The Obama Dichotomy

On the heels of the Navy SEALS taking down Osama Bin Laden, the disconnect between President Obama and the American heartland has shown itself front and center. Sometimes it seems that the areas where we all agree only seem to accentuate the areas where we might disagree. Barring a few extremists on either end of the scale who are unhappy about the military action, the American public is overwhelmingly supportive and approving of the take-down. It is some of the political posturing of the administration that has many people scratching their heads. It is important to remember through all of this that the President is a lawyer, which makes his position here even more questionable to the "average Joe". But the question is indeed as much of a moral one as it is a legal one. It has been posed by many on the right, and was recently stated as follows at FoxNews.

How can the administration be investigating CIA agents whose techniques may have led America to Al Qaeda's top guy?

Legally, we all understand the protections against illegal search and seizure. If information is gained using illegal methods, it is not admissible into the evidence against a person. Now in this case, this would not so much affect the target of this raid. But what about the courier who lead them to the location? If his name was obtained using the enhanced interrogation that President Obama has declared to be "torture" and illegal, than why would he feel it was okay to use the information to track down Bin Laden? If it is not illegal and hence, acceptable to use, than why are we no longer using these obviously effective techniques? And at the very least, how does one continue to consider legal action against those who obtained the information that was used to make the raid possible? There are things that most people won't understand because they are complicated, but this is one that people don't understand because it simply doesn't make sense.

There are other implications of this whole ordeal that are political in nature that allow the Republicans to score some points against the Obama Administration. His refusal to release the pictures of the deceased Bin Laden seem to fly in the face of his original instinct to release the Abu Ghraib photos, yet in fairness he did change his mind on this issue for a very similar reason to the one stated here. Yet it should be noted that this raid was planned for almost a year. Am I to believe that there was no discussion in the lead up about what would be done with the photos? Was this never even considered until after the raid? I doubt that. Until the decision was announced not to release the photos, I had assumed that they would be released and all of the posturing coming from the White House was to placate the left and Muslim groups. Thus, I now logically assume that they never planned to release them, and they were never giving serious consideration to doing so, but rather patronizing those who want them released.

A bigger political threat to the Administration would be the point raised by many on the right in regards to his willingness to allow photos of our returning flag draped coffins while blocking the release of this photo. I still see this as a political attack, based on the obvious difference between a graphic photo of a dead body and the much less graphic image of coffins draped in the American flag, yet it is incredibly tough to overlook this discrepancy. I welcome the comments of those on the left who agree with these decisions to help me understand why politically those who support the troops appear to be more expendable than those who support Bin Laden.

Personally, I support the President in the attack, yet I wish he would release the photos. Fair is fair, sir. I believe that Bin Laden is dead, I don't question that at all. Yet I believe that if we should legally be required to release graphic photos of one of our lowest points at Abu Ghraib, we should be allowed to release the graphic photos of one of our higher points of victory in Abbottabad.

Also disturbing to me is the hypocrisy of the Administrations stance on Bin Laden himself. If Obama truly believes as he claimed in his speech that Bin Laden was not a Muslim, but rather one who killed Muslims, than why give him a Muslim burial? More importantly, if the President truly believes that it is a small minority of terrorists who are abusing Islam that are causing a problem, as opposed to a larger problem of radicalization inside the Muslim religion, that why the need to bury the body at sea? What do we care if a few terrorists build a shrine where we bury him, then come there each year to morn his death? I say build the shrine, let them come, and then we bomb it. That is, of course, unless the bombing would take out a much larger group of Muslims who are not involved in terrorist activities but religiously support those who are. Is this what President Obama believes? Because from where I stand, that is certainly how it appears to be from his actions.