In praising NATO, Biden gives credit where it isn’t due
Memo to Joe Biden: NATO did not help us get al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The U.S. Navy Seals did it. Had the 30 member countries of NATO — ranging from Slovenia to Slovakia — been consulted in tracking down and killing the terrorist’s leader, Osama bin Laden would still be killing Americans.
Rather than strategizing with NATO members about the perilous plan to take out the architect of the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001, the U.S. went at it alone.
Nineteen Islamic terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners that day. Two of them were flown into the two buildings of the World Trade Center in New York, collapsing both and killing 3,000 people and injuring another 25,000.
A third plane was crashed into the west side of the Pentagon killing 125 there. A fourth, headed for the White House, crashed in Shanksville, Pa., after a struggle between passengers and the hijackers, killing 44 passengers.
It was the deadliest terrorist attack in history.
The U.S. responded by declaring war on terror and proceeded to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan where bin Laden had been given sanctuary. However, Osama bin-Laden escaped into Pakistan before he could be captured.
Despite what a confused President Biden said at a press conference in the U.K. last week, where he praised NATO, the organization had nothing to do with the American operation to find and kill bin Laden.
It took 10 years and a costly war, but the U.S. finally tracked him down hiding out in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Under the utmost secrecy, on May 2, 2011, U.S. Seal Team Six helicoptered from Afghanistan into the compound in Pakistan. The Seals raided the facility and gunned bin Laden down. The terrorist leader was later buried at sea.
Biden should have known this. He was vice president under President Barack Obama when U.S. intelligence finally tracked bin Laden down.
Maybe he forgot. However, the reporters asking questions should also have known and questioned him about it.
But just as Biden went off the rails at the G-7 summit when he confused Syria with Libya several times during his press conference, he also botched the killing of the terrorist leader.
In the context of praising Article Five of the NATO pact, which calls an attack on one member an attack on all, Biden lauded NATO for “supporting us” after the 9/11 attack. He did not explain what, if anything, NATO did.
In a mumble of words, Biden added, “NATO was with (us) when we got bin Laden.”
That had to come as news to NATO.
It is absurd to think that the U.S. would have shared such secret and sensitive intelligence about a highly charged and controversial assassination plan with NATO or any country.
Obama greenlighted the decision to get bin Laden following a meeting in May 2011 of top officials in the White House’s Situation Room. He asked those attending their views.
While most attending hedged, Biden and then Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to Gates in his book “Duty,” expressed skepticism. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was all for it, as was then CIA Director Leon Panetta.
As a matter of fact, Biden, as vice president, did not support Obama’s decision to launch the clandestine mission — which violated Pakistani airspace — to get to Abbottabad.
Another source at the meeting said Biden was concerned about the political fallout, “We need greater certainty that bin Laden is there,” Biden is quoted saying.
Biden at a 2012 Democrat congressional retreat talked about the Situation Room meeting. He said Obama went around the room asking for opinions. “He got to me. He said, ‘Joe, what do you think?’” Biden said he answered, “Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go,” adding that he needed more intelligence.
So when Biden talks about the “we” in killing bin Laden, and includes NATO in it, he is giving himself and NATO credit they do not deserve. Neither Biden nor NATO had anything do with it.