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It argues that the meme that President Obama will simply let terrorists run rampant is wrong, but most of us knew this was wrong already. This is a nice article that dismisses Right Wing talking points about President Obama being weak on either domestic policy or foreign policy by discussing the facts, rather than simply presenting competing talking points and generalities. http://www.newsweek.com/2011/05/05/commander-in-chief.htmlObama decided to reveal how he would fight Al Qaeda in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 1, 2007. Clarke and Rand Beers, a counterterrorism expert with three decades of experience in Democratic and Republican administrations, met with Obama to outline his political objectives. First, he had to get out in front of any terrorist strike that might occur during the campaign. Clarke, who runs a global-security consulting firm, was regularly tapping his network of spook and counterterror sources to measure the threat environment. He believed the odds of an attack were high and potentially catastrophic to Obama’s campaign. “We told him quite explicitly to get on the record putting the blame on the past administration,” Clarke tells NEWSWEEK. “We wanted him to show causality between what the Bush administration did and the continuing terrorism threat.” Second, Obama had to show he was willing to use force, prudently but confidently. Obama understood the need to project strength, and he embraced it. At the same time, he argued that a strategy that relied solely on kills and captures would produce Pyrrhic victories. His goal, he told the audience, was to “dry up the rising well of support for extremism.” He pledged billions in aid for poverty reduction and education to counter the radical madrassas. But beneath its softer talk of values and economic empowerment, Obama’s speech was shot through with steel. Near the halfway point, the senator, his voice rising, accused the Bush administration of fecklessness in the fight against terrorists—and vowed, in a rare display of machismo, that “if we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and Musharraf won’t act, we will.” In early 2005 Bush had planned a daring “snatch and grab” operation in North Waziristan aimed at capturing Ayman al-Zawahiri, among others. But at the last minute Donald Rumsfeld aborted the raid, in part because Bush didn’t want to ruffle feathers in Islamabad.
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Now the political repercussions of that mission have the power to reshape Obama’s presidency. The most obvious effect of Abbottabad is that it vindicates the president’s approach to the war on terrorism, and removes from the Republican arsenal the argument that he is a weak, naive, bumbling humanitarian. It is difficult to imagine the 2012 contenders questioning Obama’s commander-in-chief chops, as Republicans have done to Democrats for decades, and were hoping to do again. Why? Because that particular line of inquiry now gives the president a priceless opportunity to remind voters that he accomplished in two years what George W. Bush was unable to accomplish in eight. As rebuttals go, it’s a good one.
Less obvious is the fact that Abbottabad might also vindicate Obama’s broader approach to presidential leadership, which has always emphasized calculating, technocratic, goal-oriented tenacity over “Mission Accomplished” theatrics. The problem with the Obama-Carter comparisons, which have been regurgitated by 2012 hopefuls such as Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty in recent months, is that they overlook the real-world results of Obama’s supposedly knock-kneed management: universal health care, Wall Street reform, a depression-averting stimulus package, the end of the Iraq War, and now, bin Laden’s head. As much as Pawlenty & Co. might disagree with Obama’s policies, it’s hard to deny that the president has a knack for getting (most of) what he wants. Swing voters pay little attention to politics, so they’re unlikely to warm to the president’s cool approach by themselves. But they will appreciate, and remember, that he killed bin Laden. The more Obama reminds independents that Abbottabad was a direct result of his leadership style, and not a lucky break, the easier it will be for him to sell the rest of his record. “The way Obama made this decision was very similar to way he makes domestic decisions,” says historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. “Gathering the info, talking it out, then making the most rational call.”
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