Obama, Rambo and the Republicans

In extolling the values of the elite units of the army, President Obama winked at the conservative electorate.

The spectacular American commando attack in Somalia on the night of Jan. 24-25, 2012, has freed an American citizen and a Danish citizen kidnapped last October 2011 in the city of Galkayo, over 500 km from Mogadishu, the Somali capital. Twenty Navy Seals — the very people who killed bin Laden in May 2011 — killed the nine hijackers. The attack was prepared from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. Last month, in a site visit, Leon Panetta, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, put that base (of 3,500 men) at the center of the new plan in the fight against terrorism. It includes shorter, more reactive interventions and breaks with the U.S. military doctrine of being able to deploy in two areas at once. The Obama administration hopes to save $487 billion (371 billion euros) in 10 years.

But in this electoral year, the president has nonetheless courted the military in his State of the Union address on Jan. 24, 2012, before Congress. Paying tribute to the troops returning from Iraq — an opportunity to underline that he kept his promise of withdrawal — Obama cited the example of military values (“courage, generosity and teamwork”). And, as a unifier, he evoked at the end of the State of the Union speech the flag that the Navy Seals gave him in memory of the bin Laden operation: “[On] it are each of their names. Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room when I sat next to Bob Gates — a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary — and Hillary Clinton.”

Degraded.

In a sign perhaps of the sacredness of the U.S. Army, the military justice returned a more lenient verdict in the trial of the Haditha massacre on Jan. 24, 2012. In 2005, after a bombing cost the life of a G.I. in this city in the center of Iraq, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich ordered his troops to “shoot first, and ask questions later.” The soldiers killed 24 civilians, but all the charges against the members of the unit have been dropped. Only the count of “breach of duty” was held against Wuterich. After a plea deal, he was sentenced to a suspended sentence of three months and downgraded to a common soldier, with reduction in salary. A price to pay.