Osama Bin Laden Brought To Justice

The operation took minutes, but I can imagine to Obama and his group it seemed to take hours. Osama Bin Laden's compound had been breached by an elite force of Navy Seals, the long search would soon be over. The various faces in the room would betray some of the feelings of this group. It doesn't mean that everyone's demeanor in that room betrays their feelings. Hillary Clinton said she may have been trying to stifle an early allergy season cough, but it doesn't look that way. Then a communication came from CIA Director Leon Pannetta, "we have a visual on Geronimo", and minutes later a Navy Seal spoke the words "Geronimo EKIA" (enemy killed in action). That signaled that a ten year manhunt had come to an end. The strike group took Osama Bin Laden's body into custody. The terrorist's body was buried at sea later that day.

The way in which this terrorist was captured and killed was due to the courageous decision the President made to carry out this task. We have gained a great deal of intelligence from captured electronic equipment and documents which confirm that bin Laden was not merely a 'figure head', he was a working leader of the group al Qaeda. As the captured information is reviewed, we are finding that at bin Laden's direction there were plots being hatched against the United States and other western countries. If we had bombed the compound no information would have been gained in such an operation.

The code name Geronimo had apparently been chosen for bin Laden because, like the Native American chief, he had managed to evade capture for years and was apparently able to vanish into thin air.
Geronimo's had the ability to stay on the run, and it was said that he was able to walk without leaving any tracks, and that he could survive being shot.
In a similar circumstance to bin Laden's escape from the caves of Tora Bora, Geronimo and his followers once entered a cave which only had one visible entrance or exit, and then disappeared as US troops waited at the front.
More than 5,000 soldiers were used to hunt Geronimo and a small band of followers. Unlike bin Laden he eventually surrendered in 1886.
Geronimo went on to embrace Christianity and to become a celebrity, appearing at the World's Fair in St Louis in 1904. He attended the inaugural parade for President Theodore Roosevelt the following year.

Geronimo was not the murderer that Osama bin Laden has been shown to be. He fought for the rights of his people who were brutalized by US forces at a sad moment in this country's history. There should be no doubt that Native Americans were treated unfairly from the moment the first Europeans arrived.

Osama bin Laden had no real quarrel with the US. We hadn't done him any harm. Yet he was a mass murderer of innocent citizens of this country. Our President in bringing this man to justice was only applying principles by which we live in our country. September 11, 2001, bin Laden slaughtered over 3000 people, the President could not, in good conscience let this act go unpunished. The Bush administration did not keep the pressure on this man that they should. Bush, as president three months after 9/11 announced that the capture of bin Laden was not a major issue for his administration. As far as I can tell his policy was pursuing Saddam Hussein for hoarding (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction.

I am positive that President Obama had no role in the code name given this monster, anymore than he had in naming missiles Tomahawk or helicopters Blackhawk. I commensurate with Native Americans with regard to the naming of monsters like this or weapons of mass destruction, the government has no reason to use names associated with these noble people.

President Obama made a brief visit to the site of Osama bin Laden's most heinous crime Thursday, meeting with first responders and the family members of 9/11 victims in his first trip to New York since the al Qaeda leader's death.

At the World Trade Center site itself, he made no speeches, simply leaving a wreath composed of red, white and blue flowers in front of what has come to be known as the "Survivor Tree." Then Obama walked over to 14-year-old Payton Wall, whose father was killed nearby nearly ten years ago, and gave her a hug.

"We just talked," Wall told television crews after her meeting with the president, which was prompted by a letter she wrote him just days ago. She was joined by her younger sister, a friend who also lost a parent on 9/11, and her mother.

Before that visit to Lower Manhattan, Obama met with a group of New York City firefighters in a station that lost 15 members on September 11, 2001. Bin Laden's death, he said in his most extensive public remarks, sent a message "that when we say we will never forget, we mean what we say."

And, he added pointedly, he believed that "when those guys took those extraordinary risks going into Pakistan, that they were doing it in part because of the sacrifices that were made in the States. They were doing it in the name of your brothers that were lost."

After he laid the wreath just steps from where the World Trade Center towers once stood, Obama had a private meeting with about 60 people who lost family members on 9/11.

For Lee Ielpi, a retired member of the FDNY whose firefighter son died responding to the attack on the World Trade Center, that meeting was "casual." He noted that "there was no script. I was impressed, he spoke from the heart, he was very sincere, he spoke about the mission and that it was accomplished, which I really thought was very nice."

Inside the meeting, President Obama spoke for a short time to the assembled family members as a whole.

"There's a word that most families don't like or understand, and that's closure, and he never said it," Ielpi said afterward. "The word he used was peace -- I hope this brings some peace to your families."

After that, the president went from table to table speaking with the family members. Ielpi described a quiet but "very powerful" series of encounters. "He went and spoke with every single family member there -- shook their hands, shared a tear with them."

Debra Burlingame, an often-time critic of the president from the right whose brother was the pilot of the plane that flew into the Pentagon, told Fox News the event was "very social." The president's entrance was "almost like a neighbor coming into a barbecue, there was no pomp, no ceremony."

Talat Hamdani, a Muslim American critic of Guantanamo whose son was a NYPD cadet killed responding to the attacks, said she was surprised at how much the president's visit meant to her. "I never realized that I would feel all these emotions, feeling overwhelmed," she said.

"It was just a, you know, a very special moment, especially at the 9/11 memorial, to know that your president cares for you," she said. She too described a quiet, sober meeting: "He exudes so much calmness, it was inexpressible."

Brennan Basnicki, 26, whose father was killed on September 11, did not attend, saying that "While President Obama's visit is a kind and respectable gesture, the reality is that his visit doesn't change the events that have taken place."

The meeting with family members lasted less than an hour, and then the president was gone, leaving on a helicopter for Kennedy International Airport.

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who attended the wreath ceremony, expressed satisfaction with the trip, saying, "I was inspired by the strength of the families who stood here today, thinking of their loved ones, knowing that the first chapter has closed and moving to the next chapter."

Gillibrand was joined by a number of prominent politicians from New York and the tri-state area, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Republican elected officials like Rep. Peter King (N.Y.) and Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.).

King said, "Visiting Ground Zero was the appropriate thing for the President to do. It was very meaningful to the 9/11 families. The President handled it with great dignity."

Many details of the trip came together at the last minute, with some invitees receiving invitations just a few hours before Obama arrived in the city. The small number of family members who were able to attend -- just around 60 relatives for the nearly 3,000 individuals who died on September 11 -- and was put together purposely in order to have a representative cross section.

For Ielpi, that cross section worked, creating a "diverse" group around him. And even though fierce critics of the president like 9/11 Burlingame were invited, he said he "didn't hear any politics."

Though President Obama invited former president Bush to attend the memorial, Bush declined. The event was nothing like George W. Bush's stand atop the World Trade Center rubble with a bullhorn, where he promised that "the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!"

Although it had been nearly 10 years since 9/11, most seemed satisfied that some justice was done and there was some closure from the elimination of bin Laden.