{"id":75675,"date":"2026-07-03T05:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T10:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/03\/navy-seal-who-killed-bin-laden-says-americas-250th-proves-hard-work-still-pays-warns-of-victimhood-culture\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T05:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T10:00:19","slug":"navy-seal-who-killed-bin-laden-says-americas-250th-proves-hard-work-still-pays-warns-of-victimhood-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/03\/navy-seal-who-killed-bin-laden-says-americas-250th-proves-hard-work-still-pays-warns-of-victimhood-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Navy SEAL who killed bin Laden says America&#8217;s 250th proves hard work still pays, warns of &#8216;victimhood&#8217; culture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former <a href=\"https:\/\/foxnews.com\/category\/tech\/topics\/us-navy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">U.S. Navy SEAL<\/a> Robert O&#8217;Neill, who is credited with killing Usama bin Laden, reflected on America&#8217;s 250th anniversary, praising opportunities for those willing to work hard while urging Americans to preserve the nation&#8217;s values amid what he described as a growing hatred of its history.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As we come up on our 250th anniversary of being the greatest country ever, it&#8217;s just the opportunity here from my personal experience that reminds me, and I almost get to a point where I&#8217;m jealous of younger men that were my age when I joined because they literally have the world at their fingertips,&#8221; O&#8217;Neill told Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You can do anything, seriously, in this country.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>O&#8217;Neill, who served with SEAL Team 6 during Operation Neptune Spear, the 2011 raid that killed the al Qaeda mastermind and chief, encouraged more young people to step outside their comfort zones and contribute to America\u2019s success.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/foxnews.com\/media\/bill-maher-tells-liberals-stop-partisan-sulking-join-america-250-party\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>BILL MAHER TELLS LIBERALS TO STOP &#8216;PARTISAN SULKING&#8217; AND JOIN AMERICA 250 PARTY<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m able to attribute a lot of my successes in life simply because I left the house,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I went to <a href=\"https:\/\/foxnews.com\/category\/us\/military\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">join the military<\/a>, and I did. In this country, I just proved you can do anything by not doing one thing. I just didn&#8217;t stop. I never quit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Looking back on his service, O&#8217;Neill said it was a &#8220;great honor&#8221; to leave home, rise through the ranks on merit, and earn a place on a team chosen solely on ability, calling his experience an example of &#8220;the greatness of the country.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That team was proof of equal opportunity,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You have an equal opportunity to try out, but you&#8217;re gonna be tested every day, and if you don&#8217;t pass, we&#8217;re just gonna get rid of you. But the team was built because of this country, and the country has the ability to do that over and over again.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As millions prepare to celebrate the anniversary, O&#8217;Neill acknowledged that not everyone views the milestone positively, blaming a growing &#8220;victimhood&#8221; mindset for turning people away from the nation&#8217;s history.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/foxnews.com\/media\/youtuber-amir-odom-challenges-black-americans-reject-victimhood-reclaim-future\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>YOUTUBER AMIR ODOM CHALLENGES BLACK AMERICANS TO REJECT VICTIMHOOD AND RECLAIM THEIR FUTURE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Part of the issue is we stop teaching our kids the past, and we&#8217;re actually raising a lot of victims,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know why the victimhood is here. Maybe it&#8217;s because the country is so great, we have to look back on the past and invent problems, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re doing right now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A driving force behind this growing disdain is &#8220;institutional cowardice,&#8221; according to O&#8217;Neill, who warned that &#8220;if we keep importing the enemy and won&#8217;t call it what it is,&#8221; the country risks deeper political division and, ultimately, &#8220;civil war.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re at a place right now of institutional cowardice where we&#8217;re importing people based on untruths because people in political positions know that they&#8217;ll vote for them if they keep doing what they&#8217;re doing,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Once that base starts growing, they&#8217;re going to get rid of what was referred to by communists as the &#8216;useful idiots.&#8217; It&#8217;s growing right now. I mean, it&#8217;s almost ironic that we can look over the ocean at Great Britain on an anniversary from a country where we gained independence, and it&#8217;s not like looking at another nation. We&#8217;re looking at a glimpse into our future.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>O&#8217;Neill said the nation loses its strength despite its ability to &#8220;win anything <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/us\/military\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">with force<\/a>,&#8221; arguing America would need to &#8220;import the enemy in order to lose.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re seeing right now that we can win anything with force, but we need to import the enemy in order to lose,&#8221; he said. &#8220;What I mean by that is if we get infiltrated, pound for pound, we&#8217;re never gonna lose a fight. Instead of telling the truth, we just try to appease. That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re seeing right now. We win the wars that we&#8217;re in until we involve too many laws that we make up ourselves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/foxnews.com\/media\/raising-americas-children-mentor-warns-kids-seeking-role-models-online-communities-fade\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>WHO IS RAISING AMERICA&#8217;S CHILDREN? MENTOR WARNS KIDS ARE SEEKING ROLE MODELS ONLINE AS COMMUNITIES FADE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>But O&#8217;Neill said America can continue to succeed if it preserves its founding values, saying the country is &#8220;fragile&#8221; as &#8220;it&#8217;s still an experiment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Pointing to the <a href=\"https:\/\/foxnews.com\/travel\/secrets-revolutionary-war-battlefields-emerge-250-years-after-americas-founding\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">British, Persian, and Ottoman<\/a> empires as examples of powerful nations that eventually declined, O\u2019Neill said America&#8217;s 250-year run does not guarantee its future and people &#8220;need to reflect on our great nation and how it&#8217;s very important that we keep it that way.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We gotta realize that the American project, the experiment that it is, it&#8217;s still worth continuing, and it&#8217;s good to see that we made it 250 years, but also keep in mind, that&#8217;s usually the lifetime of most empires,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>O&#8217;Neill said people should not take the country&#8217;s freedoms and opportunities for granted, saying he has seen &#8220;true poverty and real dictators&#8221; and that &#8220;it&#8217;s a blessing&#8221; to be here.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We need to realize that we have been padded by two oceans, the Pacific and the Atlantic, and you don&#8217;t want to do the whole &#8216;don&#8217;t know what you got until it&#8217;s gone,&#8217; because this country is great,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former U.S. Navy SEAL Robert O&#8217;Neill, who is credited with killing Usama bin Laden, reflected on America&#8217;s 250th anniversary, praising opportunities for those willing to work hard while urging Americans to preserve the nation&#8217;s values amid what he described as a growing hatred of its history. &#8220;As we come up on our 250th anniversary of &#8230; <a title=\"Navy SEAL who killed bin Laden says America&#8217;s 250th proves hard work still pays, warns of &#8216;victimhood&#8217; culture\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/03\/navy-seal-who-killed-bin-laden-says-americas-250th-proves-hard-work-still-pays-warns-of-victimhood-culture\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Navy SEAL who killed bin Laden says America&#8217;s 250th proves hard work still pays, warns of &#8216;victimhood&#8217; culture\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}