The legendary Alabama Football Coach Bear Bryant used to advise his young players: “When you get in the end-zone, act like you’ve been there before.”
This is pretty good advice for virtually everyone. It is a lesson that has apparently been lost on the currant White House staff. It is common sense that in a war there are many times when it is best to say very little, that anything said may negatively affect ongoing and future operations, that, to use the phrase from an earlier generation, ‘Lose Lips Sink Ships.’
But during the past 12 days we have been ‘treated’ to a seemingly never-ending stream of press conferences, ‘off the record’ briefs and anonymous releases from high sources that have resulted in a significant amount of details about the raid that resulted in Usama bin Laden’s death, about the men and units that executed the raid, about those that supported the raid, about how the intelligence was acquired that led to the raid and about what was discovered as a result of the raid.
And, in true disingenuous Washington DC fashion some of the same people who have taken part in the verbal orgy have lambasted others for saying too much and ‘placing our soldiers and sailors at risk.’
Meanwhile the level of smug hubris at the White House continues to rise. One would suppose that this is normal, that this is the first time that they have had a real victory and it was a significant one – the death of an evil man who was the enemy of our nation. But, in fact, that is no excuse. This isn’t a high school football game. We are still a nation at war and we still have any number of enemies who would like to see our nation destroyed. ‘Celebrating in the end zone’ is not the correct response. In fact, the entire evolution over the past 12 days has been a travesty. Here’s what should have happened:
1) There should have been no announcement until at least the completion of the initial assessment of the material seized in the raid. That would have taken several days, but would have allowed our forces to perhaps act against certain other al Qaeda cells before they were alerted to UBLs death and the possible compromise of their information.
The entire force that conducted the raid is familiar with operating in secret; this would not have been a problem for them. As for the fact that the Pakistanis would find the remains of a helicopter, so what? We could stall for several days, then simply admit that US forces had been there. There would be no need to reveal why – specifically – they had been there until the material seized had been exploited.
When the information had been exploited or we had other information that showed that al Qaeda knew that UBL was dead and that certain information had been compromised, the President could have made his announcement. For the nation at large the result would have been the same, just delayed a few days.
2) The brief statement should have said simply that US forces had raided the compound and that UBL was dead. There should have been no further details and the President should have said: ‘To protect our forces and our capabilities, there will be no further details released as to the forces involved or the tactics and technology involved.’ Unfortunately, like the freshman who has finally scored for the first, the White House wanted to let everyone know about all the ‘cool’ stuff they knew. So they did. And they continue to do so.
3) No details should have been released as to what was found in the compound. Even apparently harmful details such as lewd photos being found with UBL’s data should have been withheld. Unless there was a carefully orchestrated strategic communications plan in place to exploit this fact, such a release will probably backfire in some as yet unanticipated way.
The people who executed the raid, the people who supported the raiders, the intelligence personnel around the world who worked for more than 5 years to grind through a mountain of data to connect one obscure fact after another, all did a magnificent job. And all acted like they had been there before, celebrating quietly and then going back to work to try and get the next guy. That the White House and the President’s national security team benefited from years of effort, effort that really started just a few months after UBL hoofed it out of Tora Bora in December of 2001, is one of the realities of the American political system, and the President did a good job in giving the okay. And we are all glad that UBL is gone.
But since then the President, the VP, SecDef, SecState, and all the other strap hangars, many of them who have spent a career in classified circles inside the Beltway, have all acted like they never heard of Bear Bryant or his words of wisdom, nor have they apparently ever been ‘in the end zone.’ They continue to dance around in the end zone and in doing so they have not only possibly endangered some of the people who executed the mission, they have also revealed things that shouldn’t have been revealed and told our enemies things they should know.
It is an interesting thing that, with very few exceptions, the better someone is at something, the less they talk about it, the less they ‘dance around in the end zone.’ (It is an interesting footnote that Jim Brown, perhaps the greatest football player to date, never spiked the football when he scored at touchdown. Instead, he would simply hand it to the referee. No dance, no weird gyrations, etc.) It is time the President and the rest of the national security team take a cue from such behavior. If your deeds really are significant, they will speak for themselves. If not, all the prattle will in the end only make you look asinine and will hurt our nation.
As Coach Bryant said, try to act like you’ve been there before.
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