I’m not the one to gainsay President Obama’s performance in the Somali hostage crisis that ended yesterday with three dead pirates and a rescued captain.  I imagine the President believes he has a lot of diplomatic eggs to balance in thinking of taking these sorts of actions (even though the pirates don’t represent a country).

But Jeff Emanual has no problem speaking up:

Philips’s first leap into the warm, dark water of the Indian Ocean hadn’t worked out as well. With the Bainbridge in range and a rescue by his country’s Navy possible, Philips threw himself off of his lifeboat prison, enabling Navy shooters onboard the destroyer a clear shot at his captors — and none was taken. The guidance from National Command Authority — the President of the United States, Barack Obama — had been clear: a peaceful solution was the only acceptable outcome to this standoff unless the hostage’s life was in clear, extreme danger.

The next day, a small Navy boat approaching the floating raft was fired on by the Somali pirates — and again no fire was returned and no pirates killed, thanks again to the cautious stance assumed by Navy personnel due to the combination of a lack of clear guidance from Washington, and a mandate from the Commander in Chief’s staff not to act until Obama, a man with no background of dealing with such issues and no track record of decisiveness, decided that any outcome other than a “peaceful solution” would be acceptable.

After taking fire from the Somali kidnappers again Saturday night, the on-scene commander decided he’d had enough. Keeping his authority to act in the case of a clear and present danger to the hostage’s life, and having heard nothing from Washington since yet another request to mount a rescue operation had been denied the day before, the Navy officer — unnamed in all media reports to date — decided the AK-47 one captor had leveled at Philips’ back was a threat to the hostage’s life, and ordered the NSWC team to take their shots.

All’s well that ends well.

But as Emanuel describes it, it had every opportunity not to end well.

Ah, well.  As Vice President Biden told us, there are all sorts of crises spooling up for The One.  Hang on.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 5:14 am and is filed under War On Terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.