Kerry At Yale

The good news is that Secretary of State John Kerry is not Ayaan Hersi Ali, and therefore his address to Yale graduates on College Class Day was not cancelled by a tremulous administration responding to charges that the appointed speaker had needlessly denigrated Islam. Yale, one may be thankful, is not Brandeis University, which first announced plans that it would bestow an honorary degree on Hersi Ali and later cancelled her invitation to speak at the college when students and Muslim organizations became restive.

Mr. Kerry, assuredly, is no Hersi Ali. His comments concerning the murderous assault on Christians by Muslim Salafists in the Middle East and Africa are so mild and inoffensive as to be barely noticed at all. 

  

Nor is Mr. Kerry Condoleezza Rice, currently a professor of Political Economy in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and  the first African American in U.S. history to be appointed Secretary of State. Ms. Rice graciously declined the invitation to speak at Rutgers University when students at the university professed to be agitated by former President George Bush’s Iraq War.

Ms. Rice fell victim to academic indignation when leaders of the university’s Islamic organizations, Ahluk Bayt, MuslimGirl and the Muslim Student Organization wrote a letter to Rutgers’ President charging that Ms. Rice, in her official capacity as Secretary of State, had been guilty of “grave human rights violations, defrauding the American public” and unequivocally supporting “enhanced torture tactics.”

“During a six-hour ‘occupation’ of a campus office building,” one news outlet reported, “demonstrators labeled Rice a ‘war criminal’ and suggested that her rightful place was not in front of a college commencement crowd but in the docket.”

The President of Rutgers showed some spine by refusing to withdraw the invitation, but Ms. Rice declined to appear because, she said, the invitation “has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time.”

Mr. Kerry’s invitation to speak was not protested by Yale students. Nor was President Barack Obama denounced by aggrieved Islamic student organizations for having sent Navy Seals into a sovereign nation to assassinate Osama bin Ladin, a charismatic, Islamic “religious leader. Protesting that the war in Iraq was the wrong war, Mr. Obama disengaged and committed many more American troops to “the right war” in Afghanistan, a collection of warlike tribes sometimes called by historians “the graveyard of empires.”

During his self-effacing remarks at Yale, Mr. Kerry may have unintentionally appropriated a line from T.S. Elliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions

Which a minute will reverse.

Mr. Kerry advised graduating Yale students to tie their courage to the hitching post or, as Lady Macbeth says, “But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we'll not fail.”

Said Mr. Kerry, “Class of 2014, your job is to disturb the universe. You have to reject that these problems are too big, so don't weigh in." Courage must not “fall victim to the slow suffocation of conventional wisdom.”

For a good part of his life, Mr. Kerry said, hidebound institutions and conventional government had responded laconically to society’s “felt needs.” As examples of the incapacity of government to respond quickly and adequately to “felt needs,” Mr. Kerry mentioned  the Civil Rights Movement, the Clean Air Act and, according to a report in a Hartford paper, “ the ending of the war in Vietnam.”

Ah yes – Vietnam. Mr. Kerry is something of an authority on the Vietnam years, a national agony that corresponded neatly with the breakdown of authority in colleges: Spitting at returning troops, non-negotiable demands made of college deans by students occupying his office, and a highly fictionalized view of the role played by soldiers in Vietnam were all characteristics of the age of protest. The students to whom Mr. Kerry directed his remarks at Yale, unlike the Secretary of State, have no personal recollection of the Vietnam War era. They depend for an accurate remembrance of times past upon such as Mr. Kerry, one of the disturbers of the universe during the Vietnam period.

Upon his return from service in Vietnam, Mr. Kerry was not one of the troops spat upon by war protesters, possibly because he eagerly joined their protests as a member of the "Vietnam Veterans Against the War.” Invited to testify before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs in 1971, Mr. Kerry pulled out all the anti-Vietnam War stops, and then some.  He and other returning soldiers whom he contrasted in his testimony to Thomas Paine’s “sunshine patriots” had just finished conducting in Detroit an investigation into war crimes committed by American troops in Vietnam. In his Congressional testimony, Mr. Kerry reported the findings of the “Winter Soldiers” with which he strongly identified. He wished to emphasize that the details he was providing to the Congress were:

… not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day to day basis, with the full awareness of officers at every level of command. It’s impossible to describe to you what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. But they did. They relieved the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do. They told the stories of times they personally raped, cut off the ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and  turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown (sic) up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, raised villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war, in addition to the very particular ravaging which is done by the power of this country. We called this investigation the “winter solider” investigation…

Mr. Kerry’s graphic description of war crimes committed by American troops in Vietnam – “… not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day to day basis, with the full awareness of officers at every level of command” – did not prove a bar to his long career in the U.S. Senate, his bid for the presidency in 2004 or his appointment as U.S. Secretary of State following the resignation, presumably for health reasons, of possible Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

During his presidential bid, Mr. Kerry campaigned in opposition to the Iraq War, having voted two years earlier in favor of a measure authorizing then President George Bush to use force in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Such pirouetting is not uncommon among congressmen who decide they are presidential material.

Yale students who may have expected a heroic anti-Vietnam War protester to launch verbal missiles at Islamic terrorists who have only recently cut off the ears and arms and heads of Christians in the Middle East and Northern Africa very likely were disappointed in Mr. Kerry’s College Class Day address, a good part of which was devoted to the ravages to the environment caused by an over-reliance on oil.

China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia have just concluded a multi-billion dollar oil deal, shredding whatever serious sanctions might be imposed by Mr. Kerry on a proto-Stalinist Russia now busily dismembering Ukraine.

Russia’s Doors, Putin’s Time

There are, and always have been, three doors to Russia, every one of which has been jealously guarded first by Russian Czars and in the Communist era by Russian Czars posing as proletarian workers such as Josef Stalin. There is a Western point of access (Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states), a Middle Eastern point of access (Afghanistan, Iran) and a Southern point of access (China). Access doors open both ways and, depending upon one’s point of view, President of Russia Vladimir Putin has now either opened or shut all the doors. It would be paradoxical, though never-the-less true, to say he has shut the doors by opening them.

Mr. Putin was featured as Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2007. That year, China’s leader Hu Jintao was featured as a runner up.

Mr. Putin seemed to be on his way out, Time noted: “His final year as Russia's President has been his most successful yet. At home, he secured his political future. Abroad, he expanded his outsize—if not always benign—influence on global affairs.”

But in communist “post-communist” Russia, things are not always as they seem. Putin was never out; he was simply playing musical chairs with Russia’s second in command Dmitry Medvedev. It was Mr. Medvedev whose knee President Barack Obama tapped prior to his re-election to office to convey a message to Mr. Putin. Reuter’s caught the moment this way:

“President Barack Obama was caught on camera on Monday assuring outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he will have ‘more flexibility’ to deal with contentious issues like missile defense after the U.S. presidential election.

Obama, during talks in Seoul, urged Moscow to give him ‘space’ until after the November ballot, and Medvedev said he would relay the message to incoming Russian president Vladimir Putin.”

Mr. Medvedev apparently relayed the message, which may have been re-interpreted by Mr. Putin as indicating that Mr. Obama was a weak and indecisive president.

Proof of Mr. Obama’s weakness is strewn all over the world: There were no defense missile emplacements in Poland or any of the Baltic States; Mr. Obama’s “lead from behind” foreign policy in Libya and Syria had collapsed; the personal representative of the president of the United States, Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens, was assassinated by armed militants associated with al-Qaida, a metastasizing group of terrorists that, the American public had been told during Mr. Obama’s second presidential campaign, had been decimated after Mr. Obama had cut short the video career of Osama bin Laden. For a moment there, it appeared that Mr. Obama had turned over his Middle East portfolio to the once and future Time magazine “Person of the Year,” Mr. Putin. And, of course, Mr. Putin was only too happy to lend a shoulder.

Next year, one may expect to find Mr. Putin’s mug on the cover of Time once again. Consider Mr. Putin’s triumphs: Mr. Putin has both shut and opened the Middle Eastern access doors. He is providing help to Iran in the county’s march towards the acquisition of nuclear weapons. The western door opens to natural gas pipe lines running from Russia through an as yet partly dismembered Ukraine to Europe, which can ill afford an interruption in energy supplies. The United States might supply Europe with sufficient energy resources, but its President, convinced the country can run on fuel cells, has been dithering on the opening of a Canada supplied energy pipe line. Afghanistan, which occasionally has provided a route used by Islamic terrorists to strike at the heart of Russia, has been, since the Taliban chased Russia out of the country, operating under an American protectorate now crumbling everywhere in the world. So long as an American Cerberus guards the Afghan door to Russia, the Islamic threat to Putin will be considerably reduced.

Most recently Mr. Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping have struck what Charles Krauthammer has styled in a recent column “a spectacular energy deal — $400 billion of Siberian natural gas to be exported to China over 30 years." This last foreign policy gesture opens and closes the last of Russia’s doors. 

Mr. Putin’s “pivot to Asia” is a live option, Mr. Krauthammer writes, while Mr. Obama’s pivot to Asia has become a dead letter. Mr. Obama’s “withdrawal from the Middle East — where from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, from Libya to Syria, U.S. influence is at its lowest ebb in 40 years — is a fait accompli.”

Mr. Krauthammer’s columns are not read in the White House by Mr. Obama, who appears to have settled comfortably into a position of unarmed neutrality. His is the kind of foreign policy that is to be expected from a president chronically unable to determine friends from enemies. Those who cannot read the times will be done in by them.

In any case, the second appearance of Putin as Time magazine's’ “Person of the Year” is  imminent.

You Do Trust Us, Don’t You?

 

Here is President Barack Obama holding forth in an ad released in September: “Now Governor Romney believes that with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy, and fewer regulations on Wall Street, all of us will prosper. In other words, he’d double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place.”

That is the core message of the Obama-Biden campaign. Mr. Obama has repeated the claim often, and Vice President Joe Biden took it for a ride around the block in his recent debate with Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

Unfortunately, the theory recently collided with fact checker for the Washington Post Glenn Kessler, not a conservative or a member in good standing of the much abused and misunderstood Tea Party movement, who awarded the claim three out of four “Pinocchios,” which places the statement alongside such whoppers as “the earth is flat” and “Vice President Joe Biden is a gentleman.”

Citations to support the claim are missing, and the veracity of the proposition rests upon a single column written by Ezra Klein, the paper’s liberal blogger who told Mr. Kessler, “I am absolutely not saying the Bush tax cuts led to the financial crisis. To my knowledge, there’s no evidence of that.”

In an attempt to bury the lie, Mr. Kessler wrote, “It is time for the Obama campaign to retire this talking point, no matter how much it seems to resonate with voters.”

Good luck with that. It was British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who said there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. One suspects the Obama-Biden trope falls into the category of damned lies that cannot be withdrawn without causing a campaign to collapse upon itself. Inconvenient lies are easily thrown overboard, but a convenient lie that forms the main joist of a political campaign must be defended to the death. And didn’t some politician or other point out that if a lie is large and audacious enough, it would survive the attacks upon it  of angels, science and fact checkers?    

If former President George Bush did not slay the economy with tax cuts, who killed Cock Robin? What was the precipitating cause of crisis so often lamented by Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden?

It was, many non-partisan writers are coming to believe, the mortgage crisis. This writer said months ago that if Mr. Obama had from the beginning of his first term in office addressed himself to settling the mortgage crisis, he would today be undefeatable. A healthy housing market drives the entire U.S. economy, and an effective solution to the mortgage crisis would have been very painful indeed. The housing bubble was caused by politicians in Washington who degraded mortgage banking standards so that those who could not afford mortgages might never-the-less own houses. In Canada, where banking standards remained rational, the housing industry remained solvent.

Instead of addressing himself to restoring the lending integrity of banks, Mr. Obama reached for the same brass ring that tempted progressives a hundred years ago during the election of 1912 and pushed through a Congress dominated by Democrats the holy grail of progressivism – universal health care, Obamacare being a giant step in the direction of universal health care. That attempt is now crashing on the rocks of reality. The U.S. economy simply is not healthy enough to sustain the cost of Mr. Obama’s unaffordable “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” a poorly conceived half-way measure designed to move the nation towards a government run health care system.

Other government controlled and administered systems – Social Security, than which there is nothing less secure, Medicare and Medicaid -- are heading towards collapse if nothing is done to make them solvent for future generations. Solutions that might make these systems solvent put forward by Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, among others, have been laughed to scorn by the easily amused Mr. Biden, who continues to disown problems he and the president should have accepted as their own long ago. The very first step in problem solving is to own the problem before it owns you.

We are living in a time when problems put the saddle on men and ride them until they drop. In Europe, politicians are already hagridden. Excessive spending and unaffordable entitlements have bankrupted first Greece, then Spain, then Italy, and the governments of impecunious countries, former democracies, have now been delivered into the unforgiving hands of technocrats and international bankers. All this is happening in real time, right under our noses. And yet here, just as in Europe, we are following the path of least resistance towards a fatal fall dramatically pictured in our media and on our television screens.

It ought to be a cause of great concern that our politicians cannot see the problems so apparent to the enemies of our country.  The response of the United States to the murder of an ambassador and the destruction of a consulate in Benghazi is a near triumph of rhetoric over reality.

At first, the attack on the embassy was attributed to a spontaneous protest occasioned by a film that insulted the prophet Mohammed, a tissue of lies. On the second day following the organized attack on the embassy by a terrorist network supposedly disabled by the killing of Osama bin Ladin, intelligence officials knew there was no protest rally at the embassy -- none. Nice try. At a vice presidential debate with the excessively polite Mr. Ryan, the vastly amused Mr. Biden, three corpses sitting on his chest, pointed to faulty intelligence as the culprit that prevented him and the president from reinforcing an embassy under constant threat from terrorists for months, a four Pinocchios stretcher. Pity Mr. Biden couldn’t put the blame on former President George Bush. But in Mr. Bush’s absence, intelligence services would serve the same purpose.

Trust my rhetoric over the reality that seeps through your senses into your brain, Mr. Biden implored an audience that saw him interrupt Mr. Ryan about eighty times, a calculated filibuster designed to blunt the force of Mr. Ryan’s assertions. You do trust us, Mr. Biden asked the voting public, don’t you?

Well, don’t you?

Bysiewicz Revididus

Former Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, now running for U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman’s soon to be vacated seat along side U.S. Rep Chris Murphy, may have had her front grill dented a bit in recent days, but it must be said the lady now is in fearsome forward motion.

Mrs. Bysiewicz has called for U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan as soon as practicable and, by so doing, got a jump on the laggard Mr. Murphy, who has been advertising himself in different venues as the progressive’s progressive.

The modern progressives, nearly all of them Democrats, not so long ago were bestirring themselves as anti-war zealots. Who can forget Cindy Sheehan’s often reported march on former President George Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch?

During the Bush presidency, the air crackled with fervent calls by then presidential campaigner Barack Obama to shut down the Iraq war shortly after the Petraeus surge had been launched. The progressives were hot on closing down GITMO, still open for business. A not yet dead Sen. Edward Kennedy and several excitable congresspersons were besieged by leftists in the Democratic Party to start an investigation that might, God willing, lead to impeachment proceedings against the president and his dark star, former Vice President Dick Cheney. A bill of particulars, eerily resembling Mr. Obama’s venture into Libya, was drawn up by Ronnie Dugger and published in the Texas Observer:

“Bush announced in 2002 his illegal presidential policy that the United States can and will attack other nations first, waging war on them, when he so decides. He is now waging, as if he were doing it in our names, a bloody war of aggression against Iraq, which on the face of it is a crime against humanity under the Nuremberg principles that we and our allies established and enforced with hangings after World War II.”

These were heady times.

All this rhetorical effluvia was launched before President Barack Obama began to morph into Mr. Bush, at least in matters of foreign policy. Domestic policy wise, the president still stands staunchly a bit to the right of Senator Karl Marx. But even here, disappointed progressive Democrats have noticed some unfortunate slippage.

Mrs. Bysiewicz’s bold and unambiguous call for a removal of troops from what has been called “the graveyard of empires” opens the door, unfortunately for Democrats, to a reconsideration of Mr. Obama’s “war of choice” in Afghanistan.

A few weeks ago, dark star Cheney characterized the assassination of Osama bin Laden as "a tremendous achievement for the military and intelligence professionals who carried out this important mission." And the ex-Vice President even went so far as to bestow a compliment on the Democratic president: “I also want to congratulate President Obama and the members of his national security team.” And then Mr. Cheney predictably went and spoiled it all, warning that the war on terror must continue. "Al Qaeda,” said Mr. Cheney “remains a dangerous enemy. Though bin Laden is dead, the war goes on."

Mrs. Bysiewicz and Mr. Murphy, both courting the progressive vote in bluer than blue Connecticut, beg to differ with Mr. Cheney and, perhaps more importantly, with each other.

On a return trip from Afghanistan, Mr. Murphy sent out to his progressive supporters an e-mail in which he said he supported a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan but favored a “long standing presence” in the country.
He was vigorously attacked by Mrs. Bysiewicz, who said “"I strongly disagree with Congressman Murphy on this issue." Mrs. Bysiewitz also took a roundhouse swipe at retiring Sen. Lieberman: “Connecticut Democrats deserve a replacement to Senator Joe Lieberman who will consistently be progressive on removing US troops from Afghanistan."

Following the dust up, former chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee John Droney, long a Lieberman supporter and a political realist, archly observed that the most leftward liberal of the two would want to capture the affections of progressives in a primary race. Mrs. Bysiewicz’s linking of Mr. Murphy and Mr. Lieberman, reviled by progressives, therefore might be a politically astute move.

Mr. Murphy affected a fetching bewilderment. What ever could Mrs. Bysiewicz mean? Does she favor a withdrawl of troops, like, tomorrow?

Possibly not.

Neither of the two Democratic contenders for the U.S. Senate have been asked a question put to presidential spokesperson Jay Carney in a recent press gaggle. Asked on May 13 whether the Obama administration was prepared to ask Congress for approval to continue the participation in the no-fly zone in Libya, the president’s official spokesman, Jay Carney, responded,“I don’t have anything with regard to the 60-day issue, if that’s what you’re referring to.”

Unlike Mr. Obama, who sought authority from the United Nations rather than the U.S. Congress when he ordered the bombing of Libya, Mr. Bush was in compliance with the War Powers Act, which requires the president to seek authority from Congress 60 days after engaging in a war theatre.

The clock on the War Powers Act is ticking. Are the two Democratic contenders for Mr. Lieberman’s seat in the congress concerned?

Possibly not.

bin Laden At Room Temperature

Here is former Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi on the importance AND insignificance of the late Osama bin Laden:

Then, September 7, 2006: “[E]ven if [Osama bin Laden] is caught tomorrow, it is five years too late. He has done more damage the longer he has been out there. But, in fact, the damage that he has done ... is done. And even to capture him now I don't think makes us any safer.”

Now: “The death of Osama bin Laden marks the most significant development in our fight against al-Qaida. ... I salute President Obama, his national security team, Director Panetta, our men and women in the intelligence community and military, and other nations who supported this effort for their leadership in achieving this major accomplishment. ... [T]he death of Osama bin Laden is historic…”

Note the use of the word “historic.” Anything that happened yesterday is historic. This overused locution parallels the word “interesting” in modern times.

If your wife or GF, having dyed her hair blue with bright streaks of orange and yellow, asks you “What do you think of my hair do?” you are expected to show sufficient enthusiasm. In a pinch, you might mutter “Interesting,” but generally this will be regarded by your wife or GF as a failure of nerve, and you may expect the usual dressing down.

In using the word “historic,” a vacuous emotional place holder, Mrs. Pelosi was simply following political protocol: One of her aides had shoved a statement under her nose; she read it. We should not be too hard on her.

The truth is that, operationally, Mr. bin Laden was and is dispensable. He had outlived his usefulness. The occasional grainy videos had become… well, interesting.

The news media is now fluttering around the question: HOW was Mr. bin Laden dispatched.

Early propaganda from the White House had Mr. bin Laden cowering behind the skirts of his wife or possibly armed with a knife in his teeth or fingering a grenade in his pocket. The brave woman stepped forward; she was shot in the leg. Mr. bin Laden took a bullet above one of his eyes, creating a “gruesome” gash that has itself become problematic. Pictures were taken, apparently to convince terrorist doubters that the right man had been sent heavenward by Navy Seals.

It turns out that some of this was bunkum. Mr. bin Laden was unarmed. In the confusion of the moment, he had failed to raise his hands in surrender. Had he done so, his life would have been spared. Possibly he might have been transported to the United States and given a civil trial, as recommended by presidential campaigner Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, now a Hollywood lobbyist, and other Democrats who, at the time, favored wrapping terrorists in the rights and immunities available under the U.S. Constitution to non-terrorists citizens of the USA.

Among the people gathered at the White House watching the assault on the millionaire’s well fortified compound, a hand grenade’s throw from one of the principal military institutions in Pakistan, was the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, et al. Mr. Dodd was addressing the Media Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank and didn’t make the showing as a Hollywood guest. The group was watching the historic event IN REAL TIME, which means they likely saw Mr. bin Laden stubbornly refusing to surrender.

And yet, the news-shapers at the White House still got it wrong.

The gruesome gash left by that bullet hole in the forehead presents yet another problem.

Pictures of Mr. bin Laden after he had been assassinated had been taken. One shows Mr. bin Laden being deposited in the ocean. In deference to Islamic burial rites, the body was washed and wrapped in a shroud before being fed to the fishes. It appears that burial at sea was a faux pas; according to some Islamic scholars, the body should have been properly interred or delivered to a relative who might have accepted it. Another picture showing Mr. bin Laden’s facial wound is said to be GRUSEOME.

Should the pictures be released or not?

The United States has not developed a protocol concerning the publication of gruesome assassination pictures.

Perhaps Ms. Pelosi might be urged to venture her unscripted opinion on the matter.

Obama Gets Osama

After having made certain by DNA analysis that they had gotten their man, dead rather than alive, Osama bin Laden’s body was committed to the fishes. This was probably a good idea: The burial is compliant with Islamic rites, which specifies near immediate disposition of the dead; and the disposal of the remains makes it less likely that terrorists who drew energy from Mr. bin Laden’s presence will have a martyr’s site to which they can repair to pray and plot ways to blow up non-military civilians such as those who died on 9-11.

Here in the United States, one could hear champagne corks popping shortly after the glad tidings were disclosed in a 15 minute address to the nation by President Barack Obama. Mr. Obama said justice had been served at the hands of the Navy Seals, who dispatched Mr. bin Laden after a brief firefight.

Mr. bin Laden was shot in the head, according to officials, after he and his bodyguards resisted the assault. The assaulters bagged three adult males, including one of Mr. bin Laden's sons, and a woman used as shield by Mr. bin Laden. Two other women were injured.

In his remarks, Mr. Obama identified Mr. bin Laden as a terrorist who had violated Islamic precepts by targeting civilians and other Islamic co-religionists.

The austere millionaire – Mr. bin Laden inherited his millions from his father, a master builder and contractor in Saudi Arabia – was said to have spent his last days in a “costly, custom-built hideout” three quarters of a mile distant from a Pakistani military academy, his operational influence in Afghanistan having been degraded many years before. The war in Afghanistan is being waged by the Taliban, not al Qaeda, the group founded by Mr. bin Laden.

Never-the-less, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a warning to the Taliban shortly after the fish began nibbling on Mr. bin Laden’s toes.

“You cannot wait us out, you cannot defeat us, but you can make the choice to abandon al Qaeda and participate in a peaceful political process,” said Mrs. Clinton, regarded by some as having persuaded Mr. Obama to take a firmer hand in those areas of the Middle East -- such as Egypt, Syria and Libya -- in which the seeds of democracy appear to have produced tender shoots. Such shoots, it should be said, have a way of putting forth dark blossoms, quasi-religious theocrats who quickly stamp out dangerous democratic eruptions, replacing them with more or less permanent quasi-religious thugocracies.

Here at home in Connecticut, reaction to the mission by members of the state’s congressional delegation was nearly instantaneous.

A historic moment, said U.S. Rep John Larson “rivaled only by the demise of Adolf Hitler,” a fanciful stretch. One of Mr. Larson’s aides should seize from Mr. Larson’s vocabulary the words “rivaled only by” and impound them.

The state’s very junior senator, Dick Blumenthal, soon to become Connecticut’s senior senator upon Senator Joe Lieberman’s retirement, characterized the killing of Mr. bin Laden as “a significant turning point in the war on terror,” an overcooked sentiment. Any progress in overcoming terrorism in greater Arabia will be a slow slog. The terrorist hydra will survive without one of its heads. Mr. Blumenthal might benefit from a conference with Mr. Lieberman.

Due deference, for once, was shown by both the president and senators to former President George Bush, an indication that Mr. Bush’s long nightmare as a perceived political booby may be coming to an end.

And indeed, Mr. Obama, much to the dismay of anti-war zealots in the Democratic Party, has copied much of Mr. Bush’s foreign policy, expanding to three the war fronts that the American military is now engaged in, all without a peep from Connecticut’s congressional delegation, most of whom benefited in their campaign from the former president’s overly aggressive foreign policy. The road to Mr. bin Laden's killing was paved with information provided from CIA black sites through interrogations of Kahlid Sheik Mohammed. The GITMO prison is still functioning, despite Mr. Obama’s pledge to shut the place down during his presidential campaign. And the effort to try in civilian court the real mastermind of 9-11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, has finally been abandoned by Mr. Obama’s hapless Attorney General Eric Holder. Mr. Mohammed will be tried by a military tribunal.

There are some tactical differences between the two commanders-in chief: Mr. Bush captured and water boarded Mr. Mohammed, extracting from him actionable intelligence used to frustrate future terrorist plots against the United States; Mr. Obama fed Mr. bin Laden to the fishes.

It may be something of a plus that Mr. Osama, unlike Mr. Mohammed, won’t be talking to any American defense attorneys.

UPDATE

According to a later Barack Obama administration report on May 3, Mr. bin Ladin was not armed when he was shot, nor did he use his wife as a human shield. The assaulters were acting on orders to kill Mr. bin Ladin.