Obama's Big Victory

Mission accomplished.

One hour after it was known for certain that an American special operations unit had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, these words from President Obama put an end to the nightmare that the United States, and by extension the West, has lived since that Sept. 11, 2011 when an organization then practically unknown to the general public, as al-Qaida was, killed some 3,000 people and left around 6,000 wounded. Memory is always selective, but if the 21st century began with the huge attack against the World Trade Center towers in New York, when there are only a few months left until the 10th anniversary of that attack, the United States closes a tragic chapter of its history. And it does so at a key moment, when too many military conflicts are at stake in different places throughout the world: It gives the Persian Gulf monarchies a breath; in troubled northern Africa it sends a message that its military leadership is not going to be soft, and in countries like Yemen its voice will be heard more than it has been up to now, in that is has complained, without success, that the government put an end to repression. And Afghanistan? The withdrawal of U.S. troops could be hastened to the extent that bin Laden’s death is interpreted to be an irreversible defeat for al-Qaida.

President Obama, past the halfway point of his term in office, finds his first important military success, which at the stroke of a pen dispels the Republican accusations of being a soft president. Surely in a short time we will see how he positions himself as the only Democratic candidate for the next presidential election, and in his pocket he’ll carry a wild card that could end up being a ticket for a new term in the White House.