Barack Hussein Obama: A Beneficiary Of His Own Failures

Once again, President Barack Hussein Obama has seized success from the jaws of his own failures. He failed to dismantle the intelligence architecture that Bush created. He failed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. And he failed to disband “Dick Cheney’s personal assassination squad,” as it was dubbed by New Yorker Magazine. Obama failed to do a lot of what he promised during the presidential campaign. And the left wing of his party has expressed considerable disappointment in his failures. But now, everyone’s celebrating, except Osama bin Laden, who is feeding crabs somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

Shortly after Obama’s announcement Sunday evening, during which he claimed as much credit for himself as possible, we learned that Bin Laden was tracked down using information developed during the course of Bush/Cheney-era “enhanced” or “harsh” interrogations at Guantanamo as well as Poland and Romania. Obama claimed that Bush’s anti-terror policies represented, “the most disastrous set of foreign policy decisions in the recent history of the United States."  Had we played nice, as the loony left advocated, Bin Laden would still be sipping sweet tea on his back porch.

Osama’s demise was the handiwork of what is now known as the Joint Special Operations Command. That’s what grownups call it. During the Bush years they were disparaged as a lawless band of rogue killers who went around the world committing illegal targeted assassinations.

Nancy Pelosi, back in 2006, said that killing or capturing Bin Laden would be meaningless. “[T]o capture him now I don't think makes us any safer. But on Monday she said that, “The death of Osama bin Laden marks the most significant development in our fight against al-Qaida.” She then went on to praise the death squads. Excuse me, I mean the “intelligence community and military,” as they are now known.

Maybe this is what Spike Lee meant when he said that henceforth, history would be divided into two eras, pre-Obama and post-Obama.

When it was learned a few high value detainees suffered discomforts during their detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and other rendition sites around the world, the left suffered an attack of vapors and demanded that Bush and his entire administration be tried for war crimes. Attorney General Eric Holder sought to satisfy their bloodlust. Thankfully, he failed too. So far. But he hasn't given up.

All of those clichés claiming that torture doesn’t work (and I’m not prepared to yield the point that water boarding is torture) have been proven false. Obama has Osama’s scalp in his trophy case because water boarding and other enhanced interrogation tactics did work.

In fact, the torture myth is so ingrained in the loony left’s soul that a New York Times editorial Tuesday reiterated the claim that torture doesn’t work even though a news article in the same paper on the same day reported that the intelligence that led to Bin Laden was developed through enhanced interrogation.

It’s clear that the New York Times’ editors’ opinions are not informed by reading the New York Times.

This is not the first time that Barack Obama has claimed success for his own failure to follow through on a promise. He also promised that the US would be out of Iraq within 9 months of his inauguration. More than a year later Vice President Joe Biden was trumpeting Obama’s triumph in Iraq: “I am very optimistic about -- about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”

The reason that Biden could even dream of claiming success in Iraq (aside from his own incapacity for shame) was because we were still there 13 months after Obama took office. And yes, we’re still there.

Whatever success we’re having in Afghanistan can be credited to Obama’s mimicry of Bush’s strategy. Obama’s surge in Afghanistan so closely mirrored Bush’s strategy that Time magazine asked, “Did George Bush leave one of his old speeches in the Resolute Desk?”

In fact, Obama’s victories are mostly the consequence of his failure to bring the conduct of war under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice by treating terrorism as a crime rather than an act of war.

Rush Limbaugh made headlines in 2009 for his declaration regarding the upcoming Obama presidency: “I hope he fails.” Although he’s too vain to ever form it into a conscious thought, somewhere in the recesses of Obama’s mind, he’s thankful for some of his own failures.