Having been born into a family of seafarers, I watched the situation with Captain Phillips quite closely. Having the whole story coincide with the Holy Week saga, I think, drove it home even more deeply for me. I felt that capture and release in my bones!
PUMA assessment of Mr. Obama's role in the situation is about evenly split from what I can tell. That is not surprising. We are individuals .. each entitled to our own opinions.
I just want to thank Larry Johnson at No Quarter for sharing his own knowledge and expertise about situations like these. I tend to agree with his assessment. Though I also share many of the frustrations I see in responses to Larry. Like this one, at D.O.N.E.
For right now I will say... Barack Obama surprised me. He seems to have risen to the occasion. I will await further tellings of the tale... from Mr. Obama himself, from Capt. Phillips & family, and from other involved parties. I really look forward to hearing the take from my nephew in the Navy (though that may be a long time coming, as he is out on the high seas himself.)
Peace to all on this Easter Monday. Captain Phillips has come back from the dead. We can all rejoice!
SYD
Addendums:
"Piratebook Blog" Perspective. Interesting read. Might be a good blog to follow in this matter.
More PUMA response here, at The Confluence.
Posts
I have no problem giving credit to all involved.
ReplyDeleteAnd Hail to the Navy.
mm
I agree with D.O.N.E. He gets credit for doing nothing, which is his usual form of behavior. Probably award himself a purple heart for valor.
ReplyDelete"He Did Nothing" was when the annoyed Obama made that stupid comment to the press "...I want to discuss housing" instead of a simple,thoughtful, hopeful, compassionate and encouraging statement to the American people.
ReplyDeleteCaptain Phillips saved PBO yesterday.
Obama's no fool. He polled on it, believe me, and saw that voters wanted action and would approve of it, so he gave the go ahead. Given his slowly sinking job rating, this will buy him a bump in rating. Bush got a bump from everyone after 9/11 for his tough stance. In this case, it was the right call, and really, the only call. How long could he let U.S. warships surround this tiny boat without taking some kind of action?
ReplyDeleteIt's more complicated than that. Apparently Obama waffled a while, which perhaps delayed the military action a while; but there were other 'delays' too. (Part of hostage situation strategy IS to delay, to let time wear down the captors till they get tired and hungry and make a mistake -- like all three showing their heads at the same time.)
ReplyDeleteAfter reading several accounts, imo Obama deserves no praise. He kept quiet in public, went along with the military in private to some extent, never gave them any strong go-ahead such as his supporters are now trying to take credit for.
Standard Operating Procedure says that when a hostage is in 'immanent danger', the commander at the site can kill the captors. That is what happened. Obama had not given them any special permission to initiate other action.
This SOP got a routine confirmation twice by the White House -- which teh bots are now trying to spin as 'Obama ordered it'.
All three accounts are at my blog:
http://florasteele.blogspot.com
Some people like Johnson are praising him for not totally fouling up the operation -- for pretty much staying out of the way and letting the SOP do its thing ... pretty much.