President Barack Obama today thanked the Navy Seals involved in the operation that ended in the death of Al Qaeda terrorism CEO Osama bin Laden:
ABC’s Jake Trapper reports that Obama not only met the Navy Seals who were involved in the operation privately — but he also met the Navy dog who was involved in the operation as well:
The president met the elite Team 6 squad on the same day that bin Laden’s terror network, al Qaeda, admitted that its leader was dead. Al Qaeda vowed that it would try to make America pay for his death.
Among the team members the president met was the SEAL who fired the shot that killed bin Laden, though he was not told which one it was, according to administration sources.
Obama, who met with 9/11 families and New York City firefighters at Ground Zero Thursday, met privately with the SEALs and members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the helicopter pilots known as “Night Stalkers,” who flew the mission in Pakistan. One battalion of Night Stalkers is headquartered at Fort Campbell, Ky., home to the Army’s most-deployed contingency forces.
Obama recognized the full assault force with the Presidential Unit Citation, the highest honor that can be given to a unit. Obama said they represented “the finest small fighting force in the history of the world.”
….One briefer confirmed that a dog was part of the assault team. When Biden asked its breed, the briefer joked that if officials wanted to meet the dog, “I recommend you bring treats.”
In fact, President Obama did meet the do, according to administration sources.
“It is a really scary dog,” said someone who was in the room.
The Christian Science Monitor’s editorial board wonders whether the Navy Seals have just given Obama and the United States a “peace dividend”:
With the Al Qaeda leader gone, Americans have gained some peace of mind about their security. And that could bring a “peace dividend” if the price tag for the so-called “war on terror” can be reduced.
To be sure, Al Qaeda and its affiliates will likely remain active to some degree despite the death of their top jihadist. And the US still needs military assets like the SEALs, just as much as air passengers will probably need to take off their shoes for the Transportation Security Administration.
But with bin Laden’s demise, the US can more soberly assess the risks of terrorism, perhaps with less of the emotional rhetoric and partisan competition that has driven up security spending beyond a measure of reasonableness.
Bin Laden himself had come to realize that even small acts of terror can create such fear in Americans that their spending on security would help drive the US into dangerous debt. (Self-inflicted moves, like excessive spending on health entitlements and subsidies that created the housing bubble, already have done the bulk of the financial damage.)
He learned a key lesson from his days in fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. That war “bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt,” bin Laden said, and Al Qaeda can also bleed “America to the point of bankruptcy.”
The Monitor notes that the cost has been whopping so far:
Calculations vary widely, and they sometimes depend on the perspective of economists. Any reckoning has to take into account that spending so far has likely prevented another catastrophic attack like 9/11, saving billions. And as always, it’s difficult to put a price tag on saving human lives.
The highest estimates go up to $3 trillion over 15 years, or about a quarter of one year’s US economic output. By comparison, US military spending during the cold war was about six times that amount.
With so much secrecy in hundreds of agencies from the CIA to Homeland Security, exact public figures on spending are near impossible. It is easier to tally up outlays for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service reports that $1.28 trillion has been appropriated for those wars so far. The costs will keep rising even as those wars wind down.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.