The time since I left my computer, two days after Osama bin Laden was killed, had all the makings of a slow news week. On my return people were still arguing whether the credit should go to Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” and whether the public should be shown pictures of the event. Osama bin Laden was still dead.
The first question was settled Thursday by John McCain, a man with access to the details leading to the event and in recent years one of the Senate’s most partisan Republicans. He revealed that the person who identified bin Laden’s courier had not been subjected to torture, was in another country and had not been sent there for rendition. For doubters I’ll trade giving Bush and torture credit for getting Public Enemy Number One if they’ll acknowledge his responsibility for the economy. I’d be getting the better of that deal.
The merits of releasing the pictures may be arguable, but barely so in my opinion. Now that we have the bad guys’ leader I fail to see the need for the vicarious pleasure some people may get from seeing the gruesome details.* Whatever satisfaction from taunting our enemies is not worth the potential harm we would be inviting on ourselves.
While this event redounds to Obama’s benefit, as a partisan Democrat I still won’t go as far as saying that it couldn’t have happened under a President John McCain. By the way, does anyone remember the Bush enthusiasts after 9/11 sneering at how they claimed Gore would have performed under those circumstances? I’m certain some of them would have been demanding his impeachment.
In the bin Laden case, if you’re rooting for the same team that I am, things are falling in place nicely. May 1 is the also the date of George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” ballet. Don’t mess with them. Don’t even try to slip one in like the first Bush did with his success in the First Gulf War by saying that he wasn’t going to “gloat.”
*For people turned on by this sort of thing I believe there could be big money in making plastic replicas of bin Laden’s head to mount on their walls.
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