Hunt for Bin Laden may be Bush legacy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 06:14:00 09/08/2008
Filed Under: Acts of terror, Politics
WASHINGTON—It may well be US President George W. Bush’s outstanding “legacy” to the next American leader.
Bush has not quite five months to make good on his 7-year-old vow to get Osama bin Laden “dead or alive” before his successor inherits the hunt for the terrorist mastermind.
But the vastly unpopular president rejects suggestions that he’s making any special effort to nab the elusive Saudi-born extremist ahead of the Nov. 4 US elections that will decide who succeeds him at the White House.
“I read some of the headlines that said, ‘Bush orders special hunt for Osama Bin Laden’—a little bit of press hyperventilating: After all, that’s what we’ve been doing since Sept. 11, (2001),” he told Sky television in June.
In January, however, he seemed to accept the idea that it might not happen on his watch, telling Fox News: “He’ll be gotten by a president.”
If he feels regrets about not capturing Bin Laden, it hasn’t stopped Bush from mentioning the al-Qaida leader in an applause line attacking his Democratic foes’ commitment to the so-called global war on terrorism.
“When it comes to the war on terror, our Democratic leaders should pay more attention to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and spend less time heeding the demands of MoveOn.org and Code Pink,” Bush said, referring to the two activist groups.
And the White House has rejected Democratic charges that Bush had diverted resources from the Afghanistan war to go after Saddam Hussein in Iraq, enabling Bin Laden to slip away to a remote region on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
While Bin Laden’s status is not publicly known, White House rivals Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have been at it hammer and tongs over which of them would be more likely to oversee the terrorist chief’s capture.
“For while Senator McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face,” Obama said in late August.
“John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow Bin Laden to the Gates of Hell—but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives,” the Illinois senator charged.
“[Democratic] President [Bill] Clinton had opportunities to get Osama bin Laden. President Bush had opportunities to get Osama bin Laden. I know how to do it. And I’ll do it,” McCain shot back in a talk with ABC television on Wednesday.
Bush made his dramatic “dead or alive” promise six days after Bin Laden’s al-Qaida network carried out history’s worst terrorist strikes, leading the US president to declare a global war on terrorism.
Asked at the Pentagon whether he wanted the Saudi-born author of history’s worst terrorist attacks dead, Bush replied: “I want justice. There’s an old poster out West as I recall that said, ‘Wanted: Dead or alive.’”
Six months later, his focus was already shifting to the war in Iraq. In March 2001, Bush told reporters that the war on terrorism was bigger than Bin Laden and declared: “I truly am not that concerned about him.”
Six years after the Sept. 11 attacks sent the US president’s popularity soaring to record highs as the US public rallied behind its wartime leader, his ratings are languishing at record lows, with Bin Laden still on the run.
And Bush now lists “dead or alive” with other colorful but “unfortunate” phrases he regrets uttering—and US First Lady Laura Bush has publicly criticized the invocation of the rough justice of the US Wild West.
“It didn’t sound serious, really,” she told Sky News television in June. “It makes it look like I like war. And I don’t,” the president agreed in the same interview.
Agence France-Presse
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