by Jennifer C. Hunt

Yesterday morning at 5 a.m., I got an email from a friend who is a retired Navy Seal.

“This is what I was talking about!!” summarizes pretty much all his cryptic message said.

“What? What happened?” I responded or something to that effect. I’d gone to sleep early the night before and hadn’t turned on the news.

At 8 a.m. I got on the subway and sneaked a peak at a passenger reading the Daily News. That’s when I learned that Bin Laden was dead.  Ten minutes later I picked up the New York Times and read the story. CIA and Special Forces operatives (Navy SEALS) killed Bin Laden some place in Pakistan.

Congratulations to the Navy SEALS and CIA and the rest of men and women in the military who have been hunting Bin Laden and fighting our wars since 9/11 and before.

As the Commander and Chief, President Obama finally has a feather in the cap I’ve been bitching about for years.

He gets to take the credit for what the SF guys did and rightfully so – in the same way that President George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld should have taken responsibility for Abu Ghraib.

After all, they (Bush and Rumsfeld and Gonzalez)  created the conditions for the war crimes at Abu Ghraib to occur- Authorization (implicitly or explicitly authorizing violations of the law and uniformed code of military justice), Routinization (normalizing troublesome acts as if they were as American as apple pie) and Dehumanization (anyone who is Middle Eastern and in the wrong place at the wrong time is a bad guy. The world is divided between good and bad guys with no one in between).

I’m willing to celebrate the victory of the Navy SEALS and other folks in the military. I’m less inclined to celebrate that of Obama. I remain a disgruntled one time supporter who is befuddled by his leadership.  Do we really need General David Petraeus to head the CIA? I’m all for enhancing communication between agencies. I am not in support of mixing up who does what.

We’ve got former CIA manager David Cohen screwing up the Intelligence Division of the NYPD, apparently turning that unit into a secret police force that acts above the law…. (see my post in http://onviolence.com/)

And now who is the head of the FBI?

Why did we get involved in the Libya situation?

Isn’t there a solution to Guantanamo?

Why hasn’t the shenanigans that graced the Bush administration been exposed?

Didn’t he promise more transparency in government?

What is going to happen in Afghanistan now?

What’s going on with the damned Road and USAID?

Why don’t we get more real news on the war?