The Power Paradox
The White House is mixing it up. Usually after commando raids against terrorist targets, the leaks flow like a fine triumphalist wine. We hear just enough detail of high-level secret meetings to emphasize that everything that worked was actually the president's idea. We may get a photo or two indicating that while considering the raids everyone was looking extremely serious. But that's not what happened in the wake of the raids this weekend. Rather, the response to the U.S. commando operations in Libya and Somalia reminded me a bit of the movie The Right Stuff , when after a post-splashdown screw-up that resulted in the sinking of his Mercury spacecraft, Gus Grissom is denied the pomp and parades that his colleagues had enjoyed. While this weekend's raids didn't exactly "screw the pooch," to use the movie's descriptive term, they did not go according to plan. According to reports, the raid in Somalia on al-Shabab encountered heavier resistance ...