The raid that got Osama
It’s the sort of article the New Yorker often does well—a detailed description of something. In this case, the “something” is the planning and execution of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
There are few surprises there, but one of them (for me, at least) is the fact that Obama really did make a few tough calls prior to the raid. Another previously unknown (to me, at least) fact is that the designers of the operation had the presence of mind to include a native-speaking translator, who stood outside the compound and warned curious passers-by drawn by the sounds to move along:
“Go back to your houses,” [translator] Ahmed said, in Pashto, as Cairo [the dog] stood watch. “There is a security operation under way.”
Although the beginning of the raid was filmed by drone and watched live in the White House, there was a blackout period of about 20 to 25 minutes where there was no information transmitted. It must have been a long twenty minutes.
As you read the article, you can just picture the movie that will be made some day. Those SEALS are very tough cookies:
After a few minutes, the twelve SEALs inside helo one recovered their bearings and calmly relayed on the radio that they were proceeding with the raid. They had conducted so many operations over the past nine years that few things caught them off guard. In the months after the raid, the media have frequently suggested that the Abbottabad operation was as challenging as Operation Eagle Claw and the “Black Hawk Down” incident, but the senior Defense Department official told me that “this was not one of three missions. This was one of almost two thousand missions that have been conducted over the last couple of years, night after night.” He likened the routine of evening raids to “mowing the lawn.” On the night of May 1st alone, special-operations forces based in Afghanistan conducted twelve other missions; according to the official, those operations captured or killed between fifteen and twenty targets. “Most of the missions take off and go left,” he said. “This one took off and went right.”
Here is a description of the moment right before Bid Laden was killed:
The Americans hurried toward the bedroom door. The first SEAL pushed it open. Two of bin Laden’s wives had placed themselves in front of him. Amal al-Fatah, bin Laden’s fifth wife, was screaming in Arabic. She motioned as if she were going to charge; the SEAL lowered his sights and shot her once, in the calf. Fearing that one or both women were wearing suicide jackets, he stepped forward, wrapped them in a bear hug, and drove them aside. He would almost certainly have been killed had they blown themselves up, but by blanketing them he would have absorbed some of the blast and potentially saved the two SEALs behind him. In the end, neither woman was wearing an explosive vest.
It’s not that the operation went flawlessly. It did not, beginning with the crash of one of the helicopters as it descended into the compound. But the SEALS were fully up to the task of improvising when things did not go as planned—and in the end, they got their man.
“There are few surprises there, but one of them (for me, at least) is the fact that Obama really did make a few tough calls prior to the raid.”
As I have said several times here…the only time Obama does something good is when he does what Bush would have done.
The little love letter, which is what this NY times epistle is, to Obama makes me puke. Of course it was written to make everything he did look brave and true. I’ll take my info from another source. Please remember, we are under no obligation to credit anything Obama does. Let the Left do that. The whole purpose of the article is not to commend the bravery of our military, but to enhance Obama’s standing. I’d like another source, please, about whether or not Obama made any gutsy calls.
Curtis: It’s not the Times, it’s the New Yorker. Not a difference that makes a difference, but still. It’s the latter magazine that’s good at long pieces with a lot of details, which is what this one is.
Of course it’s skewed to make Obama look good. And of course it might be false. But if is is accurate (which it might be), then he deserves a little credit. My guess is that there is some accuracy there, because he probably did have to make some decisions, and they turned out to have been correct, because the mission worked.
You could get a random dozen from a high school football team to run the raid as rehearsed. The question is who, then, gets on the bird to go do it. And what happens when things murphy?
I have a lot of problems with the article, the first of which is that they were supposedly in the compund for nearly 18 minutes, but bin Laden failed to find a weapon and cover despite the fact that they were blowing stuff up and shooting people all over the place. Guns are LOUD, even with silencers, and there’s no way to silence C-4, and helicopter crashes.
Second:
In the Situation Room, Obama said, “I’m not going to be happy until those guys get out safe.”
Yeah SURE he said that! This just sounds made up to me.
Third:
At one point, Biden, who had been fingering a rosary, turned to Mullen, the Joint Chiefs chairman. “We should all go to Mass tonight,” he said.
Again, yeah SURE he said that. Again that sounds made up to me.
I don’t buy the official account, and haven’t since it first came out. I think they did get bin Laden, but I wonder if they really killed him. I think there’s a lot more to this story. The whole article sounds like a made for TV movie.
Assuming that the basic outline of the raid is true (I mostly do), it took a huge set of balls to authorize it. I will give Obama credit for that. There are a thousand ways it could have gone wrong, and if it had, it would have been very bad for him and the country. Last thing: Thanks to the Brave men who carried out the raid.
The Wash. Post reports this re the article:
“As Schmidle [the author of the New Yorker piece] describes it, the story was built on about two dozen interviews, including with Brennan and other senior officials. “It’s a circuitous process,” Schmidle said. “One source was willing to share something that gets a second source to talk. That opens up a third source. And then you go back to the first source.”
Determining what wasn’t true was just as important as what was, he says. A TV report that the SEALs wore helmet cams during their assault, for example, turns out to have been wrong.
Schmidle says he wasn’t able to interview any of the 23 Navy SEALs involved in the mission itself. Instead, he said, he relied on the accounts of others who had debriefed the men.
But a casual reader of the article wouldn’t know that; neither the article nor an editor’s note describes the sourcing for parts of the story. Schmidle, in fact, piles up so many details about some of the men, such as their thoughts at various times, that the article leaves a strong impression that he spoke with them directly.”
If he creates this kind of stuff, who’s to say what Obama actually said and did.
Full article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/freelance-journalist-scores-coup-with-account-of-bin-laden-raid/2011/08/02/gIQAEiaeqI_story.html
It was the default position. To kill or not to kill? To raid or drop another bomb? Obviously the choice is the confirm your kill will eyewitness account. There was little in the article that Bush Jr. wouldn’t have done (and I suspect with far less hand wringing).
Tom, I second your points about the screenplay-like nature of the reported dialogue. (Although if Obama really said he wouldn’t be happy until those guys get out safe, I’d have asked the obvious follow-up question.)
Regarding how bad it would have been for Obama had things gone wrong, I’d have to put another consideration on the other pan of the balance: how bad would it have been for Obama if he hadn’t authorized the raid, and bin Laden escaped? (Hillary would have thought all of her Christmasses had arrived at once, not that she would ever have let that little nugget slip; her lips would be sealed, sealed I tell you!) Public knowledge that he’d refused to authorize the raid would have absolutely guaranteed a primary challenge, and put paid to any hopes Obama had of re-election.
So it was a high tension decision, but not a tough one. All he had to do was nod his assent and then (having learned not to micromanage from Jimmy Carter’s fiasco) distance himself from any direct involvement so he could lay off blame on the military if it came to that.
OB: If you believe the article, he did more than nod and assent. He made some choices that were more specific than that.
Ah, OK, neo. I haven’t had time to read the article yet.
A huge set of balls to authorize it? Ha!
It takes balls to authorize an attack on the most hated man on Earth? It takes balls to mount a raid in Pakistan, where our forces had been mounting similar raids for months? Give me a fucking break. This was the rare occasion when Obama’s political advantage and the good of the country actually matched, so he made the extremely easy choice to authorize the mission.
If it had failed, I’m sure he had a speech ready . . . blaming Bush.
I am unstoppered (is that a word, it feels right, like someone gut punched you and all the air runs out.) by any recognition of Obama. It feels too PC.
Big deal if he did something deserving of approbation. That’s my immediate reaction. And it really is open to question, as well. Besides, what’s the chances he could not during the course of his occupancy of the American White House.
I “have” to recognize something Obama did? Why? And then who else? When does it stop?
Wasn’t Stalin ole Uncle Joe? A dog would sidle up to him? Obama, mmmm, mmmm, mmmm. That’s what I remember. And laugh at. I’d rather laugh than hate.
I’m not against facts. Not against people stating facts. I am against a PC which requires me or my children to “recognize” facts, dubious facts, and lies.
But this is me and I don’t have the care and concern and practice Neo does for objectivity. I see the advantages for clear headed thinking, but this one is a tough one.
I think the mission was carried out more or less as described, with the Democrats (as usual) getting carried away embellishment. I would like to know why he wasn’t able to interview the seals. Also there has to be a written order, who wrote it and who signed it?
No balls required to authorize this operation. The military people did the work. The job of the President was to give the go-ahead.
Zero’s job, for which we pay him, was to take the flack if things went wrong. I’m sure most of the people who read this blog have made difficult decisions in their lives. That’s what being an adult is all about.
A flack is someone who bullshits the public. Flak is anti-aircraft fire-it is very unhealthy if it gets close.
All the balls were on the SEALS carrying out the mission.
Ordering him to be taken out? a no-brainer. I still wish Bush had blasted Tora Bora with tactical nukes in 2001.
But that’s just me, a bloodthirsty ole Anglo-Saxon.
The propensity of some folks to fail to give credit where credit is due points to a total lack of objectivity when it comes to anything political. If you’re not willing to give Obama credit for making seriously tough choices (and yes, they are very tough choices that I’m sure would have left you throwing up in the toilet), then how can you be counted on to look at anything objectively?
There is a crowd on both sides of the political spectrum who would, I’m afraid, run right off the cliff if it was something their party was doing, just because they are not willing to objectively review what it is that is happening.
Obama did the right thing and the Seals got their man. Now we can move on to serious matters.
Daniel.
Lieutenants make such choices in combat all the time with less information and infinitely less time in which to choose and many fewer intervening institutions to alleviate the blame.
Richard, I’m well aware of what lieutenants do. I was a regular army infantry officer.
And those decisions are a whole lot different from those that can affect the fate of a nation. Generals, for instance, were only tested when they were lieutenants because the decisions become much broader in scope as they move up the ladder. It’s really easy for all of us to say that the decision was a no brainer, because we didn’t have to make it. None of us know what it’s like to sit in that office, and damned few of us would ever be able to cope with the crisis decisions that he or any other president would have to make.
If you think this was the equivalent of a company grade decision, you’re just not thinking.
Obama got it right as both candidate and President in wanting bin Laden killed. My cynical observation about the article is that I don’t recall The New Yorker ever publishing anything remotely laudatory about the US military. Other commenters feel free to correct me. The only reason the article got published was to give Obama a bump in a positive direction. As election 2012 draws closer, look for a leak of the photos of bin Laden’s body, assuming the economy is still in the toilet and Obama’s standing in the polls continues to tank.
Daniel:
I don’t disagree with you in general. Yes, there were some tough decisions to be made here, and yes, President Obama made them. Given that he has, in the past, taken seemingly endless time to make Presidential decisions, it’s to his credit that he didn’t let this opportunity slip away.
Having said that, I don’t see this as a spectacularly noteworthy decision, as many people seem inclined to believe. This was a Presidential decision; this is what we pay him the big bucks for. This is what he campaigned for — the authority to make decisions of this scope, and more.
(Would these decisions have left me “throwing up in the toilet”, as you say? Perhaps. But that’s not a fair comparison. I didn’t run for President, and I don’t get paid $400,000 annually to make the tough decisions. He did and does.)
In short, President Obama did his job. If you like, call it the equivalent of the 3AM phone call that Hillary said he wasn’t ready to answer; he answered it, and did so correctly.
On the other hand, we expect our Chief Executive to make such decisions all the time. (Perhaps this one is noteworthy because he actually did get it right.) Nor do I think this event compares, by your vomiting-in-the-toilet criterion, to, say, President Bush’s decision to take the country to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. In those cases, he knew that hundreds, if not thousands, of young Americans would not be coming home, and he had to decide if this was a sacrifice America needed to make. By contrast, this was a decision involving a single mission and a single SEAL unit — a unit which, as Neo’s quotations point out, goes on similar missions (against targets of far lower profile) all the time.
Mr. President, you did the job you get paid to do; thank you. Here’s hoping that you continue to do your job, for the benefit of all Americans… and here’s hoping that the success of the Osama bin Laden raid will not be the high point of your Presidency.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Well Daniel, merely sitting in the office doesn’t confer legitimacy. This is the point that rankles: that Obama is even there, that our country has been subverted to the point where an anti-constitutionalist, an anti-American, a socialist, a communist, a community organizer, a liar, is our commander in chief. And I just don’t buy that “None of us will ever know.” We, in fact, can and do know.
You have a point: objectivity. But it is point that is being used in a PC manner. “Hey everybody, you MUST recognize Obama did a good job here.” Uh huh. Like we have to recognize that America was a land of slavery and bigotry and evil capitalism that robs people of opportunity and creates a rich versus poor class.
I think its you that’s not being objective. When you raise the value of any one virtue and demand obedience, that is a loss of objectivity.
Fairness isn’t what is desired of a straight leg dog face infantry troop. I hope you train your men like Patton, to make the enemy dead.
“When you put your hand in the goo that used to be the face of your buddy, you’ll know what to do.”
Give credit to Obama? And not doing so is a total lack of objectivity? This affirmative action baby who is our enemy and had been coddled and pampered all his life, and you demand we give him credit when it is his due? It just doesn’t pass the smell test. There might come a time for such a thing but only if the man repented and started to do what is right. I don’t credit my enemies.
You have to be aware of where its coming from. The whole thing is designed to make you a tool of the left and the mechanism is exactly the one you describe: objectivity.
Shall we give credit to an imposter and a forger:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/confessions_of_a_birther_evangelist.html
You are following in information cascade and Wilfred Trotter’s herd-instinct theories.
You know, Daniel’s comments show how our country has been degraded even in our military. From an infantry officer you want loyalty to country, not fairness and objectivity. I hope if Obama ever decides to go native and declare his true allegiance and attempts to use our armed forces, I hope at such time all the “credit” given Obama doesn’t lead to our armed forces becoming a traitor. Leave that to the college professor in the “studies” programs.
I don’t have anything to add on the issue of Obama’s decision making process. As to the men involved in the mission, I can only echo Keith Douglas:
“How can I live among this gentle, obsolescent breed of heroes
And not weep?”
Not sure I agree. What was the other options? Hold off until Osama fled? Use a bomb? Obama took 16 hours to approve the mission, after it was all worked out. This resulted in a 48 hour delay.
We had CIA on the ground watching Osama, and Wikileaks realeased info that could tip him off the previous month. Time was ticking.
I don’t think there was any other viable option.
Daniel.
I wouldn’t have said what I said if I hadn’t been an Infantry officer.
I disagree with the “fate of the nation”. If it fails, what’s anybody going to do? The casualties are the casualties. The UN and the Arab League, if there is one, will complain. The left will complain.
The sun will rise in the morning and McDonald’s will continue serving burgers.
The Iran mission under Carter failed for a number of reasons and the fate of the nation wasn’t changed.
Over at Registan.net, C. Christine Fair has written a pretty detailed challenge to Schmidle’s credibility.
Now here’s some perspective:
“Instead of a drone strike that would have carried much lower risk for American forces, Obama made the call to send in a team of Navy SEALs, reasoning in part that he needed to be absolutely sure that the United States had gotten its man. Vice President Biden has declared that choice “the boldest decision any president has undertaken on a single event in modern history.”
Biden…?
Who?
Christine Fair was also on Republican Moderate John Batchelor’s show to briefly discuss some problems with the article.
Schmidle either made up or obtained details 2nd or 3rd hand from the participants.