Redstate...
The Strategic Wisdom
of Barack Obama
...yet another gutsy call
Posted by streiff
Tuesday, May 10th
The killing of Osama bin Laden has been characterized by two distinct
phases. In Phase I the White House simply could not tell us what
happened during the raid and eventually just decided to stop talking
about it. Phase II has been a demeaning and unseemly grubbling for
credit on the part of the administration under the guise of Obama
having made a “gutsy call.” Not only has the administration actively
promoted this notion in press conferences but they are actively
planting these stories in the tame and housebroken media that has
become a hallmark of this administration.
The latest in the series of “Obama is as hard as woodpecker lips”
stories comes from the New York Times.
WASHINGTON - President Obama insisted that the assault force hunting
down Osama bin Laden last week be large enough to fight its way out of
Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops,
senior administration and military officials said Monday.
…
Mr. Obama’s decision to increase the size of the force sent into
Pakistan shows that he was willing to risk a military confrontation
with a close ally in order to capture or kill the leader of Al Qaeda.
Such a fight would have set off an even larger breach with the
Pakistanis than has taken place since officials in Islamabad learned
that helicopters filled with members of a Navy Seals team had flown
undetected into one of their cities, and burst into a compound where
Bin Laden was hiding.
One senior Obama administration official, pressed on the rules of
engagement for one of the riskiest clandestine operations attempted by
the C.I.A. and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command in many
years, said: “Their instructions were to avoid any confrontation if at
all possible. But if they had to return fire to get out, they were
authorized to do it.”
“Fight its way out of Pakistan.” You can nearly smell the cordite as
the phrase trips off the tongue. You can just see Josh Barnett running
through a cloud to smoke.
I’d be among the first to acknowledge that the SEALs are tough but,
let’s be honest, they aren’t tough enough to fight their way out of
Pakistan. As I detailed earlier, bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound was
over a hundred miles from the Afghan border. The city itself garrisons
four infantry battalions and is located in a highly militarized area as
it borders on Kashmir. So some latter day reenactment of Xenophon’s
Anabasis is pretty much out of the question. Extracting yourself by
helicopter while under enemy fire is not something to be attempted
lightly.
Nothing that we know about the raid indicates that, in fact, there was
any contemplation of going at the Pakistani police or army hammer and
tongs. The raiding force consisted of four helicopters. They were
hardly jam-packed with shooters as they lost one helicopter on the
insertion and had enough spare seats for the passengers and crew from
that helicopter to extract. As a contingency they probably had seats
available for several prisoners to be extracted. In short, there is no
way enough troops could have been inserted on four helicopters to allow
the force to “fight its way out of Pakistan.” Such an operation would
have required significant tactical air support and would have resulted
in sufficient casualties and property damage that Pakistan simply could
not have ignored it with really bad effects for our army in Afghanistan
that depends upon Pakistani roads to bring in their supplies.
What is actually scary, though, are the prospects that someone actually
thought that a handful of US troops, no matter how skilled, could lock
horns with a large number of trained troops and prevail. Pakistan’s
Army, though hardly world class, is not to be dismissed lightly. As we
used to say in regards to the Red Army, “quantity has a quality all its
own.” Or in the words of Kipling
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail -
While there is absolutely nothing in the story that backs up the rather
extraordinary claim made in the lede the three reporters involved, Eric
Schmitt, Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, aren’t rookies and the odds
of them having come up with this formulation without some prompting are
pretty slim. The way this claim is used to bolster the idea that at
some level Obama was spoiling to kick a little Pakistani butt is also
troubling.
There is no doubt that Obama is looking at a the killing of bin Laden
as a boon to his reelection chances and, recognizing his own basic
gutlessness is a millstone in this endeavor, is using “gutsy call” as
shorthand for what he hopes we remember of his grossly deficient
leadership. It is a sad state of affairs when you find yourself hoping
that your president is simply bloviating and did not seriously
contemplate sending young men into a situation that would actually have
required them to do something as profoundly stupid as “fight their way
out of Pakistan.”
Read it at Redstate
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