Automatically Wrong

So I understand that Glenn Beck & Company were discussing on Faux News the other day whether or not Osama Bin Laden should have been killed.

Read that sentence again. They were actually criticizing President Obama for authorizing the raid on the safe house in Pakistan where Bin Laden was holed up.

Now, I understand. This is how Fox rolls. Being the mouthpiece for the right means having to criticize whatever Obama does, even when it results in the extermination of the most feared and wanted terrorist on earth, responsible for 3,000 deaths on 9/11/01, and whom the previous president started two wars over.

But Obama did it. And in keeping with their script, they must therefore criticize it.

I have some faith that most people understand how the right operates. However, given Fox’s strong viewing numbers, I am not so sure. And it is because there are some people, and the results of the 2008 presidential election say they are in the minority, that eats this stuff up. They didn’t vote for Obama so it is human nature that they want to criticize him. That’s fine. But there comes a time to just say stop already. Bin Laden is dead. This is a good thing. Be proud to be an American, even if your bias precludes you from being proud of Obama.

But why is this? Why is there a certain percentage of this country that cannot even accept that Obama is an American, much less the president? And by extension, cannot accept anything he does and thus has to be stopped or at least slowed down in anything he tries to accomplish?

The Right will not tell you this, but the reason for this has to do with the way they felt George W. Bush was treated. They feel that he was unjustly criticized and are now just slapping back. Well, this is where I take my stand in the debate. In short, Bush earned his criticism. Obama just got elected.

Ever wonder why it took almost ten years to finally get Bin Laden? Ever think it might have had to do with having him surrounded in Tora Bora in late 2001 only to let him squirm away, then making a decision to needlessly start a war elsewhere? Bush couldn’t get Bin Laden, so he sold the public that the real fight should be in Iraq. Many, like myself disagreed. But understand – it wasn’t a kneejerk ‘I disagree with anything Bush does’ criticism, it was more like, ‘Uh, really? Iraq is where we need to be? Well okay but you better be right.’

He wasn’t.

Flawed intel, no WMD, 4,000 American troops killed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. In short, Bush earned his criticism. So, years later, Obama finally gets the guy Bush had in his sights in 2001. And there is no doubt in my mind that had it been Bush that gave the order, those chuckleheads would have been exploding with plaudits.

Hey look – I understand this is how the Right and Left operate. Support their man, criticize the other side. But this has gotten plain silly. Remember right after Obama was elected and they had an elderly lady weeping, saying ‘I want my country back’...?

Sweetie, nobody took it from you. You just got out-voted. It happens.

But there’s an insidious undercurrent to all this. Never have I seen such a president receive such unwarranted heat from so many sides. Hell, never have I seen an elected president’s nationality criticized. Obama, unfortunately, has become the first president in history that had to hold a press conference to release his birth certificate. Such is the voracity from the right.

So here’s my conclusion, and you’re not going to like it. But stop by a coffee shop in Nashville or a Waffle House in Fort Worth and tee this one up and see what you get –

Some people just cannot accept a black man being president.

And before you criticize me for saying that, give me another reason why he would be ostracized by anyone for catching and killing Bin Laden. Post a comment. Enlighten me.