On this first at-bat in the Major Leagues, Hoyt Wilhelm hit a home run. He went on to compile a great record as a pitcher, but he never, in 21 seasons, homered again and had a lifetime batting average of .088.
There’s no question that Barack Obama hit a home run last Sunday, and I’m happy to cheer him for it. But the fact remains, he’s not much of a slugger, and I doubt that he has a great knuckle ball to fall back on.
After the superlative military operation came the amateurish fumbling: the too-hasty announcement of the malefactor’s death (reducing the value of the captured intelligence trove), the changing narrative of Osama’s death, the weird rush to bury him at sea, the accompanying blather about adhering to “Islamic law”, the contradictory statements about whether SEAL Team Six had orders to kill rather than capture, the confusion about whether to release photographs of the corpse, even the peculiar detail that the code name for the mass murderer was “Geronimo”, as if he were a patriot fighting for his homeland against overwhelming odds.
This near farce follows two years of consistent foreign policy misjudgements: the ambivalent semi-surge in Afghanistan, the Russian “reset”, the continuing failure to restrain Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons, the absurd intervention in favor of the deranged Marxist ex-president of Honduras, the effort to force a change of government in Israel, the dithering over the Iranian Green Movement and the Arab Spring, the creation of quagmire in Libya – you can add your own favorite blunders. We can argue about whether the Obama foreign policy is as feeble as Jimmy Carter’s. There’s no disputing that it’s in the cellar of the same league. Counting on Administration competence now is as if the Giants, dazzled by Hoyt Wilhelm’s debut blast, had made him their clean-up hitter.
Still, I harbor a quixotic hope. The execution of Osama bin-Laden was the President’s first unequivocal, overwhelmingly popular success. It came about because he deployed American military power directly against our enemies, and it gave him a boost in public esteem that “leading from behind” certainly hasn’t. Might he not want to repeat the experience? Opportunities abound. Will Bashar al-Assad suffer a fatal accident next week? Will mysterious explosions devastate Iran’s centrifuges? Will North Korean generals feel an impulse to mount a coup? Will there be an unexpected flow of funds to the Venezuelan opposition? Will SEAL Team Six find its way to Libya? Will Israel get a green light to break Hamas and Fatah (both denigrators of the Obaman triumph)? The world wonders.
Addendum: If the mainstream media are to be believed, the President needed 16 hours of deliberation before giving the order to get bin-Laden. Ace of Spades has a grumpy but not utterly unfair observation:
And yes, even Jimmy Carter probably would have ordered this. At least the 1970s version. Bear in mind: He did order a failed hostage rescue attempt – also fraught with peril, obviously, since the choppers crashed in the desert.
A commando hostage rescue is a lot trickier than a hit, of course. A lot more moving pieces, and you have to get all those people safely away.
So why should I praise Obama for a choice that every single one of his predecessors and every plausible successor would also make?
And probably not requiring 16 hours to do so, either.
Dear Tom,Well, Walter Sobchak is in charge.The famed(sic) Seals managed to destroy a helicopter,spray a young woman with bullets and kill an unharmed old man in his pyjamas.Such heroics!The United States had an opportunity to show the same integrity and nobility that they showed after W.W. 2 when they ,against the wretched advice of the Soviets and even Churchill,took the position that the accused Nazi leaders be given an opportunity to be judged in the world court.His(Bin Laden) guilt was, if not in question, subject to clarification as he did say, in response to the horors of 9-11, that it was against the tenants of the Koran to kill innocent people.But of course,you say, he lied-much like the American President did when he invaded Iraq.Appeal to the Law,however ill formulated as international law is, and abide by what is best in the United States.Stop acting like,if truth be told,like the frightened and clumsy school yard bully.I have heard-pace Messrs.Turner and Moore,what can only be regarded a sophomoric and disingenious their defense of the assassination but listen to carefully to the likes of Benjamin Ferencz who was there at Nuremberg,actually served in a just war and (who)appeals to the best in the United States not the self serving and frankly comical. Rick Ficek
Posted by: Richard Ficek | Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 10:15 AM