The successful U.S. mission to kill Osama bin Laden should be one of those moments that transcends politics and brings Americans together.
Yet, there are hyperpartisans who can’t bring themselves to praise President Obama for ordering the risky raid, as Sarah Palin showed Monday night in Denver, and others who only grudgingly credit, if at all, former President Bush for laying the intelligence groundwork for the effort.
We hope those sentiments are out of step with ordinary Americans, who feel an overriding sense of relief that bin Laden has been eliminated. This should be a moment of unity, not partisan sniping.
The truth is both administrations, and the massive military and intelligence infrastructures beneath them, share the credit for taking out the world’s most wanted man.
Bin Laden was a dangerous zealot who declared it the duty of Muslims to kill Americans. He was the founder of al-Qaeda, which attacked America on 9/11 — and before — and he reveled in the death and destruction. As Obama said, the world is a safer place without him.
There are those, however, who cannot look at anything without viewing it through a partisan lens.
Palin, a potential Republican presidential candidate, spoke at Colorado Christian University in Lakewood and praised the military for hunting down bin Laden. But she never uttered President Obama’s name in her remarks, though she somehow remembered to thank President Bush.
The churlish omission says more about her than it does Obama, who made a difficult decision in sending a commando team into Pakistan. Even worse was Rush Limbaugh, who delivered a sarcastic, on-air assault, giving mock thanks to Obama for making a decision no one else could make and being “single-handed[ly]” responsible for the raid. GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor commended Obama for having “followed” Bush’s lead in the anti-terror campaign.
Why not just give the man his due?
Republicans were not alone. Democrats tried to put space between them and the prior administration. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that after Obama was elected, he made sure the U.S. would “revitalize” its hunt for bin Laden. Such a statement intimates the Bush administration eased efforts to get bin Laden, when many published reports say that’s not how it happened. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave a long speech on the Senate floor without even mentioning Bush.
Meanwhile, blogs, Facebook postings, tweets and online comments were loaded with full-throated partisan attacks within minutes of Obama’s Sunday announcement.
To be sure, there were many gracious examples of cross-party praise for the efforts that led to bin Laden’s demise, and we were glad to see the civility. There are certain events that should be appreciated for what they are and not spun in a transparent effort to gain political advantage.
This is one of them.
