 approach to fighting terrorism.

You want to say we’ve now won the war? Fine. It’s at least an arguable proposition. After all, the war on terror will end one day, and we will return to policing the odd terrorist nut case. I would argue, however, that while bin Laden’s death marks an extremely important inflection point in the fight against jihadism, it’s far too early to declare victory.

Now, it is one thing to have an argument about whether it’s over. It’s quite another to claim that our reaching this happy day — during which we can even be debating whether victory has been achieved — has nothing to do with the war on terror of the previous decade. Al-Qaeda is not subsiding on its own. It is not retiring from the field, having seen the error of its ways. It is not disappearing because of some inexorable law of history or nature. It is in retreat because of the terrible defeats it suffered once America decided to take up arms against it, a campaign (once) known as the war on terror.

Obama's gangsta government

Kimberley Strassel points to the President's planned executive order to require all companies and their officers to list their political donations if they bid on government contacts. The Democrats tried to do this by passing the so-called Disclose Act. When they couldn't get that through the Congress, the President is expected to do what he can within the federal government to accomplish the Democrats' goal.

Companies can bid and lose out for the sin of donating to Republicans. Or they can protect their livelihoods by halting donations to the GOP altogether—which is the White House's real aim. Think of it as "not-pay to play."

Whatever you call it, the order amounts to the White House brazenly directing the power of government against its political opponents—and at a time when the president claims to want cooperation on the budget and other issues. Senate Republicans from Mitch McConnell to Susan Collins are fuming, warning this is one political sucker punch too far, an unabashedly partisan move that will damage Senate work.

Minority Leader McConnell in an interview calls the order the "crassest" political move he's ever seen. "This is almost gangster politics, to shut down people who oppose them. . . . I assure you that this going to create problems for them in many ways—seen and unseen—if they go forward."

That might not matter to a White House that's already monomaniacally focused on 2012. Democrats are obsessed with the money game, in particular rubbing out any GOP opportunities that came with the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision to restore some corporate free-speech rights. Democrats last year tried to ram through the Disclose Act, designed to muzzle those new corporate rights, while allowing unions to continue spending at will.

When the party failed to get the bill through even an overwhelmingly Democratic Senate, the White House stepped up. The draft order, which came out last month, would require federal bidders to supply a complete list of all political contributions made by the company, its political action committee, and its senior executives—going back two full years. (Richard Nixon would be impressed.) More astounding, the order requires the list to include donations made to third-party political groups—disclosure that is not currently required by law, and that is, as a result, surely unconstitutional.

Ever audacious, the White House is spinning this as "reform," claiming taxpayers deserve to know how federal dollars being paid to contractors are being spent in campaigns. This might hold (a drop of) water if the executive order also required all the (liberal) entities that get billions in taxpayer dollars via federal grants and funding—unions, environmental groups, Planned Parenthood—to disclose also. It doesn't.

So what will the federal government do with this information? Are they going to deny contracts to companies that contribute to Republican candidates? What reason would there be for the federal government to have that information except for the Democratic Party to use that information against companies?

It says something for how odious this is that one of the leaders against it is Senator Susan Collins, not your rabid Republican.

The whole reform language is "Orwellian," says Ms. Collins. It's a measure of the order's naked political nature that she's leading the pushback—spearheading a GOP letter to the president and briefing Republican senators at a policy lunch this week. This is the same Susan Collins who has bucked her party in the past on campaign-finance issues, voting for McCain-Feingold.

The administration's argument that this is about disclosure is "a fraud," she declares. The very notion "offends me deeply," she says, since the order undermines decades of work by her and others to ensure federal business is free of corruption of political influence.

The politics of the order have been so ugly that she argues the media has missed the equally profound policy implications. It's the "equivalent of repealing the Hatch Act," she argues, the seminal 1939 law designed to weed out federal pay-to-play.

It has taken decades to create a federal contracting system based on "best prices, best value, best quality," Ms. Collins says, and the effect of the Obama order is to again have "politics play a role in determining who gets contracts." Companies may choose not to bid, which will reduce competition and raise government costs. And the order puts "thousands of civil servants" who oversee contracting "in an impossible situation."

This is how partisanship enters into every aspect of life. One party crosses the line and then the other party, when it gets into power, will retaliate. A Republican president could rescind the order. Or could extend it to unions and liberal interest groups.

This order is questionable on constitutional grounds. Obama might not care figuring that the could get the information he wants in time for the 2012 election before the order could be struck down. Cynical gangsta government.

Joining SEAL Team 6

Here are a few details about what it takes to join the elites of the elite team that was dispatched to take down Osama bin Laden.

The men, hailed as heroes across the country, will march in no parades. They serve in what is unofficially called Seal Team 6, a unit so secretive that the White House and the Defense Department do not directly acknowledge its existence. Its members have hunted down war criminals in Bosnia, fought in some of the bloodiest battles in Afghanistan and shot three Somali pirates dead on a bobbing lifeboat during the rescue of an American hostage in 2009....

Inside the Navy, there are regular unclassified Seal members, organized into Teams 1 to 5 and 7 to 10. Then there is Seal Team 6, the elite of the elite, or, as Mr. Roberti put it, “the all-star team.”

Former Seal members said this week that the unit — officially renamed the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or Devgru — was chosen for the bloody Bin Laden raid, the most high-profile operation in the history of the Seals, because of the group’s skills in using lethal force intelligently in complex, ambiguous conditions.

All Seal members face years of brutal preparation, including a notorious six months of basic underwater demolition training in Coronado, Calif. During “hell week,” recruits get a total of four hours of sleep during five and a half days of nonstop running, swimming in the cold surf and rolling in mud. About 80 percent of the candidates do not make it; at least one has died.

For those who succeed, more training and then deployments follow. After several years on regular Seal teams, Team 6 candidates are taught to parachute from 30,000 feet with oxygen masks and gain control of a hijacked cruise liner at sea. Of those Seal members, about half make it.

There are thought to be about 300 members of Team 6, but its mere existence is classified and not acknowledged by the Defense Department. There were 79 people on the team that killed Osama. And we'll never know their names or be able to thank them in person. But they certainly burnished their image as the all stars of our special ops forces.

In a side note, my students are preparing for the Advanced Placement Government and Politics test on Tuesday. One of the zillions of little facts they've learned is about the Goldwater-Nichols Act and how it reorganized the command structure of our military. And so I was able to point out to them yesterday, as they reviewed that unit, that the Joint Special Operations Command that dispatched SEAL team 6 was created by Goldwater-Nichols. Talk about an extra connection to current events!

Is there anything that Eric Holder can't get involved in?

Yup, this is just what we need the Justice Department to be worrying about.

The Department of Justice has sent a letter to NCAA President Mark Emmert asking why the association does not have a major-college football playoff and it wants to know if Emmert believes some aspects of the Bowl Championship Series system do not serve the interests of fans, schools and players.

Holder is just curious. That's all.

Penn State law professor Stephen Ross, an antitrust expert who once worked for the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, called the letter "curious."

"It doesn't commit the Justice Department to anything," he said. "They haven't done any investigating, they just sent a letter."

Ross also found it "strange" for the department to make an inquiry public rather than send an investigator to talk to NCAA officials.

"They raise the question whether the BCS is operated not in a manner consistent with the principles of the antitrust law, as opposed to any suggestion in the letter that the BCS actually violates the antitrust law," Ross continued. "Then, (the letter) questions why doesn't the NCAA offer a particular product. Again, it's sort of a curious question. What is the antitrust conspiracy that would be illegal?"

It's just Holder figuring that he will use the power of the Justice Department's power to interfere in something simply because he's interested in it. Interfering in the NCAA, that's fun. Investigating Black Panther intimidation at the polls, not so much. Reading the actual law in Arizona which he worries might lead to racial profiling, not worth his time. But trying to try KSM in a civilian court, ah, that was worth pursuing to his utmost.

And as we celebrate the CIA intelligence gatherers who finally had the pieces to put together to find bin Laden, let's remember that Eric Holder has been conducting a criminal investigation of CIA operatives into how they conducted interrogations of captured terrorists. As Daniel Henninger writes,

That's right, the Americans whose interrogation of al Qaeda operatives may have put in motion the death of this mass murderer may themselves face prosecution by the country they were trying to protect.

It is time for the Holder CIA investigation to end. The death of bin Laden 10 years after 9/11 makes the Holder investigation of the CIA interrogators politically, emotionally and morally moot.

But it lives.

President Obama can celebrate this victory and describe the "heroic" work of "our counterterrorism professionals," but he allows his Attorney General to continue an investigation of the very people who were working to get the same sort of information that led to Osama's death at the hands of US military.

Why bin Laden's death doesn't signal a new Obama

As pollster attempt to measure the bump that Obama gets from the operation that took out Osama bin Laden, let's remember first of all that there is a big difference between ordering a military strike to take out the most wanted man in America's war against terror and the day-to-day foreign policy dealing with all the foreign crises and situations around the world. Obama has shown a willingness to order military strikes and the use of Predator drones in Afghanistan. He has, with lots of dithering internal debate, maintained our forces in Afghanistan. He has ordered our forces to attack Qaddafi's forces in Libya without consulting Congress until after the fact. But he still has demonstrated the same desire to believe that his personal leadership can alter the behavior of rogue nations such as Iran and Syria. Thus, we are not seeing anew Obama. Richard Cohen, no right-winger, wishes that the order to go after Osama signaled a new Obama, but holds out little hope that we are going to see such a desired evolution in President Obama.

For too long now the Obama administration has shown a touching but sometimes counterproductive sensitivity for the sensitivities of the Muslim world. It has proceeded as if it was more important to be liked than feared and as if some differences were not fundamental but always a product of misunderstanding. This, though, is not the case. The United States can do little to mollify Islamists and others who seek the obliteration of Israel and the return of holy Jerusalem to the Muslim fold. It can do little with bigots who loathe America’s culture of tolerance — for all religions, for gays, for lesbians and, of course, for women.

We shall see if the killing of Osama signals the emergence of a new Obama. After all, it was being planned and rehearsed while elsewhere the president was dawdling in Libya, waiting for NATO approval, Arab League endorsement and U.N. authorization. Even then, he quickly flipped the hot potato to NATO, which is a sturdy acronym but a flaccid fighting force. For a while, NATO dithered and the United States withheld the maximally efficient A-10 aircraft, sending Moammar Gaddafi a mixed message: We want you out, but not all that much. He has decided to stay.

It pains me to say this, but on occasion Obama can really be the lefty caricatured by right-wingers. They took the measure of him right at the start (January 2009) when he joined a coven of conservative columnists for dinner at the home of George F. Will. It was as if Obama thought he could charm these guys, reason with them — that their antipathy toward him was based on some sort of misunderstanding or maybe something personal (see how charming I am) and not, as it was and remains, their ideology.

Obama attempted something similar with Iran. He wanted accommodation, less belligerence — as if the crackpot regime, fascist in all but name, might misunderstand us or we them. They know very well who we are, and we should know who they are. The same holds for Syria. Once again, we have been much too nice with a murderous regime, offering praise where none was warranted or earned. The regime of Bashar al-Assad was hardly persuaded by the compliments. It still kills with abandon.

A nation like the United States can sometimes be liked, sometimes feared and sometimes both. The choice ought to be ours — liked is nice, but not at the cost of our principles and values. When it came to killing bin Laden, Obama clearly chose to do what he had to do — what he ought to have done — whether or not Pakistan or anyone else liked it.

Cruising the Web

For those trying to figure out whether giving the gutsy order to send the SEALs in after Osama bin Laden will guarantee victory for Obama next year, Michael Barone reminds us that there is no one-for-one correlation between leading a country to military success and political victories. I suspect that next year people will be focused once more on the economy and that will be the determining facts underlying the election.

One other group that deserves praise in Sunday's takedown of OBL was the coordinated activities of our intelligence communities. We tend to focus on their failures, but should credit them when they achieve a major success.

Of course, there is a major irony that the intelligence that led to what may be Obama's finest moment as president came from the enhanced interrogation techniques that Obama has so often criticized. And the other delicious irony is that the group that carried out the raid, Naval Special Warfare Development Group is the same group that Seymour Hersh called "Dick Cheney's personal assassination squad.

Congratulations to the Canadian Conservative party which run a major victory in yesterday's elections. Meanwhile the Liberal party suffered a crushing defeat. And the Quebec separatist party, the Bloc Quebecois suffered what may have been a mortal blow.

The WSJ writes about Jimmy Carter's weird moral compass.

Wake County schools, the county where I live, has made a decision I wish more school districts would make - they've scrapped the whole "zero tolerance" approach to school discipline and insert a modicum of common sense.

Congratulations to the Navy Seals

How wonderful to have a moment that we can all celebrate together and we can take pride in the planning, courage, and ability of our special forces to carry out this raid without an American casualty.

As Victor Davis Hanson wrote, it is good that his death came at the hands of U.S. soldiers in battle. It is good that he died in battle and we don't have the debates over how, when, and where he would be tried. We are not going to repeat the debacle over the KSM trial.

How funny that his compound is now already marked on Google maps. And that an IT consultant in Abbottabad, Pakistan has been tweeting the story after complaining about the sound of a helicopter hovering in his neighborhood. And the story seems to have broken on Twitter. We're lucky that our intelligence forces did a much better job keeping the news secret for the past four years as they followed information that was first gotten from interrogations of a detainee. So much for that argument that the information that we got from detainees is just old information. It is being reported that the information about the courier was gotten from a detainee at Guantanamo some time after September 11 and then four years ago our intelligence forces got his real name and two years ago they began to figure out where the courier and his brother resided. It shows how intelligence is built up from a tidbit here and a tidbit there. It also demonstrates the value of keeping these detainees long term. If the detainee that had given the name of the courier had been released, perhaps OBL wouldn't have been trusting him up to the last day of his life.

It's interesting that the Pakistanis are claiming that it was a joint operation while our officials say that only U.S. personnel were involved in the raid. It is a humiliation to Pakistan that the guy was living in a compound built, not in Waziristan but right around the corner from a police station in a region 50 km northeast of Islamabad.

As we think back to September 11 and our hearts go out to all those who lost loved ones that terrible day, we can come together as a nation to cheer this news. But it is just one step in our fight against terrorism. That battle continues, but it's heartening to know that we have on our sides the sorts of courageous men who carried out this operation.