Death of an Ambassador........

 

Our media is having a field day reporting the events in Benghazi, Cairo and elsewhere in the Middle East. In their haste, they get it wrong and mass confusion now prevails with heated debates over what happened, when and in what order.

 

One thing for sure, our youthful, spirited and optimistic Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, is dead; killed by a gang of angry men. Photos of Chris lounging around Libyan street corners and coffee shops in conversation with natives gives the impression that he was a man of the people. He believed in Libya and felt that his presence there made a difference.

 

He also believed that his popularity among the Libyans provided immunity to bodily harm. He was dead wrong.

 

As I have repeatedly noted, the Arabs are your friend until you stop feeding them. In this case, it was reportedly the streaming of some ill-advised amateur film deprecating the Prophet Mohammed that triggered the turnabout and violence. We are not yet sure if the violence was planned and if so by whom and why. Speculation is rampant over these unresolved questions.

 

One account states that the vast majority of Libyans were saddened over Stevens killing and that of the other three or four people who also died. I believe they were, but I am also of the conviction that had circumstances been different and that vast majority of Libyans had skin in the game that was under threat, they too would have murderously reacted.

 

When the news broke, there was a strong feeling in America to get the hell out of Libya and Egypt and in the process stop writing them checks and sending advisors, arms and aid. After all, who needs friends that bite the hand that feeds them? The average person here is fed up with the Arabs, their convictions, their costumes and their culture.

 

Nor do most Americans sympathize at all with Arabs who seek to manage our behavior by killing our citizens whenever we do or say something they interpret as offensive. Our freedom of speech includes criticizing anything and everything and sometimes in a cruel and unjust manner.

 

Americans will fight and die for the right free speech no matter who it offends. As a result, a lot of offensive material is spoken and printed and filmed. I believe we are the more vulgar as a result of our freedom of speech.

 

No sooner did the news from Libya go viral than Mitt Romney jumped into the act and in his usual clumsy, foot-in-mouth fashion. The observation of Ann Richards, a Texas stateswoman, about George Bush, being "born with a silver foot in his mouth" applies also to Mitt. The latter can be relied upon to come up with the wrong word or phrase at almost every opportunity.

 

Mitt's sin was not only to politicize the events in Benghazi, but to get the sequence wrong. For example, it is reported that O's statement about the need for religious tolerance was broadcast before it was known that Stevens had been killed. To most, this was an appeal for calm. To Mitt and his speech writers, it was an apology issued in the face of a nasty murder. The loyal opposition and their minions on the political right supported Mitt publicly, but I surely they privately feel Mitt had over reacted and as a consequence, placed his capacity to maintain a cool head during a crisis in question. Someone said that Mitt is shooting first and aiming later.

 

It is not over. We now have a couple of navy destroyers parked off the Libyan coast and US Marine Corps boots on the ground. We are also talking about plans to reinforce, nay, fortify, our embassies in several foreign locations. This effort will cost a pretty penny that we can ill afford. Nor does it send the type of message that reflects our policy of friendship toward newly formed governments like those in Iraq, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt.

 

It is difficult for the American in the street to rationalize the export of billions in support of foreign governments while at the same time spend billions more in fortifying the homes and work places of our diplomats. Many Americans would like to see us simply pull back and pull out and leave the countries of the Arab Spring and others like them to their own devices.

 

Our leaders feel otherwise. They want to either redouble our efforts to assist in democratizing the third world, like O is doing, or they seek to meet terror with armed intervention as Mitt espouses. Our leaders are oblivious to the growing spirit of isolationism among Americans who cannot understand our foreign policies and who blame those policies for the hatred felt by many foreign organizations, governments and citizens toward America.

 

America's foreign policies are further conflicted by the role and influence of Israel. Netanyahu wants to partner up in a strike against Iran. O doesn't even want to talk with him. American Jews traditionally vote Democratic. They are conflicted between their allegiance to Israel as Jews and to America as citizens.

 

Many American Jews seek to unite the objectives of Israel and the USA into a single foreign policy. What's  good for Israel is good for America. One can see strong threads of this argument in the Neo-conservative movement that gained much headway during the W years. There are also many American Jews who do not support Neo-conservative policies and the aggressive means promoted to achieve them.

 

They  are content to support the liberal legacy of the Democratic party; partly out of respect for that policy having facilitated Jewish immigration to America. The impact on all of this on Arabs in general is staggering and frequently fuels their hatred toward America.

 

We live in troubled times.

'Last Night......!'

 

I suppose that the Last Night of the Proms, the Great British Tribal Convention marks the end of the silly season, although in current politics it is now lasting all year round.

 

The Henry Wood Promenade concerts are something that the BBC does superlatively. It is the biggest music festival in the world.

 

The Last Night brings together the entire British family. It is held not just in the Albert Hall but in Hyde Park (audience 40,000 with many young people), Scotland, Wales and Ulster.

 

I had once thought that BBC PC had taken over after the incomparable Andrew Davis was enticed away to Chicago.

 

We got an American in return, one Leonard Slapkin. He thought that the Last Night was nationalistic (a sharp cookie, our Len), so he chucked out many of the traditional parts of the programme. From memory, that was his first and last. It is said that the band refused to play for him.

 

Last year for the very first time I switched channels. The programme had been so bowdlerised that it was almost unrecognisable. Even ‘Sea Songs’, Sir Henry’s own contribution, was shamefully dropped.

 

This year the Last Night was a triumph. All the ‘nationalistic’ tunes were there. A Maltese tenor – new to me, but magnificent – sang ‘Rule Britannia’ whilst casting baseball caps emblazoned with the Maltese Cross into the audience.

 

There was a terrific choral rendition of ‘You’ll never walk alone’.

 

But this was beaten by an extraordinary choral version of ‘God Save the Queen’ with the audience lustily joining in.

 

There were many foreign flags being waved (I didn’t notice the EU rag). I wonder what foreigners think of it all.

 

As if we cared!

'Summer's lease.........'

Never mind the weather; it has been a glorious summer anyway.

 

First we had the Jubilee; showing the world that when it comes to public display nobody can touch the Poms, Limeys and Rooineks.

 

Then we had a triumphant Olympic Games. I may sometimes seem a bit cynical (what, moi?) but as a spectacle it was magnificent, flawed only by the rather banal opening ceremony. Sorry, but I just don’t find Mr Bean funny. Now if it been Mr Milibean that would really have been a laugh. And the women were stunning; they make top models look flabby and jaded.

 

But the greatest show on earth was undoubtedly the Paralympics. It is nothing short of miraculous that disabled people can do what very few able people can. This was a festival celebrating dedication, singleness of purpose and plain old-fashioned guts. They put us mere mortals to shame.

 

And the greatest shame is that many of them would never have been there but for the misdeeds of our political masters.

 

When Dave was elected, he had the perfect opportunity to get out of Afghanistan.

 

He could have said to O ‘ We are broke. We can’t afford foreign adventures. You don’t like us anyway. You are on your own, matey!’

 

Watch out, Afghanis.......Harry's here!

 

Well, Capt. H. Wales,  Army Air Corps, slipped out when nobody was watching. The smelly socks didn’t get the story until he was already ensconced in Camp Bastion.

 

One would have thought that this would have been greeted with universal approbation and relief. Far from it!

 

Comments blogged to the story in the DT were frequently vile beyond all understanding; he won’t be doing any fighting; he will sit there surrounded by security men; it’s not dangerous anyway; he will only be photographed standing by a helicopter but never flying it, etc. And I thought that DT readers were reasonably intelligent and sensible people.

 

So let’s look at a few facts.

 

Helicopters are the most difficult aircraft to fly. In fact, they shouldn’t fly at all; common sense says that they should screw themselves into the ground! Harry passed out top of the form in his training against very tough competition, so he clearly has ‘the right stuff’ – a natural pilot.

 

He will be up the business end with a lot of noisy gear at his fingertips, and, make no mistake, he is going to see action alright.

 

‘They haven’t lost an Apache yet, so what’s the big deal?’ was one of the sour comments.

 

The Apache is a very, very strong aircraft. But helicopters have a particular vulnerability. In a fixed wing aircraft blowing a chunk out of the wing is most likely survivable. Knock a chunk out of a chopper’s rotor blades and you are toast. And the role of the Apache is close support to ground troops, so there’s a lot of stuff flying around (one of the most dramatic pieces of film to come out of Afghanistan was of a casevac helicopter pilot who was shot exactly between the eyes. It was deflected by his face visor and he got away with a head wound).

 

It sure beats strip billiards for excitement!

 

He may have a certain amount of difficulty in keeping his chaddis on, but there is little doubt that he is a good soldier, physically tough, courageous, and by no means the thicko that he has been  portrayed.

 

And yet we have had idiot voices saying ‘He should get a proper job!’

 

While I am at it, I will mention Fl/Lt. W. Wales RAF. He has been made captain of the aircraft, so he’s good. He is doing a very valuable job, and one that requires enormous skill and nerve. Doing a SAR at night in the Irish sea in bad weather is not for the faint hearted.

 

Both men are a credit to us all. Let’s stop the knocking, shall we?

POTUS shindigs: wives on top............

Well, our quadrennial political convention season is over after having sacrificed a considerable amount of the brotherhood that once prevailed in the US. That these two weeks of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions (RNC and DNC) are preceded by almost two years of campaigning and are followed by another two months of more campaigning tends to render the actual Conventions anti-climactic. Indeed, the true test of political mettle is yet to come in the much anticipated debates between M and O.

 

O's acceptance speech was nowhere near as vivacious and engaging as his earlier major addresses. He was sufficiently wound up and articulate to pass muster, but totally void of new ideas and content. But then again we predicted no content so as to not give anything away for the opposition to chew on and spit back. O's major issues are carbon copies of what he said and promised 4 years ago. He offers big promises that won him the last election but may well result in a lower number of followers this time around.

 

The Conventions offered some good speeches, but none better than those delivered by M and O's spouses.

 

Both of these extraordinary women engaged participants of the convention, the media and most important, the TV audience. They were hopeful, kind, sincere and replete with loving support for their husbands. In each instance, the wives provided personality and character to men who came across as totally engaged in the business of being or becoming president. Romney needed this type of assistance much more than Obama.

 

Yet, Michelle gracefully praised O's attributes as a husband and father and in the process gave him a new look. Indeed, some of the scenes looked like a sitcom of the Barack and Michelle show complete with adoring kids and lots of hugs and kisses.

 

Never before have I seen commentators and presenters (anchors) expose their political colors more than in this campaign.

 

In 2008, Sarah Palin pretty much stole the show in such a fashion as to guarantee John McCain second place. Deserving of it or not, she provided a comic relief that offered the media safe passage through the campaign end game. This time, however, there was no comic relief; not even from Vice President Joe Biden who can usually be counted on for a gaff of some sort.  

 

As a result, and also because we are so politically polarized, everyone was seriously and passionately focused on the issues and the contenders. Pundits who have in the past come across as fair and impartial revealed their loyalties in numerous and often heated panel discussions offered on all the networks and cable news channels.

 

Reshuffle kerfuffle and Boris Island.........

So that was the reshuffle that was.

 

IDS refused to move to Justice (how’s that for the smack of firm government?). Warsi was kept on the payroll as the token Asian/Muslim/woman, and the rest was musical chairs, Westminster-style.

 

And then there was the extraordinary decision not only to keep Hunt but to give him a bigger job. This is the man best known for the Murdoch take-over farce, for trying to cancel the NHS tribute at the Olympics opening, who was in charge of Olympics security, and who has a bit of form for expenses hanky-panky, tax-avoidance, and nepotism.

 

What was Dave thinking? Well, my take is that it was not because Hunt will be a success but because he will fail. Health is the graveyard of political careers, so Dave can shaft him, smiling the while. Very Machiavellian, Dave.

 

Of course, if Dave had reshuffled himself in favour of David Davis that would have been really great news. Still, cometh the hour……

 

The overall winner was not even in Parliament.

 

It was the ever-irrepressible Boffo Johnson.

 

The government has now, to all intents and purposes,  dumped its manifesto promise on the LHR third runway, and that puts Boris Island firmly back on the menu. The Tory Party Chairman, one Shapps (who he?) has said that ‘a third runway will not be built within the term of this Parliament’,  i.e. before 2015. How’s that for weasel words? If they gave the go-ahead today they couldn’t even start building ‘within the life of this Parliament’.

 

So what are the issues?

 

Those of us who use that benighted airport regularly know that it is bursting at the seams. It is running on about 98% capacity, and the smallest hitch, like a snowfall, can cause delay and chaos. Something must be done, but what?

 

If LHR is to remain as London’s #1 airport it must have that third runway (but we also have Gatwick and Stansted, both of which could be expanded more quickly and more cheaply but the big boys don’t want to go there). London is in imminent danger of losing its leading role as an international hub.

 

The downside is location.

 

It is in a densely populated urban area, which causes huge traffic, environmental, and social problems. A third runway would mean the demolition of a lot of housing and other buildings with all the attendant expense, technical problems and public protest on a major scale. And the Tory party is split on the issue anyway.

 

The SW prevailing winds mean that most landing approaches are over central London. Increased traffic from a third runway would undoubtedly increase pollution and noise nuisance. But much more important is the security aspect. A successful terrorist attack on a landing aircraft would cause slaughter on the ground on an horrendous scale. There is particular vulnerability because of the ease with which a missile could be concealed along several miles of flight-path.

 

So what are the merits of Boris Island?

 

Most landing approaches would be over the sea, eliminating many of LHR’s disadvantages. Take-off would be over land  far less urbanised than central London. Noise and carbon pollution would be minimal.

 

It would be very accessible. The approaches by land would be from both the Essex and Kent sides. There are good road connections. Rail services from both north and south could be extended to the new airport terminals. Southend and Manston airports could become satellite feeders. Southend in particular would be only minutes away, and will soon have its own dedicated railway station.

 

It would provide huge economic stimulus to a somewhat neglected corner of SE England (a side benefit would be that it would kill off once and for all the absurdly massive wind farm planned for the Thames Estuary, as turbines interfere with the surveillance approach radar – something the Greens like to keep quiet about).

 

The downside?

 

The most obvious one is the SS Montgomery. This is the wreck of a ship carrying a large cargo of explosives during WW2, including block-buster bombs and other noisy things. It lies more or less in the middle of the estuary. It is said that the cargo is very unstable due to degrading during its long submersion. If it blew up it would probably takeout most of Southend sea-front and do £20 million-worth of improvements. I have flown over it many times on the approach to Southend Airport and thought to myself that if it goes up I will break the altitude record for light aircraft.

 

Then there is the time-factor.

 

After going through Parliamentary inquiries,  planning procedures, environmental impact studies and all the rest of the bureaucratic delaying mechanisms years will have passed before the first sod is turned. Shall we say 30 years before the first flight? Or three if we sub-contract it to the Chinese.

 

Whatever the outcome, the row has put Boris where he loves to belong – on the front pages. Another step on the road to No. 10.

Mitt's content-lite acceptance speech

Mitt's speech was typical Mitt. He is unable to capture the imagination of the masses. Then again, who said the President had to be a man of the people. A bit of remoteness would go a long way. The speech was clearly no game changer. That will not happen until the debates. Then, hang on to your hat as both O and M will be playing for their political lives. The game will be hardball.

 

As for the content of M's speech, there was very little. Everyone expects content and everyone is quick to point out the lack thereof. Everyone also knows that content kills. The slightest detail on how M or O will improve the American economy will unleash a pack of media Rottweilers that will rip apart every item spoken, suggested or impugned. Once in the Oval Office, the Pres can reveal the details, but not before if he expects to survive. During the Republican nominee debates, M came up with 50 odd points on what he would do to cure America. After that debate, these points were never mentioned again. Clearly, one of his better advisers got Mitt's attention and told him to stop and desist on the 50 points program.

 

We shall see what the Dems have to offer with their Convention and its attendant rituals beginning today. What interests me most will be Clinton's speech. Bill could be a loose cannon and has been chastised in the past for just that. Will he tow the party line or veer off into his own version of reality?  There is still no question in my mind that if Bill were allowed to run again for President, he would win hands down.

 

Rumors that Hillary may be harboring Presidential ambitions should be squelched by now. Someone wrote she got as far away from the Conventions as possible. How about Indonesia for far away.

 

Speculation is increasing over a preemptive Israeli strike against Iran. One take is that if Netanyahu thinks O will win the election, he will act against Iran before election day.

 

We enjoyed your bit on women and equality. Ironically, we had lunch at the local Chinese yesterday and cracked the omnipresent and tasteless fortune cookie after we finished.

 

 

Fortune cookies in the US have long given up fortunes and offer some other wordy diversion instead along with a luck number or the translation of a Chinese word into English for those of us who want to master Mandarin.

 

 

Anyway, mine read as follows: A woman who strives to be equal to men is lacking in ambition.

 

Silly season shuffle.

Cameron is going to reshuffle his government today. There will be no great changes. The Big Beasts will stay.

 

But the media is saying that various Ministers are refusing to budge.

 

Eh?

 

I know that I am just a simple old country boy but I always understood during my 75 years of undiscovered crime that the real authority of the PM was his exclusive right  to hire and fire Ministers.

 

But now we have the Party Chairwoman, the Justice Secretary, the Transport Secretary, and the Business Secretary  all chanting ‘Hell, no; we won’t go!’

 

If all this is true then our form of government has already undergone a stealthy change for the worse; perhaps leaving us without a coherent form of government at all. One certainty; if Dave doesn’t put his foot down he’s toast. David Davis is already positioning himself to come back to the forefront of Tory politics as leader of the Resentful Right.  He was impressive and authoritative on ‘Jeff Randall Live’ last night, and did a pretty good job of demolishing the Government’s economic policy. Looking and sounding Prime Ministerial, he’s the man to watch.

 

The changes that ought to come are:

 

·        Shifting little George Osborne to be party chairman so as to plan for what will be a very tough election. He has been doing that job anyway when he should have been running the economy;

 

·        Sending Clarke to the Lords. He was a first-class Chancellor years ago, but he is 72  and showing definite signs of having lost his marbles.

 

·        And sending off for an early bath the  ludicrous Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary who was irredeemably tainted over the Murdoch take-over scandal.

 

What ought to happen but will not is getting rid of the increasingly laughable Clegg. Yet. But it is obvious that his own party is frantically briefing against him, and trailing Vince Cable to displace him.

 

His latest daft idea is a ‘wealth tax’, although he doesn’t say who he would class as wealthy; maybe somebody who is richer than him, which would set the bar pretty high. Yes, I know that the politics of envy are pretty sterile, but they are also shamefully attractive.

 

So why not a wealth tax on all those fat cats?

 

Because to a large extent we already have one. Nearly 50% of tax and NI receipts come from 5% of the population. How much more should they give before taking themselves off to more relaxed tax regimes?

 

Get rid of tax concessions for non-doms? They would  simply go, so we would be worse off.

 

A mansion’ tax? What is a ‘mansion’? OK, a large house, but how large? Bigger than Clegg’s three? Not too good for the already-depressed property market, in which values are governed by the top end of the market. And Swedish experience suggests its effects are negative; it raised £420 million a year before it was abolished but led to £142 billion fleeing the country.

 

And the reshuffle itself?

 

Yawn!

Bias, balls & the Beeb........

Just to prove that it sticks by its lefty, PC, right-on bias in all things, not just its news reporting, the BBC has just started a new season of a ‘tec series called, imaginatively, ‘Inspector George Gently’.

 

The first series was undemanding entertainment for the brain-dead, but it passed a couple of harmless hours. It was supposed to have been set in the late 1950’s or early 60’s (the writer and director clearly were unsure, but clearly thought that such ancient history, years before they were born, had been forgotten, so attention to fact and detail was not important.

 

Our hero leaves the Yard to join the northern plod in pursuit of a criminal who murdered George’s wife.  Of course he nails the villain who is duly topped – a bit harsh considering that capital punishment had been abolished by that time. Another episode featured nasty goings on by the IRA several years before the ‘struggle’ actually began. And the Sergeant has a Beatles haircut long before John, George, Paul and Ringo, not that a copper would have been allowed such an extravagance unless he was Drugs Squad or Special Branch.

 

The new series is very socially-aware. The first episode was a murder that wasn’t of a black girl. Actually she was the victim of a hit-and-run, a fact that would have been noted by the Police Surgeon within minutes of discovering the body.

 

The entire programme was reprise of just about every anti-racist cliché ever heard – the landlady with ‘No coloured, no Irish, no dogs’ in her window, the Enoch Powell stuff, the whole bag.

 

And the accustomed sloppiness was ever-present. The dead girl’s father was supposed to have served in wartime RAF, and duly appeared in what purported to be uniform. Servicemen wore battle-dress throughout the War. This was supposed to be service dress only it wasn’t.

 

Everything was wrong, including the presence of a large population of West Indians in the north-east in the early 60’s.

 

But what did that matter when there was a captive audience for a major rant against fascist, racist pigs?

 

I hoped that it was a one-off and that the second episode would have got back to a bit of detective work fronted by an actor of limited range but OK for this light-weight stuff.

 

Boy, did I get that wrong.

 

Next was class. Every stereotype was there; the elderly eccentric aristo who consorted with the peasantry in the village pub and played with motor bikes (how plebeian), his much younger bitch of a second wife who insisted on being addressed as ‘your Ladyship’ and constantly ranted about the lower orders really being governed by the aristocracy, the layabout son sent down from Oxford and chucked out of the Guards whose upturned car was found in a river with a dead girl inside, Chappaquiddick-style. She would have been ’beneath him’ if you get my drift.

 

I gave up part-way through and went over to Johnny Cash.

 

Now, I have nothing against bias. We are all biased one way or another. It adds colour and debate, and life would be very dull without it.

 

What I won’t accept is a public broadcaster being outrageously biased and always one-way, of ludicrous  plot-lines, unbelievable stories, and sloppy production that suggests a total contempt for the viewer or professional incompetence or, more likely, both.

 

Women on top?

As if they don’t have enough problems, including the delightful prospect of the whole corrupt, rackety, incompetent, and anti-democratic  structure of the EU crashing down, they are now getting all worked up about female rights in the workplace and particularly imposing rules across the entire EU for quotas on women on company boards.

 

What is it about politicians that makes them itch to interfere in the smooth running of business? (Obama is a case in point; anyone who can say to a gathering of company big-shots that it wasn’t you who created the business, it was the workers, is an unreconstructed Marxist). There is scarcely a leading politician today who has ever done an honest job.

 

So allow me to expose a few fallacies about equality.

 

First, that women are paid less than men.

 

Does on seriously imagine in this day that firms have discriminatory pay scales for identical work? That the salary of an executive – or anyone else – will be governed by gender?

 

This is a perversion of the truth.

 

It is a fact that women earn less during their working lives. The reason is that their working lives are shorter. And the reason for that can be summed up in one word – children.

 

If only economic criteria were applied, men would have priority in professional training because they work much longer so there is a larger return on the original investment.

 

It is an important and interesting fact that women are now delaying having children until their early thirties, whereas formerly it would have been early twenties. And these days this is exactly the period when executives make the big jump to the most senior positions, including the board. So they tend to miss out (an uplifting exception is Marissa Meyer who is moving from Google to head-up Yahoo where she will have her work cut out trying to turn around what looks like a basket case. She is 8 months pregnant).

 

And the biggest obstacle is children and the demands of family life, as Louise Mensch has discovered. She caused a stir when she exited the Commons inquiry into phone hacking at a crucial point because she was on the school run. Now she has thrown in the towel, causing a by-election that will be a Labour landslide.

 

It is also a fact that in the US more than half of professional new entries are women, only 28% get senior management posts, and only 3% are CEOs.

 

The sad truth is, girls, that no, you can’t have it all.

 

Business life is a mixture of very long working hours and often extensive travel. Many big firms try to accommodate mothers with flexitime, part-time, and working from home. But the bottom-line is profitability, not social engineering.

 

So what to do if you as a boss are forced to have a certain number of women on the board? Well, the same as MPs do. Appoint the wife, squeeze, mistress. Or all three.

 

 

Obama vs. Osama......

 

I asked Hay Texas for his take on two recently-published books that cast doubt on Obama’s role in the killing of bin Laden, one asserting that he dithered 3 times before Hillary forced his arm, written by a known right wing controversialist; the other, by a former SEAL that the events were not as described and had been hyped.

 

Here is his response.

 

We are familiar with the issues you brought up about O's role in offing bin Laden. There is a lot of scuttlebutt floating around over the incident and what with a new book just out telling a radically different story, people don't know what to believe. I anticipated different versions of the story from the beginning and still anticipate more variations over the years ahead. Some people are better at lying than I am at telling the truth.

 

Moreover, lying can be a highly remunerative business.

 

My instinct is that the plan for the Navy Seals was executed as stated just after the incident. O was called in from the golf course when it came time to enter bin Laden's compound. The Seals had cameras attached to their helmets and the President, Hillary, military brass, the Secretary of Defense and others were watching every move via satellite.

 

There is no question in my mind that O had the courage to order someone to pull the trigger. Indeed, he admits regularly overseeing and approving assassinations of known terrorists by drones and undoubtedly other means.

 

There must have been trepidations over two major issues. First, would the mission succeed and second what would the reaction be in the Middle East. Certainly, failure scenarios were prepared and evaluated among strategists. I expect O's greatest fear was a repeat of the disastrous effort by President Carter to raid the American Embassy in Tehran and free the hostages being held their.

 

On this note, Carter got full blame for the failure and by the same token, I and most Americans give O full credit for the success of offing bin Laden. Everyone knows that neither President had anything to do with the actual events.

 

As for Hillary, I expect she advised O on the impact of both success and failure among our Arab and Middle Eastern friends and enemies. I can imagine O dithering over these impacts. He definitely needed to avoid an irreversible diplomatic row with Pakistan.

 

 

Whatever may have been said by Hillary, the ultimate decision to go was, in my opinion, that of O.