UPDATE: it seems that http://www.gutsycall.com still points to Obama 2012.

Last week my colleague, Dan McLaughlin, noted that the website gutsycall.com referred visitors to the Obama 2012 campaign  website

If you click on the URL www.gutsycall.com, you will notice that – as of this writing – it redirects you to the Obama 2012 re-election campaign website. The URL was apparently purchased yesterday, although the purchaser seems to have covered its tracks. It would appear that this is being done with the intention of using “Gutsy Call” as a campaign slogan for Obama’s 2012 campaign, in an effort to capitalize on President Obama’s decision -after just 16 hours of deliberation – to order the operation that led to Osama bin Laden’s death.

The website no longer redirects to the Obama campaign and there was much squalling from the Obama camp that they had nothing to do with this. There is much to doubt in their denial and there is little doubt that Obama will run for a second term by attempting to capitalize on the “gutsy call” to kill bin Laden.

As I’ve noted before, in the 29 or so months that have intervened since Barack Obama was inaugurated we have come to know him as a petty, vindictive, indecisive little man. Arguably, his is the smallest presence to have occupied the Oval Office in this century, and maybe the last as well. It is a record he is likely to retain barring a Verne Troyer presidency. Indeed, the photo, below, that is now deemed “iconic”, that of the President and his national security team observing the raid on bin Laden’s compound shows a man dwarfed by the office and attempting to shrink into insignificance in the presence of even renowned  chuckleheads like Joe Biden.

Now it seems that having been forced to make the only decision that he could reasonably make, the president’s acolytes want us to pay homage to the man for doing his job albeit reluctantly. Make no mistake about it Obama, himself, wants us to know what kind of a courageous man he is.

“At the end of the day, this was still a 55-45 situation,” Obama told CBS’s “60 Minutes” in his first broadcast interview since bin Laden’s death early last Monday. “I mean, we could not say definitively that bin Laden was there. Had he not been there, then there would have been some significant consequences.”

But “gutsy call” is the rallying cry. Google the phrase combined with “Obama” and you get over 58,000 hits. As Tony Harnden at The Telegraph observes, the phrase crops up anytime one of Obama’s supporters talks about the event.

When President Obama was faced with the opportunity to act upon this, the president had to evaluate the  strength of that information and then made what I believe was one of  the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory.

(John Brennan in the White House briefing room)

This was a gutsy decision by the president.  A lot of things could have gone wrong.

(Senator John Kerry on MSNBC)

It was a very gutsy decision made by the president.  I mean, he could  have sent some Hellfire missiles in there and destroyed everybody and  everything.

(Senator Dianne Feinstein on MSNBC)

All of those risks were debated.  All of them were thoroughly  explored.  And in the end, I think that’s why the president made a very gutsy decision by deciding that for all of those risks, we had to  do this.

(Leon Panetta on PBS)

You know, the president had an opportunity, on a very granular basis, to work with those guys every day, particularly the leaders of the bin Laden team, two very impressive guys. And the president came away very impressed. And it was their information that allowed him to make this gutsy call.

(Denis McDonagh on CNN)

…

But the top prize for the most sycophancy towards Obama this week surely has to be awarded to Wendy Chamberlain, Middle East Institute president and former US ambassador to Pakistan, who had this to say on CNN:

But he made that decision to go without telling Pakistan and that took some real courage, as much courage as our Navy SEALs did in pulling off a near flawless operation.

We can all be glad bin Laden is dead but the administration turning this into some kind of proof of Obama’s toughness is little more than juvenile. The fact is that killing bin Laden, or attempting to kill him, was the only choice that Obama had. The fact that he has dithered over this decision for two months and at the eleventh hour took a 16 hour nap to think on the subject should give every American call for alarm not thanksgiving. Regardless of the political fallout from the raid, the vague “significant consequences” Obama mentioned on 60 Minutes, we all would have forgiven him for doing something to kill bin Laden.

Whether the building had been a Trappist monastery or he’d carpet-bombed Abbottabad the American public would have forgiven action. What we would never have forgiven was him doing nothing. We all know that and the president trying to capitalize from taking a course of action he plainly did not want to take but was forced upon him is simply disreputable.