It takes a Democrat: Mission (finally) Accomplished

I sat spellbound with the rest of America on Sunday night as news came across the television of a Barack Obama press conference.

"It has to be Osama, something with Osama," I thought to myself as the networks switched over to dishoveled anchors who had no doubt been rushed into the studio like jounralistic minutemen.

It turns out, it was Osama. Osama Bin Laden had been killed.

I will never forget where I was on 9/11 when the plane hit the first tower: Mr. Crews' U.S. History class. It wasn't until homeroom some 30 minutes later that we got a clearer picture. One that clearly painted that we as a nation were under attack.

I will also never forget where I was when news of Osama's death came across the airwaives of television and the wires of social networking. Sitting in my living room, thinking to myself, "it has to be Osama."

I thought something else too.

"Thank God its Obama." Almost ten years after I sat in my desk as a high school freshman and saw the horrors of terrorism first hand, the man who was responsible for all of that horror was dead. Ironically though, the President that was responsible for authorizing the operation wasn't the one we might have anticipated.

Since the days after September 11, 2001 we have been spoon-fed a lie by the Republican party: that they are the only party who could keep us safe in the face of terrorism. The GOP successfully fear-mongered their way into re-election in 2004 by convincing voters that they were the strongest on national security. They strong-armed a war hero in John Kerry, and effectively labled a man who had fought and saved lives in Vietnam as "weak."

They in effect said the Democrats aren't strong enough on national defense to keep us safe.

They were wrong.

At the 2004 Republican convention, keynote speaker Rudy Guiliani recounted the day of the infamous attacks: "I turned to Bernard Kerick and said thank God George W. Bush is our President." Whether Rudy said that because he thought Dubbya would keep us safer, or be the president in office when Bin Laden was captured, is not important.

Rudy was wrong.

Because at the end of they day it is Barack Obama, a democrat, who has re-focused our mission from an illegal unfounded war in Iraq back to the war against Al-quaeda in Afghanistan. It was Barack Obama, a democrat, who authorized the mission to kill the world's number one terrorist. It was Barack Obama, a democrat, who stepped out in front of the country and the world on Sunday night and told us all that the mission was successful.

Eight years to the day from Sunday Night's announcment, then President Bush stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier, in a flight suit in front of a banner with "Mission Accomplished" emblazoned across it.

Eight years later Barack Obama, a democratic President, from the very same party in the oval office when we won WWII, actually got something accomplished.

When you weigh what the previous Republican administration gave us in the area of national security and what Barack Obama has given us so far there is only one logical conclusion:

Thank God Barack Obama is our President.