Vice President Joe Biden is known for yielding to rhetorical over factual observations. He was in fine form this week when he told an audience at the fundraiser that the plan to kill Osama Bin Laden was the greatest and most audacious plan in 500 years. While the Bin Laden raid was incredible, there are a few raids that may have equal or greater claim to that title. To put that into perspective, the raid surpassed such minor skirmishes as the Battle of Trenton, Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, and the Raid at Cabanatuan – just to name U.S. operations. There are also a few notable foreign rivals like Operation Eiche (Oak) to rescue Mussolini, the Dambusters Raid on Ruhr, the Pegasus Bridge landing, Operation Chariot to destroy the St Nazaire dry dock, and the Entebbe raid to rescue Israeli hostages.
Biden announced to the thrilled audience that “You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there.”
Since the speech was in New Jersey, I would have thought someone would have mentioned nearby Trenton and the crossing of the Delaware in Winter as perhaps more worthy of that distinction.
Biden’s time frame runs from 1512 to 2012. That also includes Battle of Trafalgar in 1802. Peanuts.
What is most interesting is the statement that followed the boast:
“Do any one of you have a doubt that if that raid failed that this guy would be a one-term president?” That would make it sound like the brave audacity about the raid was to give the order at the risk of your own re-election. That makes the Delaware crossing look like a mere regatta parade.
Source: Politico
Michael Murry,
A decade earlier was glad to have gotten tech job instead of tactical which my roommate from Monmouth Sig Off course got. He went V-way with 322nd Sig Bn in ’61. Of course it was for corps HQ “protected” by ARVN.
But as you and Ellsberg know the field was never secure whatever.
So how well did you do with the language.
Got so close as Bangkok designing B-52 bases. U Tapao or aka Sattahip was one. Seems still active as Google “pinks” it out.
I assume you had hot and cold running maids on that houseboat.
You naval types have all the luck. Of course we had one at our BOQ, but self was occupied by the CG’s daughter instead. Of course who she entertained at Tucson U. was not my worry.
Meanwhile there was plenty of local talent to fill in with. But BOQ groupies, nope.
As before, it was what you write which was the impulse this time.
JFK wasn’t preaching, he just ordered us on indefinitely prolonged tours when a Berlin blockade hit again, and the almost WW3 of the Cuban faceoff over missiles. Fun times. We all held our breath.
As for Joe, he speaks to the beer crowd, or shall we say our baser side.
Swarthmore Mom, thanks. Lots to see and do in Istanbul. We’ve lucked into good weather. Not sure Summer weather would be so great.
Speaking of “audacious raids” into Muslim territory: why limit the heroic Biden examples to a mere 500 years? Why not make it an even 800, so as to get in the truly relevant historical comparisons with America’s “cakewalk” crusades of the past half century? Something like:
“Peace With Horror”
http://themisfortuneteller.blogspot.com/2008/03/peace-with-horror.html
Michael Murry,
If you have ever been to a Presidential Convention then you understand that it is as surreal as Las Vegas is to Cleveland.
There is no truth at a convention and I suspect there never has been since Jefferson and Hamilton began arguing about the nation’s economy and diplomacy, each viewing the role of government differently. People chose sides and the argument morphed into political parties.
Strangely enough, the basic argument remains the same; the side choosing remains the same; the atrocities of the government at home and abroad remain, in spite of the changing circumstances, exactly the same.
We are no better than our ancestors … for proof I offer you Martin and Zimmerman and a Police Department and a Department of Justice that couldn’t be bothered with either of them.
Winston Churchill wrote “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried”. But he also said, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
We are a flawed people, Mr. Murry, who foolishly expect a perfect government.
Where’s the credible evidence that OSAMA bin Patsy was killed – by anything except for, perhaps, a pair of “bad” oil filters?
The most audacious plan in 500 years was a disaster.
What Michael Murry said. Not much one can add to that. Righteous rant, brother.
I have posted this before, but this is a good place to put up again for reinforcement purposes.
Otteray Scribe:
Thanks for the Dave Van Ronk link. I recently found one of my old favorites by the Fuggs, called — appropriately — “Nothing.” Back in 1968 when I served in the Navy aboard a submarine tender in San Diego, a friend and I would knock off ship’s work in the afternoon and head on over to a small, dilapidated houseboat that he had rented at a nearby marina. There, we would kick back in civilian clothes, grab a cold beer from the fridge, turn on the TV and catch up on the news of the world. But whenever President Johnson came on the screen — ranting about how much we should hate communists and moaning about how much he really regretted getting so many Americans and Vietnamese killed in Southeast Asia — my buddy would turn down the TV volume and put one of his favorite records on the stereo, volume cranked up to maximum. Then, with Johnson’s lying lips moving silently on the tube, the Fuggs would scream over and over again the gist of our commander-in-chief’s latest transparent bullshit: “NOTHING! NOTHING! NOTHING! NOTHING!”
Ever since those long-ago days, I have never once heard an American president utter a single syllable without hearing that raucous refrain pounding through my brain. And if anything, the intellectual and moral content of the bellicose babbling has decreased to less than nothing, if one can imagine such a thing.
raff,
It’s a double edged sword. The front mocks the Republicans, the back plays the “we’re strong on defense” card. I don’t want one but they are perfect for a political convention.
Tex’s favorite t-shit, which he got at the ’92 convention, reads “Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican”
I have a collection of convention t-shirts and buttons all the way back to JFK. Some of them are hilarious and some are raunchy as hell. Today’s stuff is tame when compared with things from the ’60’s conventions.
A bad message is on that shirt glorifying war. it is an abominable thing as far as I am concerned.
Blouise:
I don’t know about campaign t-shirts, but back in early 1972, shortly after I returned from Vietnam, the depressing re-election slogan of the day went like this: “Why change Dicks in the middle of a [screwing]?”
As prologue for that hapless acceptance of inevitable evil, I can remember a standing joke we had at Defense Language Institute in 1969 (studying Vietnamese in preparation for Vietnamizing Vietanam).
Question: “If Nixon is withdrawing the troops from Vietnam, how come I’ve got orders to Vietnam next year?”
Answer: “You fool! How can Nixon withdraw you from Vietnam unless he sends you there first?”
We can try to laugh this shit off with a clever slogan, but the human blood and entrails splattering all over the Middle East for the past twenty years — speaking only of the American contribution to the mindless militarization of just about everything — usually turns the humor sour and foul-smelling before long. As Noam Chomsky truthfully said of only one of our bloody debacles: “The scale of the catastrophe in Iraq is so extreme that it can barely be reported.” Yet the political partying at the conventions approaches, and I do not expect to see the tears of shame and rage that ought to pour from every pair of American eyes when confronted with what we have done and the clueless cretins — our self-styled “leaders” — who have sullied our name and legacy for nothing more than their own venal vainglory.
The United States has imprisoned and tortured — for years — absolute nobodies who didn’t know squat about Al Qaeda and its activities, yet when a platoon of President Obama’s military minions surprise an unarmed middle-aged Muslim, one who ostensibly knows everything worth knowing about Al Qaeda, our vaunted Visigoths assassinate him on the spot for the vicarious video-viewing pleasure of some desk-murdering bureaucrats safe and snug in the White House, rather than take this treasure-trove of intelligence into custody for interrogation and trial, which they could easily have done.
As for VP Biden’s self-inflating rhetoric: I can remember Eisenhower’s U-2 embarrassment, JFK’s Bay of Pigs fiasco, Ronald Reagan’s debacle in Beirut, Jimmy Carter’s disastrous attempt at a Special Ops rescue of the Iranian embassy hostages, and Bill Clinton’s bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade — to mention only five times when American Presidents wound up looking like complete morons for trusting the U. S. military and C.I.A. to “surgically” pull off some idiotic stunt in some other country. So I will stipulate that President Obama certainly bet his presidency on another one of these potential screw-ups. This time, he beat the heavy odds favoring debacle — since such disasters occur with escalating regularly these days — but pulling off a relatively minor success like snuffing the unarmed and undefended Osama bin Laden at home really shows the desperate lack of anything but another body count statistic in place of anything remotely qualifying as foreign policy success in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan.
Pretty thin political gruel; but the American government has precious little else to commend it, and its fulminating functionaries have even less moral or ethical credentials on display. Midnight murders of single individual foreigners won’t put a meal in a hungry mouth, educate a single child for a single day, or really do much but elevate Osama bin Laden and others like him to mythological superman status among the put-upon victims of America’s relentless, spastic militarism. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda and its many hapless imitators continue to humble and humiliate a terrified America through nothing more than their own marginal, often comically inept existence. Each pathetic body-count boast by an American official only rubs this stinging salt in America’s own self-created wound. .
Interesting shirt Blouise!
The “Republicans Grant Obama Full Citizenship (front) For Killing Osama (back)” t-shirts are ready for the Democratic convention.
I kid you not.
Burn those shirts. The promote violence as being good.
And the Danish people’s rescue of its Jew during the Second World War.
And what about the sabotaging of the heavy water plant at Telemark during WW II?
jonathan
post the clip of obama saying he wants his image on a flag.
Politicians it seems thinks that killing is the answer for whatever. That should be a clue as to whoever is harboring the deceptive deadly devil.or not. Humans think killing is strength.That is why we put Washington on a coin. That is an idol. Obama wants his image on a flag .That is an idol too. Obama is evil, as evil can be. He is acting like a lamb, but he is a roaring lion seeking who he may devour.
Actually, killing Bin Laden was genius. There will be a political ad that will have as its centerpiece the Twin Towers in flames, President Bush saying he doesn’t think of Bin Laden often and President Obama saying he had Bin Laden Killed. To not have that ad would be for an Obama PAC or the Obama campaign to reject a gift from god herself. Title it “I’m the one that gets shit done.”
I recall shortly after the President said he had done the deed one of the late night comedians remarking that attacking him on defense was going to be difficult because whenever a national security/defense question came up in a debate all Obama would have to do is let his rival ramble on for awhile and then look around, as he does, get that little smile, that he has, and say “I killed Bin Laden”. Standard answer to every question of that sort.
Now it was being played for laughs by the comedian but I could see and hear (Obama) that as clearly as if it was playing in front of me and, though I’m not normally one to tout nationalism or murder, it made me feel good. I don’t think the value of that act for the President should be minimized politically.
Don S, Istanbul is on my list of cities to visit. Have a good time.
I am just guessing here, but I would think that D-Day was just a tad more audacious than the killing of one man.
Being in Istanbul right now, home to a few audacious raids, though perhaps not withing the 500 year timeframe our loquacious, irrepressible,
Veep may have had in mind, he does seem to be a rather puny. admin-serving jester.
Some things are utterly predictable.
MetroCowboy, For some reason the state of Missouri has taken a sharp turn to the right.