Last Call

Our Navy SEALs did their job admirably and professionally. God forbid if things had gone wrong and Captain Phillips was injured or killed, it would have been on the President's head. He would have been crucified.

Oh wait, he's getting crucified anyway. The same guys who are saying "How DARE Obama take any sort of credit for this! He took too long to make the call! He's just a civilian 8,000 miles away!" of course are the ones who'll be the first to tell you that Bush freed Iraq from Saddam's WMDs.

But my hat is doffed to the guys on the right who did give credit to Obama where credit was definitely due.

And a round of the barkeep's best to the crew of the USS Bainbridge, the SEAL team on board, and most of all to Captain Phillips (who resembles my father so much it frightened me when I first saw his picture.) He did what he had to do to protect his crew and his ship, and then stayed cool long enough for the Navy to do their job. That man is the hero of the story. He put his life on the line for his people, gave himself up as a hostage, and made his own luck in the end.

Would that we had a million more people with that kind of resolve to do the right thing. Oh wait, we do: the men and women of our armed forces and the man who commands them.

Happy Easter, Cap'n.

EPIC WIN.

[UPDATE] And one last thing before we get all Kumbaya on everybody down here. Speaking of the resolve to do the right thing, Post of the Week goes to the Double G, who pretty much slaughters Obama's legal position on infinite detention, rendition, and lack of habeus corpus rights with the following:

We all know about the recent case of the Canadian man who was suspected of terrorist connections, detained in New York, sent to Syria--through a rendition agreement--tortured, only to find out later it was all a case of mistaken identity and poor information. . . .

This is an extraordinarily difficult war we are prosecuting against terrorists. There are going to be situations in which we cast too wide a net and capture the wrong person. . . .

But what is avoidable is refusing to ever allow our legal system to correct these mistakes. By giving suspects a chance--even one chance--to challenge the terms of their detention in court, to have a judge confirm that the Government has detained the right person for the right suspicions, we could solve this problem without harming our efforts in the war on terror one bit. . . .

Most of us have been willing to make some sacrifices because we know that, in the end, it helps to make us safer. But restricting somebody's right to challenge their imprisonment indefinitely is not going to make us safer. In fact, recent evidence shows it is probably making us less safe.

Oh wait a minute. Glenn Greenwald didn't say that.

A young Senator from Illinois did. His name was Barack Obama.

Our President does indeed deserve credit for making the right call, as he did in the case of the piracy of the Maersk Alabama. And he deserves criticism when he clearly makes the wrong one, as he has done in the Bagram detainees case. Any political leader must be kept honest, especially an American President. Mr. President, I'd like you to meet Candidate Obama. You two have a lot to discuss.

Here endeth the lesson.