Mission Accomplished - Part 2

 

 

 

"Sometimes that karma thing can really turn around and bite you on the butt"



On May 1, 2003, President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln to address the troops. The Navy wanted to mark this historic occasion by hanging a huge banner on the superstructure of the ship which read "Missioned Accomplished". The liberation of Iraq was going very well, and President Bush thought it might be time to phase out combat operations and begin the transition into a Iraqi government. President Bush, as well as the rest of us, grossly misjudged the situation on the ground. Iraq was in no way ready to come together under a coalition government. The worst part of the war was about to begin.

The Democrats jumped all over the President for this miscue. They jumped on him and jumped on him for the rest of his term. It was a real "pile on". In fact, one of the late comers to the pile on was some young brash Senator from the state of Illinois. It seems this young, very inexperienced Senator decided after spending a few months on the job, it was time to run for President. The "Mission Accomplished" goof up made excellent campaign material.

The young Senator from Illinois became our next President. Many of the actions and methods he railed against President Bush doing, he also did - sometimes more so. By the luck of the Irish, he was the Commander in Chief when our Seals were able to kill Osama Bin Laden. Our new President could barely contain his glee. He may have not taken full credit for the kill, but he sure took the lion's share. It was a simple case of "spiking the football", over and over and over again.

It all made for good campaign fodder in his run up to his re-election. Not only did our first term President take credit for killing OBL, he also claimed to have "decimated" Al Qaeda. Wow! Not bad. I hoped he was right, as he had also told us over and over during his first term the War on Terror was over. All wars come to an end. Right?

Flash forward to today. It seems we have a small problem. Osama may truly be dead, but Al Qaeda far from decimated. In fact, they have come up with a new command structure and more clandestine, deadly methods. Here on August 6, 2013, based on intercepted intel, we have shuttered almost 20 embassies and have told all Americans in Yemen to "run for their lives". Whoops. It seems our "Mission Accomplished - Part 2" was not ready for prime time. In fact, here we are again, all bunkered in, waiting for the "hit" which may or may not come.

I guess some on the Left, including the Commander in Chief, might owe President Bush an apology. I have said this before - we may want the War on Terror to be over, but the bad guys don't. In the future it might be more advisable to lead with our fists, and not with our chins.