One-Sided Battles are the Best Kind

The New York Times reports on the "one-sided" battle in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan.  "One-sided" is such a charged phrase, as if the battle  were somehow a little... dishonorable, or unfair.  Hardly!  It's the best kind of battle to have. 

The fact that there turned out to be very little and ineffective resistance was due to the US maintaining the element of perfect surprise, and moving fast once on the ground.  You do not sit around waiting for your enemy to get ready for you.  The one-sided battle is a testament to the quality of our intelligence, to the preparation of our Navy Seals, and to the decisions they made on the ground.  It is also a testament to some of the best examples of wartime decision-making to come from civilian leadership.  For instance:  not informing Pakistan of what we were about to do, and not micromanaging the operation. 

The result was beautiful.  No US casualties, a major terrorist leader eliminated, and a trove of intelligence data to sift through.  Who can argue with that? 

About the only thing that should have been done differently, in retrospect, is that we should have withheld all details until the White House had a clearer picture of just what had happened.  In the interim, the statement could have confirmed bin Laden's death in a raid conducted by US Navy Seals, that we had offered the body to the custody of Saudi Arabia, who refused, and that the body was subsequently buried within 24 hours in accordance with Islamic custom and at sea to avoid establishing any kind of shrine to bin Laden.  At that point, no further details should have been offered since we would be in the process of debriefing the team, securing anything of value from the site, and handing off control of the site to the government of Pakistan.  But that's 20/20 hindsight.  For the critics of the garbled information initially released by Jay Carney, understand that there is enormous pressure to provide details in the immediate wake of such tremendous news. 

As for the arguments over releasing the gory death photos of bin Laden, I think President Obama has made the correct call to keep those private.  The White House correctly notes that there is a long history of such images being used to make people in to heroes and martyrs, to incite violence, to inspire further attacks.  And the photos will not convince anyone who already doubts the fact of bin Laden's death.   In gauging world reaction to the news, there is no reasonable doubt of the basic fact:  bin Laden is dead.