I'm sure this won't be the last time I apologize to the president:
The Defense Department twice asked Obama for permission to use military force to rescue Capt. Richard Phillips from a lifeboat off the Somali coast. Obama first gave permission around 8 p.m. Friday, and upgraded it at 9:20 a.m. Saturday. Officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations said the second order was to encompass more military personnel and equipment that arrived in the Indian Ocean to engage the pirates.
It was still a failure of leadership to keep completely mums about Phillips' plight -- would it have really sent "mixed signals" to the pirates to express concern for his safety and denounce his abduction? -- but this is gratifying indeed. (And if it's later disclosed that this attribution of credit was the invention of Rahm Emanuel looking to cash in on "looking presidential," then I'll be back here to point that out, as well.)
However, if this brief but illustrative episode is an indication that gone are the days when the White House withheld from authorizing deadly force due to lawyerly compunction (as it did when a convoy likely carrying Mullah Omar sped out of Afghanistan in 2001), then Obama may prove to be a more capable commander-in-chief than many conservatives originally thought. He seems to have already won over Fred Kagan and Bill Kristol on his Afghan strategy.
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