Vindication

From the National Review Online. By Jim Geraghty.

In case the font is too small, the words at the bottom are: “VINDICATION:
When the loudest critic of your policies achieves his greatest success because
of them.”

I can hear the liberal cries of outrage, so to recap: The interrogations of KSM (which included waterboarding) and the interrogation of Hassan Ghul (held in “black site” prisons) were key to identifying the courier; the president then authorized military action in a foreign country without going to the United Nations or informing the host government; the military action was unilateral, and we did not consult with our allies; Congress was not informed of the military action; and it increasingly appears that no serious effort was made to treat Osama bin Laden as a criminal (reading him his rights, etc.). The monitoring of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s phone call was a result of an extensive global wiretapping system. Furthermore, as Charles Krauthammer notes, the helicopters used in the raid came from Bagram and Jalalabad; if we had withdrawn from Afghanistan on the antiwar Left’s timetable, we would have had no bases from which to launch this operation.

Well done to one president for enacting all of these policy changes, and well done to his successor for keeping them in place.