Obama Prevails WhereOthers Failed

The operation against bin Laden is a great triumph for Barack Obama. For the foreseeable future, he will be almost completely immune to accusations of weakness. But the problems he faces at home and abroad are just as enormous as ever, writes professor Erik Åsard.

It is difficult to overestimate the significance, after a decade of fruitless hunting, of the United States finally succeeding in locating and neutralizing Osama bin Laden. He has been the superpower’s foremost enemy ever since 1998, when al-Qaida bombed the U.S.’ embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the bloody terrorist attacks that killed 224 people and injured over 5,000.

Bill Clinton had a couple of opportunities to kill or capture bin Laden, but failed.

George W. Bush and his security staff often maintained that they were close to capturing their archenemy, but the truth is that they were fumbling in the dark and never had any definitive information on where the elusive shadow could be found.

It took a black president with an unusual name and a background as a critic of the Iraq war to track down and destroy the brain behind the 9/11 attacks. The operation against bin Laden is a major triumph in security policy for Barack Obama and for the units that carried out the attack.

Ever since he announced his presidential candidacy, Obama has been the victim of false rumors that he is Muslim, that he wasn’t born in the United States and other lies along the same vein. The more respectable critique from the opposition has been based upon arguments that he is a weak leader who does not believe in the uniqueness of America, who is reluctant to use force and who, if one would believe Republican Mitt Romney, thinks too much before he acts.

The purpose of the criticism and lies was to delegitimize Obama, to make him an alien figure who is neither capable nor suitable to be head of state.

The campaigns have had their intended effect. The proportion of the population that believes (erroneously) that Obama is a Muslim has strangely doubled from nine to 18 percent since he took office. In a new poll, a quarter of those questioned and 45 percent of Republicans answered that they didn’t believe that Obama was born in the U.S. This despite the fact that the president’s birth certificate has been published in abbreviated form a number of years ago. It is likely that this is what spurred the complete birth certificate to be published last week.

It must be sweet revenge for Barack Obama, that just when the bizarre debate about his birth place raged at its hottest, he could give the order for an operation that led to his greatest success as president to date.

The outcome considerably strengthens his leadership profile and undermines in one blow the criticism from the right. In the foreseeable future he will be almost completely immune to accusations that he is a weak leader.

One should be aware that that there was an alternative scenario that was not chosen, namely bombing bin Laden’s compound to smithereens by air attack (as is approximately the case now with Moammar Gadhafi in Libya). It would probably have led to the same result, but Obama chose the more risky alternative with a helicopter-driven commando operation.

Meanwhile, it is clear that the threat from various terrorists and terrorist groups remains, even after their foremost inspiration has been neutralized. The problems the Obama administration faces at home and abroad are equally enormous and intractable now as they ever were. This is true not least for the strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Obama, like his predecessor, has failed to present any workable solutions.

Furthermore, prior experience shows that the effect of such a mega event as bin Laden’s death will peter out with time. There are many indications that the election debate next year, as so often before, will revolve around unemployment, jobs, the economy and the budget deficit.

Several of Obama’s employees are old enough to remember what happened after the Gulf War of 1991, when most believed that President George H. W. Bush would get reelected easily. It didn’t turn out that way — the deteriorating economy increased discontent and Bush lost to Bill Clinton.

If the Republicans are wise enough to pick a center-oriented candidate, they will have a good opportunity to challenge Obama in next year’s presidential election. But regardless of who the victor is, they will have great difficulty portraying the president with the middle name of Hussein as weak and indecisive.