Jim Geraghty Nails It

Turns out it wasn't a new era of peace, love, and understanding that captured and killed the world's most wanted mass murderer, but some good old-fashioned tactics of war put forth by the much-maligned President Bush that eventually got the job done.

I can hear the liberal cries of outrage, so to recap: The interrogations of KSM (which included waterboarding) and the interrogation of Hassan Ghul (held in “black site” prisons) were key to identifying the courier; the president then authorized military action in a foreign country without going to the United Nations or informing the host government; the military action was unilateral, and we did not consult with our allies; Congress was not informed of the military action; and it increasingly appears that no serious effort was made to treat Osama bin Laden as a criminal (reading him his rights, etc.). The monitoring of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s phone call was a result of an extensive global wiretapping system. Furthermore, as Charles Krauthammer notes, the helicopters used in the raid came from Bagram and Jalalabad; if we had withdrawn from Afghanistan on the antiwar Left’s timetable, we would have had no bases from which to launch this operation.

If I thought for a moment that dialogue and understanding could bring about true peace in this world I would be first on the bandwagon. But turns out that, when people want to kill you, they sometimes just won't listen to reason. That's why you carry the proverbial big stick, too...just in case.