DID YOU GET THE distinct impression Sunday after hearing news of the daring, stupendous rescue of Captain Richard Phillips by Navy SEALS in the Indian Ocean, that President Obama was a bold and decisive national leader of heroic proportions? I sure did.
I actually bit and believed all those frothy news accounts saying the president had acted courageously giving the orders--not once, but TWICE---to take the pirates essentially dead or alive. The mainstream media was so lathered up over the administration's astounding performance in this crisis, that everyone actually took it all at face value and believed it. Including you-know-who.
Wow, I thought, Obama may not turn out to be as bad as Jimmy Carter, after all.
But boy did I get snookered. I should have known better. My bad.
As all this Obama boldness hype unravels, a whole new story is coming out. The real story. Let's start with this:
From REDSTATE.com:
"The left and the press (but I repeat myself) are falling all over each other in their haste to congratulate Obama and his manly response to the pirates. A retch-worthy visit to the comments section of left blogs reveals revolting mission-accomplished-gasms and endless reposts of photo fakes featuring Obama being cool or hip with the words “I Got This” adoringly emblazoned upon the savior of the West. To say the fawning adoration is grotesque would be a dramatic understatement and an insult to the merely grotesque. "
So now let's go to what really happened in the rescue of Captain Mark Phillips yesterday that you won't read in the Main Stream Media: Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Jeff Emanuel of RedState.com:
"After four days of floating at sea on a raft shared with four Somali gunmen, Richard Philips took matters into his own hands for a second time. With the small lifeboat in which he was being held captive being towed by the American missile destroyer USS Bainbridge, and Navy Special Warfare (NSWC) snipers on the fantail in position to take their shots at his captors as soon as the command was given, the captive Captain of the M.V. Maersk-Alabama took his second leap in three days into the shark-infested waters of the Indian Ocean.
"This diversion gave the Navy Special Warfare operators all the opening they needed. Snipers immediately took down the three Somali pirates still on board the life raft, SEAL operators hustled down the tow line connecting the two craft to confirm the kills, and a Navy RIB plucked Philips from the water and sped him to safety aboard the Bainbridge, thus ending the four-day-and-counting hostage situation."
So let me get this straight: Phillips was again at the end of his rope at the Navy's seeming inability or unwillingness to rescue him after five days and with an AK-47 POINTED AT HIS BACK, JUMPED OFF THE PIRATE'S RAFT FOR THE SECOND TIME IN AN ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE. It was then the Navy commander gave the order for the sharpshooters to take the pirates out because he was tired of the Navy being made fools of by a boat of hoodalums.
Emanuel continues,
After taking fire from the Somali kidnappers again Saturday night, the on-scene commander decided he’d had enough. Keeping his authority to act in the case of a clear and present danger to the hostage’s life, and having heard nothing from Washington since yet another request to mount a rescue operation had been denied the day before, the Navy officer — unnamed in all media reports to date — decided the AK-47 one captor had leveled at Philips’ back was a threat to the hostage’s life, and ordered the NSWC team to take their shots.
Three rounds downrange later, all three brigands became enemy KIA, and Philips was safe."
Jeff Emanual continues to set the record straight on the Obama administrations short-comings here:
"Instead of taking direct, decisive action against the rag-tag group of gunmen, the Obama administration dilly-dallied, dawdled, and eschewed any decisiveness whatsoever, even in the face of enemy fire, in hopes that the situation would somehow resolve itself without violence — thus sending a clear message to all who would threaten U.S. interests abroad that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has no idea how to respond to such situations, and no real willingness to use military force to resolve them.
Any who think they weren’t watching every minute of this are guilty — at best — of greatly underestimating our enemies. "
Again, read Emanuel's full story here and let's all get our heads screwed back on straight. It's getting late but all I can say is I am sure more of the real truth will come out in the days ahead. And you won't read it on the MSM, but you will here and other conservative sites.
Oh yes you will.
3 comments:
It is true the left blogs are without shame. Iraq is not "victory" for America, yet 3 Somalians in a life boat is "victory" for Barack. The one thing which infuriated me was a commenter saying the Right was rooting for the death of Captain Phillips, so it could be blamed on Barack.
I agree with Jeff Emanuel that Barack looks even weaker for not taking out three pirates days sooner. Our enemies are watching. The lessons they are learning are not good news for America. Barack's action amounted to decisive CYA, followed by decisive anonymous claiming of credit. "Pres. Obama was briefed 17 times!" Disgusting. I give Barack credit for not paying off these kidnappers. Beyond that ... I don't think Barack understands the world is reading him as if they are other players at a poker table. He's an open book to them. A book of weakness.
I bit too! At first blush, I was frustrated that nothing was being done the first couple of days. It seemed we were letting these nit wits have the upper hand. Then as the news broke yesterday of the rescue, I rejoiced that Obama showed a little spine. Today I realized Obama was grabbing for the glory and taking a tad bit too much credit. I certainly respected the Captain's statement, saying he (the Captain)was only a "byline" to this story. What a man!
The early evidence suggests that the president is not necessarily pleased with the implications of the Navy's spectacular feat of small arms.
"We must continue to work with our partners to prevent future attacks," the president said Monday.
This is the recipe for delay and dawdling that adds up to timidity in the face of taunting. Any call to the Europeans will, as usual, be a wrong number. A pirate with a sharp knife could behead an entire crew before the president could get a speech programmed into his teleprompter and the diplomats at the United Nations, or whoever Mr. Obama might imagine are our willing "partners," could agree on a resolution urging the pirates to be nice.
The U.N. is already on the case. The Security Council adopted a resolution in December alleging that - are we ready for this? - piracy on the high seas is not nice. If that wasn't enough to frighten a pirate into submission, the vote was ... unanimous! Not only that, the U.N. measure led to the formation of an "action group" of representatives of 28 nations - count 'em, 28 - to coordinate hard-hitting diplomatic, tough legal and harsh military efforts. This was meant to provoke paralyzing fear and uncontrollable trembling in the pirate lair in Somalia, but the boarding of the Maersk Alabama by undaunted brigands followed. Only three well-aimed shots by Navy marksmen ended the confrontation at hand.
Now comes the hard part. The pirates, who have a good thing going, will be tempted to think that Mr. Obama's unaccustomed toughness is a one-time deal, that the usual forces of wimpery at the highest levels of government will soon reassert primacy and further military action will not be kosher. The pirates are counting on the diplomatic option that Mr. Obama is so fond of to miscarry the day. The pirates, illiterate and uneducated, may not know what "diplomats" are, but they are often shrewd judges of men and easily recognize weakness and irresolution when they see it.
U.S. military planners are said to be drawing up an order of battle to take out the pirates' base, presumably in the Somali port of Eyl. Military planners have contingency plans for a lot of things - things like an invasion of Scotland, an assault of Higgins boats on Nova Scotia, a sweep of the brothels of Juarez - that are never going to happen, and a scheme to demolish Eyl and slay the pirates, however well-plotted, must be approved by an enthusiastic president willing to brave the sneers and the scolding of the milk legs in the chanceries of Europe. Most of the security experts agree that the task of eradicating wholesale piracy would be easier if seafaring nations could get their act together, but most agree that it's not likely to happen.
"As long as governments don't come together and defeat it, it goes on like the plague," says Charles Heyman, a one-time British army officer and defense specialist on maritime risks. "People have to be very, very tough on this."
Being "very, very tough" is a lot to ask from a president who frequently says the way to peace and serenity is to curry the good opinion of those who want to kill us, even from a president who gets high marks for his willingness to defer to the professionals in the rescue of Capt. Phillips. But he's already getting advice from the usual suspects at the State Department who urge, as usual, the soft approach in dealing with hard enemies. Their prescription is more groceries for the pirates, not more Navy marksmen.
Any land-based operation would probably be assigned to the U.S. African Command, which sounds a lot more exciting than it is. Africom, as the Pentagon calls it, has no military units. But it does have a lot of bureaucrats from the Departments of State, Treasury and even Health and Human Services (the latter to help pirates applying for Medicaid benefits) at Africom headquarters in Djibouti.
The alternative to "being very, very tough" is to encourage the anarchy on the high seas that was the norm two centuries ago. Mr. Obama has presidential guidance in the precedent established by Thomas Jefferson, who dispatched a naval squadron to clean out the North African bases of the Barbary pirates extorting ransoms from American merchant ships off the coast of Libya. The Somali pirates are even now waiting for his answer.
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