Those who are old enough to remember the Reagan years in the 1980s can recall the name given to the Reagan foreign policy. In the heat of the cold war, President Reagan, unaware that the microphone in front of him was hot, leaned into it and said jokingly; My fellow Americans, I have just signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes. This was the beginning of what Reagans opponents called cowboy diplomacy. After Reagan left office, the phrase was tucked away and saved until a later day when a Republican President decided to try and protect America using force. Thus, during the Bush years, the phrase found its way back into the American political lexicon.
Cowboy Diplomacy, to the left, is the use of force and military power to win wars and protect the homeland. It is also attached to those who view the world in black and white terms, such as when President Bush described the battle between America and al-Qaeda as a battle between good and evil, and believe that the world needed to decide whether they are with America, or with the terrorists.
The professorial elite, many of whom support and work for President Obama, decried these notions as nonsensical, irrational, and ignorant. They opt for treaties and negotiations which, while often times failing to accomplish much of anything, always manage to make those brokering the deals look like the peacemakers. To them, it doesnt matter if, after the two sides come to an agreement, the violence continues and thousands of innocent lives are lost, as long as they are seen as noble.
So it comes as a shock to see even the American left, who have for the last 10 years been a cheerleader for Americas failure in the Middle East, suddenly support a cowboy-diplomacy-like action taken by a President who was supposed to be the antithesis of the cowboy George Bush.
When Navy Seals barged into Osama bin Ladens compound and sent a bullet through his head, they ended a ten year long search for a mass murderer, shot a symbolic bullet through the head of al- Qaeda, and delivered justice for the families who lost loved ones on September 11th . But how exactly did this all happen? The operation to find and assassinate bin Laden may have only been months in planning, but it has been years in the making.
Just minutes after Osama was killed, commentators started making the issue political. People began to say that Bush attempted to find Osama for ten years and failed, while it only took two years for Obama to find him and succeed. To them this was not a victory for America, or the military, or the free world; this was a victory for their dear leader. All of this of course was done in an effort to divert attention away from the success of a policy towards the success of a president.
While the order given by the commander in chief is obviously commendable, we also have to look at what led to the death. Where did the military get the intelligence to find bin Laden and how did they eventually follow through? We will never know all the specifics, but it isnt hard to try and connect the dots.
Collecting intelligence in wartime is one of the most difficult things any president has to do, and it doesnt happen overnight. It takes years and years of prodding, questioning, and, yes, enhanced interrogation (a.k.a. water boarding). As many experts have pointed out, al-Qaeda only has to be right 1% of the time; America has to be right 100% of the time.
It may very well be that after all the years of demonizing the secret prison at Guantanamo Bay, and all that went on inside it, the killing of Osama bin Laden may be credited to the enhanced interrogations, ordered by the Bush administration. While there is no way of proving that the specific intelligence gained from the interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and other enemy combatants directly led to the killing of bin Laden, there is no question that the intelligence gained during those sessions is precious and can lead to saving innocent people and eliminating guilty ones.
While the world elite and the Democrat party spent years and years screaming about the atrocities at Guantanamo, there was very important work being done inside the secret prison. Work done by patriots, who did the dirty work that eventually lead to the disruption of plots to kill more Americans and quite possibly led to the killing of the most wanted terrorist on the face of the earth.
When the President was given word that they had a lead on bin Laden, he did not get out his pen and broker a treaty between the two sides. He didnt bring bin Laden back to American civil courts for a trial that would have made the O.J. Simpson case look like petty theft. The President did what only a cowboy diplomat would do. He finished the job.
When push comes to shove, even the most liberal President will use the very same tactics to get the job done that the left spends their waking hours vilifying to the point of accusations of criminality. And while the death of bin Laden is a testament to the US armed forces, the CIA, and the President himself, it is also living (or dead) proof that cowboy diplomacy, while often used as a negative term in the debating arena, is actually the only real way to conduct foreign policy in this dangerous world.
It is easy to pontificate, in the theoretical world, about negotiations and peaceful resolutions that make you look like a genius who has all the answers. It is also easy to sit back and critique the strategy taken by those who are in charge of keeping the country safe. That is, until you are the one burdened with such a serious responsibility.