The rescue of Captain Phillips from the hands of the Somalia pirates by the U.S. Navy SEALs has some people on the right mightily confused. President Obama is supposed to be a lily-livered liberal bleeding heart who wouldn’t harm a fly on behalf of our citizens — didn’t he bow and scrape his way through Europe? — so when he actually proves them wrong, the wingnuts at Redstate have to reconfigure their reality.
Captive Captain Saves President Obama
Playing pansy politics with pirates put the Captain’s life at increased risk. His first escape attempt was thwarted by the thugs as Phillips remained adrift from the aid and cover of the US Navy, which sat restrained by an administration too cowardly to let slip the dogs of war. Each day the tension and humiliation of a nation grew. The emboldened pirates fired upon our men of action, who thus restrained could not yet act in kind. The terrorists’ defiant lack of fear inspired their fellows to target other American vessels. All while the community organizer in chief flipped through his conflict resolution handbook.
But here, at long last, the captive captain is free. He leapt clear and our faithful Navy, apparently at last free to take the safety off, rid the world of three contemptible degenerates and have the fourth in custody to question. So the bold leap into the sea frees the President of the burden to act.
This is their way of explaining what really happened.
In fact, aides said yesterday, Obama had been briefed 17 times since he returned from his trip abroad, including several times from the White House Situation Room. And without giving too many details, senior White House officials made it clear that Obama had provided the authority for the rescue.
“The president’s focus was on saving and protecting the life of the captain,” one adviser said. Friday evening, after a National Security Council telephone update, Obama granted U.S. forces what aides called “the authority to use appropriate force to save the life of the captain.” On Saturday at 9:20 a.m., Obama went further, giving authority to an “additional set of U.S. forces to engage in potential emergency actions.”
A top military official, Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, commander of the Fifth Fleet, explained that Obama issued a standing order that the military was to act if the captain’s life was in immediate danger.
“Our authorities came directly from the president,” he said. “And the number one authority for incidents if we were going to respond was if the captain’s life was in immediate danger. And that is the situation in which our sailors acted.”
Leaving aside the fact that the world does not operate in a time-frame that fits into a Jack Bauer 24 story arc, you would think that at least these clowns would have the maturity and the class to acknowledge that the president did exactly what they’ve said he would never do — his job.
So the question therefore is, why the hell should we pay attention to these people? It’s clear they don’t want us to take them seriously, so this must be their attempt at comedy. We all need a good laugh now and then, and so far, these clowns are doing a great job of coming up with new material.
