IS OBAMA’S FATE SEALED?

Barack Hussein Obama has campaigned on the taxpayers’ dime far more often than any predecessor.  Of the 60 domestic trips he’s taken since filing for re-election, 26 have included fund-raisers, noted Mark Knoller of CBS.

"How much longer do we have to pretend these POTUS events aren’t campaign events?" tweeted Mike O’Brien of MSNBC last month after the president made a blatantly political speech at the University of North Carolina.

Mr. Obama outdid himself when he flew to Afghanistan Tuesday (5/01) to pat himself on the back for having ordered the hit on Osama bin Laden on that date a year ago.

The president arrived at Bagram AFB at 10:20 p.m.; helicoptered to Kabul to sign with Afghan President Hamid Karzai a vague agreement which theoretically commits U.S. troops to Afghanistan until 2024; then returned to Bagram to make a speech broadcast to the U.S.  It was wheels up before the sun rose.

Things used to be very bad, but "over the last three years, the tide has turned," Mr. Obama said.  "We broke the Taliban’s momentum. We’ve built strong Afghan Security Forces. We devastated al-Qaida’s leadership."

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews compared Mr. Obama’s speech to the words Shakespeare put in the mouth of Henry V on the eve of the battle of Agincourt.

CNN’s Don Lemon was impressed for a different reason.

"Wow. Prez in Afghanistan on bin laden anniv," he tweeted.  "No better campaigning than that.  How will GOP respond?"

Peter Foster of the London Telegraph, a former war correspondent, was less impressed.

"Mr. Obama’s oratorical skills couldn’t disguise the  tail-between-the-legs ‘optics’ of the event," he said.  "The message of this trip was clear: after a decade of expending blood and treasure in Afghanistan, the US President dares not visit the place in broad daylight."

A distinction which escapes Mr. Matthews is that Henry V led his troops in battle; Barack Hussein Obama claims credit for the heroism of others.  The Navy SEALs who took the risks think the president’s politicization of their mission endangers them.

"The frustration-or, even anger-within the SEAL community is real, and has been brewing for months," wrote Michael Hastings in BuzzFeed. 

"It started immediately after the raid, with questions among the Special Forces and intelligence community of whether the president should have waited to announce the kill to exploit the intelligence cache at Osama’s compound.  It simmered after a Chinook helicopter was shot down, killing 30 Americans, 22 of them Navy SEALs from Team Six.

"Was it a coincidence, SEALs asked themselves, that catastrophe hit Team Six so soon after being named as the team responsible for the killing?"

Within hours of Mr. Obama’s visit, the Taliban bombed a compound in Kabul housing foreigners, killing seven.

The tide has turned in Afghanistan, but not in America’s favor.  Two thirds of all Americans killed there have died since Barack Hussein Obama became president.

Afghan soldiers and policemen have murdered more than 100 of our troops.  Our soldiers think their Afghan "allies" are unstable, incompetent, drug abusers and thieves, according to an Army study last summer.

"Karzai is tantamount to being Taliban," former Special Forces soldier Michael Yon wrote in the New York Daily News March 15. "Karzai whips up anti-U.S. fervor at every opportunity.

"Even our most disciplined troops have lost all idealism," Mr. Yon wrote. "They fight because they are ordered to fight, but they have eyes wide open. The halfhearted surge and sudden draw down leave little room for success."

President Obama isn’t seeking success.  He seeks only to disguise defeat until the election is safely past.

He’s getting help from his friends in journalism.  Chuck Todd of NBC News compared "Bin Laden’s Death Day" to VE and VJ Day.

The apt comparison is with our assassination of the man who planned the Pearl Harbor attack.  Admiral Isoruko Yamamoto was Japan’s best military leader, so it was a big deal when Army P-38s blew him out of the sky on April 18, 1943.  But the war went on.

Despite bin Laden’s death, Islamists wage war against us. Mr. Obama pretends otherwise, but in Afghanistan, that war is not going well. His political war for reelection is not going well either. After all, these guys are those he should least like to offend: More Navy SEALs coming forward to criticize Obama for aftermath of Bin Laden raid.

As one wag puts it, Obama’s political fate may be SEALed.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.