Obama: Reliving 9/11

  Fort Campbell's visit from the presidential duo was quite an affair. A trapped audience that must show approval, a bumbling vice president and self adulatory president. Mmm mmm mmm.
  The inevitable comparison must be made.
  How many visits did the former president make without fanfare, rarely recorded in the press but later reported by family members.  
  How many trips to hospitals.
  How many private meetings to discuss details of secret operations.
  How many successful operations that the public never heard because Bush may have been a lot of things, but he was never boastful.
  Only when he was out of office did we begin to hear that there were numerous occasions in which Bush met with grieving and sometimes angry relatives and survivors of the conflict that occurred on his watch, including Cindy Sheehan.
  Recently a Clinton/Obama operative stated that Obama needed a 9/11 or even an Oklahoma City moment, a theory shared by many operatives though not often expressed publicly. Obama needed a moment in which the nation was rocked with grief and confusion in which they would turn to their "daddy" for support and togetherness.
  Yet Democrat operatives also decried any use of 9/11 imagery, banishing the video of that day from the air waves, as crass political opportunism. It was all too painful so we were urged to put it in the past, to forget it.
  It was a significant political risk for Obama to have given the ok to kill bin Laden; it was also right. For that, he should be congratulated.
  But his behavior following this decision reveals something dark, something unpleasant, opportunistic and foolish.
  The varying and immediate versions of what happened that day have been ill advised and wrong. The administration operatives have not gotten their story straight, issuing differing versions every few hours. 
  (Who needs Wikileaks with this administration?)
  But the self congratulations, the "I, me, mine" presidency that is evolving is an ugly affair, encapsulated at yesterday's Fort Campbell's appearance.
  First there was the showy appearance at NYC, with numerous pictures, private meetings with family members (and a snub of Deborah Burlingame) and lots of reliving of the moment. And the complaints from members that our president was taking the spotlight for himself. Photo and quote from Daily Mail:

After facing criticism from the families of 9/11 victims who claim he 'took the spotlight' over Bin Laden's death, it has emerged that President Obama will visit Fort Campbell, Kentucky, today to personally thank the Navy SEAL commandos who took down the al Qaeda leader. 

  Later at Fort Campbell, Biden introduced Obama with nyuk nyuk lavish praise for his "gutsy" performance. When Obama arrived on the scene, he did praise the appropriate military. No one begrudges him (and certainly not them) such an appearance.
  But there's something disconcerting about the hootin,' hollerin,'and shoutouts over the death of an individual, even one so vile, by the president on a 'victory tour" a week after the event. 
  Perhaps if these appearances were quiet, behind the scenes and not so publicly broadcast as they are with jocular joshing back and forth, yukking it up on tv, knowledge of them would be more palatable. 
  It is hard to understand how release of the bin Laden death photos is unacceptable because it is "spiking the football," but these very visible, smug and inflammatory photo ops by our president AREN'T inflammatory to the overseas crazy contingent?
  There's a difference between spontaneous eruptions of patriotism and celebration and the head of state parading around the country crowing about an assassination; for those of us who applauded the death but are queasy about celebrating it, it's a bit unnerving.
  It's also pretty obvious what's happening here: our president is opportunistically reliving 9/11, while inflaming our enemies and celebrating...death, the purpose of which is to make the case for his reelection.
  We'll see how all this plays out, with the UN demanding answers and the stone age protesters threatening death to our president.
  How will the president react to those demands? Will he grovel again? Will he equivocate?  Will he bow before Arab leaders in a desperate bid to ingratiate himself again?
  We await the backtracking.