Osama bin Laden: “I am Alpha and Omega”
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. (Revelation 22:13)
Barack Obama’s State of the Union, first 100 words:
Last month, I went to Andrews Air Force Base and welcomed home some of our last troops to serve in Iraq. Together, we offered a final, proud salute to the colors under which more than a million of our fellow citizens fought – and several thousand gave their lives.
We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world. For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.
Barack Obama’s State of the Union, last 343 words:
One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden. 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, a woman who ran against me for president.
All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves. One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission. It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job – the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs. More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other – because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back.
So it is with America. Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes. No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
That’s establishing a pretty broad arc for commentary Marcy.
Test driving one of the major Obama Campaign 2012 themes of: “OBL! OBL! Yes we can! USA! USA!”
@JThomason: I’m not even sure what I think it means. But hell, the whole thing was written around OBL as biblical … something (albeit from Revelations which is some nutty shit).
@emptywheel:
LOL! You got that right!
Nice try. We’re still more divided as a country than any time since the early 70s.
Austerity…cut deficit…work together for Utopia…everything can do
but no Hopey Changey. A lot to remember! Possibilities doubtful. So many promises but the General staff did not applaud all can serve… and love whomever you want to. Lip service is I suppose better than nothing. Get more jobs, how? Environment?
(nice edit function!)
I didn’t like alot of the speech but I will give Pres. BO credit for his proposals regarding getting money out of politics. Not that there will be action. I think he did a good job of putting a laser focus on the problem and was his one nod to the Occupy folks.
As for the appeal to the political/symbolic value of the assasination of OBL. I didn’t like it much.
Elliott at fdl posted a word cloud of the speech, but I think Mary McCurnin’s version is better.
What he said that makes sense won’t happen.
What he said that doesn’t make sense … wait for it … probably won’t happen either.
I should have watched an old Bergman film (as I’d planned), instead. Obama or Smiles of a Summer Night. Dumb choice on my part. G’night.
Looks like the brilliant marketers (cough) in his campaign think the OBL kill will win him the election. Are they still making that action movie that will be released right before the election?
Elizabeth Warren was more effective in 5 minutes with Jon Stewart than BO was in 2 hours!
I kept waiting for someone to yell out,”You lie!” like a while back….
@thatvisionthing:
Mary McCurnin’s looks like the GOP’s afterspeeches.
OT – Just so folks don’t miss it, via the WaPo’s Greg Miller:
Noun, verb & OBL.
@MadDog: I’ve always thought Revelations was written by someone higher than a kite on peyote.
@MadDog:
sounds like a response to
“an american campaign”.
looks like obama expects to go against newt – two fatherless waifs want to run our nation.
this means that this speech was re-written after s. carolina.
“state of the union”?
not a chance!
neither party would be straightforward with the american people about the true and parlous state our union is in.
“… that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world…”
these are two simple, incontestable, flagrant lies.
we are neither safer (we were never really unsafe, despite the billions expended and the rhetorical strum und drung).
we are decidedly NOT more respected around the world.
that obama would utter both of these lies (safer/more respected) should tell a citizen/voter all she needs to know about this candidate-president.
that our president would use an occasion like the “state of the union” to promote his record in killing individuals and to advance his candidacy, rather than telling us citizens how things are going in our society, is just contemptible, run-of-the-mill contemporary politics.
“noblesse oblige” is not a concept this one of harvard law school’s intellectual yahoos holds dear.
as an aside, i never regarded obama as a great speaker, because his speeches, even the most lauded of them, displayed no heart,
were formulaic,
and were evidently self-serving.
was this speech different from those others in some important way?
@emptywheel:
evangelicals.
second coming.
the rapture.
axelrod has eaten up part of obama’s brain.
I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
Revelation, 1. 18
@masaccio: It doesn’t exactly have its season in the liturgical year, nome sayn? (“This is the word of the L–d.” “Thanks be to G-d.” I don’t think so.) It’s probably still in the book only as a grudging form of insurance, against something or other.
A 343-word long peroration on Osama?!
And more OT via the AP:
The NYT’s piece:
And the BBC version:
@MadDog: Given the political insight of EW’s post here, I wonder how many more of these US Special Operations Forces’ missions we’ll be seeing for the rest of the 2012 Presidential campaign season.
I’m betting there will be more.
Doubting Thomas’s?
Tim Thomas, goaltender of the Bruins, and Clarence, net-minder of the
Founding Fathers.
Both arsholes for their behavior or lack therof….
I think you missed 223 words somewhere.
Anyone ready to vote for a third party?
@orionATL:
I was talking with friends the other day about how many presidents have been raised in fatherless homes…it’s interesting history.
@MadDog: A pirate source? Captain Jack Sparrow perhaps, or his dad, Keith Richards? Fucking pirates are speaking to the press now?
@par4: I’m too busy sighting in my old pieces for the next civil war.
Do special ops only save women named Jessica? what’s with that?
@klynn:
indeed it is, klynn.
of course, anyone who speak publiclys about the psychological antecedents of our leaders’ behaviors and decisions is ignored.
our board-room-charmer of a president is still
an empty suit atop a pair of shiny patent-leather shoes.
@matt carmody: Arrrrr.
@ANOther: Link, please!
Bob in AZ
@MadDog: That’s gonna be an easy bet, but who will bet against you?
And since you seem to understand the point EW is making better than I do, Would you explain what her point is? She ends with a quote rather than a summary paragraph, so I’m wondering if the last part of her post got snipped.
Bob in AZ
As a veteran of a dozen years of parochial schooling I believe I have been inoculated, vaccinated if you will, against religious overkill.
A graduate degree in history has likewise opened my eyes to the secular religion of knee-jerk patriotism. Yet I still think it’s possible to respect the spiritual and love one’s country’s highest aspirations.
That’s why I feel so ripped off by Obama’s White House and Cabinet not cleaning up the icky mess left by previous tenants. Why? The other day I looked up the butcher of Uganda, Idi Amin, in Wikipedia, and found myself transfixed by how he seized power:
He announced that he was suspending certain provisions of the constitution and soon instituted an advisory defense council composed of military officers with himself as the chairman.
He placed military tribunals above the system of civil law, appointed soldiers to top government posts and informed the newly inducted civilian cabinet ministers that they would be subject to military discipline.
He disbanded an intelligence agency created by the previous government, and used other agencies to root out political dissent.
Victims soon came to include members of other ethnic groups, religious leaders, journalists, artists, senior bureaucrats, judges, lawyers, homosexuals, students and intellectuals, criminal suspects, and foreign nationals.
The number of his supporters and close associates shrank significantly, and he faced increasing dissent from the populace as the economy and infrastructure collapsed from years of neglect and abuse.
Gee, where have I heard that before?