Did Bush take his eye off bin Laden
In the course of disparaging the Bush administration's handling of bin Laden at Tora Bora, Jacob Stokes praises President Obama's ability to multitask:
In contrast, President Obama â?? while managing the uprising in the Middle East, the war in Afghanistan and a government on the brink of shutdown â?? could have been too distracted to pay attention to what were surely incomplete intelligence reports saying the CIA had located bin Laden. He could have followed the advice of members of Congress and put the U.S. in the lead of the war in Libya, which would have occupied a significant portion of the national security apparatusâ??s attention. All of those things could have taken President Obamaâ??s eye off the goal of capturing bin Laden. This opportunity could have been squandered.
This doesn't sound all that plausible to me. First, Libya is a fairly large distraction in its own right - it's not an Iraq-style debacle by any means, but it certainly reflects poorly on the administration's decision-making process. (For instance, where was Hillary Clinton yesterday - Islamabad? Nope, she was in Rome, trying to rescue the Libyan intervention.) Second, no matter what was going on, if CIA personnel walk into the Oval Office and say they think they know where bin Laden is living, any president is going to stop what he or she is doing and pay attention.
I think Stokes is a lot closer to the mark to say that casualty aversion was the prime culprit at Tora Bora.
(Photo credit: Pete Souza)
