Give Them All Credit

I don't know how true or reliable the source is in this NY Daily News article. The article says President Bush turned down President Obama's invite to Ground Zero today because he's a little ticked that he hasn't gotten enough credit for helping kill bin Laden.  I'm skeptical of this because I do believe President Bush is much more professional and honorable than that.

I'm not against giving Bush some credit.  He obviously forced the intel community to work closer and setup a cabinet level intelligence chief to help oversee FBI, CIA, military, and Secret Service intel.  That was a smart move and no doubt helped him and the current president decipher intelligence reports.  For him to deserve anymore credit than that, though, is far-fetched. 

After all, Bush is the one who sent 9,000 troops into Afghanistan and 130,000 into a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.  He is responsible for turning our attention away from bin Laden and taking vital resources out of the fight with al Qaeda and sending them to Iraq. 

In 2001, just two months after the attacks, Bush allowed bin Laden to slip away at Tora Bora.  In 2002 Bush said he wasn't concerned with bin Laden and didn't spend that much time worrying about him.  In 2003 he invaded Iraq and set in motion an ongoing 8 year war that left Afghanistan and the hunt for bin Laden on the back burner.  It can't be stressed enough how costly the invasion of Iraq was in regards to delaying the killing of bin Laden.  In 2005 Bush dismantled the CIA team setup to find bin Laden.  Additionally, the CIA now believes bin Laden had been living in the mansion he was killed at on Sunday for at least 5 years-- coincidentally after Bush had disbanded the CIA team tasked with finding him and while we were bogged down in Iraq.

It was only after Obama took office and ordered the CIA to make finding bin Laden their number one task.  And after Obama oversaw the ending of our combat mission in Iraq and redeployed troops ordered to Iraq to Afghanistan instead did we kill bin Laden.  As a candidate Barack Obama said he would refocus America's attention back to the person who was actually responsible for the September 11th attacks, and he did just that.

If we have to give Bush any more credit than setting up an intelligence apparatus that proved vital no doubt, then we might as well give Clinton credit for being the president to actually start the targeting of bin Laden in the first place.  And then while we're at it, let's give Reagan credit for arming, funding and training bin Laden in the first place because if he hadn't done that we wouldn't have had an enemy to kill.