Khattala

Obama just isn't fitting into Republicans' carefully-cultivated narratives about Democrats, and it must drive them completely bonkers.

You see, as a Democrat, Obama is supposed to be "weak" on national security issues - a namby-pamby, politically correct appeaser whose foreign policy can't match up to the patriotic machinations of his Republican betters.

Unfortunately, it was on Obama's watch that Osama bin-Laden was finally brought to justice, after seven years of Bush's smirking jokes about finding WMDs under a podium at the White House correspondent's dinner and "I'm just not that concerned about bin Laden". And it is now on Obama's watch that one of the masterminds behind Benghazi, Ahmed Abu Khattala, has been captured by American forces.

This comes, as you may know, after almost two years of Republicans hounding the president at every turn over made up scandalmongering involving the Benghazi terrorist attack. The most common line has been to criticize Obama for not finding the perpetrators of the attack fast enough to suit the GOP:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), for example, released separate statements on the two attacks. In his Benghazi statement, he says it's unacceptable that those responsible haven't been found.
"It is disgraceful that one year later, even though a number of the terrorists who participated in this attack have been identified, not a single one has been brought to justice," Boehner said.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/09/11/on-sept-11-anniversary-republicans-hit-obama-on-benghazi/

Now that Obama has completely proven Republicans wrong about their perceptions of Democratic foreign policy, however, the GOP can't seem to get its story straight on Khattala:

According to multiple sources on the ground, including some with direct knowledge of the operations to identify and hunt the Benghazi suspects, intelligence that could have been acted upon at times has been ignored or put on hold. Further, they say, the recent capture of Ahmed Abu Khattala -- now on a ship bound for the U.S., expected to arrive this weekend -- was an easy one.
"He was low-hanging fruit," one source told Fox News. "We could have picked him up months and months ago and there was no change, or urgency to do this now."

 Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/27/sources-us-letting-benghazi-suspects-off-hook-recent-arrest-small-potatoes/

…Mr. Abu Khattala likely was little more than a patsy. Yes, he was captured on video-surveillance footage at the scene of the burning diplomatic compound, but my sources say he was just part of a large “pickup team” of local jihadis that the attack’s real organizers successfully manipulated.

Source:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/2/timmerman-finding-a-patsy-in-benghazi/?page=1

Let's see if I have this straight: before Khattala was in US custody, he was a terrorist mastermind whose capture was of the utmost importance to our national security, and it was an outrage that the president had not yet nabbed him.

Now that Khattala is in custody - captured by a Democratic president, to boot - he is suddenly "small potatoes" - a "patsy" whose apprehension gains us nothing.

Would we be hearing these same type of dismissive reports from Fox News if a Republican president had apprehended Khattala? It's doubtful.

The real issue here is not whether Khattala is truly "small potatoes", as Fox is so desperate for us to believe. Instead, the issue is that in the wake of its major national security disasters (Iraq, failure to find Osama, etc), Republicans are left with little alternative than to just discredit president Obama's successes.

Strange behavior indeed from people who claim to be such patriots.