In fairness, any president who avenged 9/11 would be guilty of political malpractice if he didn’t remind voters he had Osama bin Laden killed. But it’s a question of what Obama says about the significance of that death. It could be the way to credibly say that al-Qaida’s days are numbered, and that the U.S. is only a few drone strikes away from its long-awaited victory in the war on terrorism. But if all Obama does is to include the bin Laden raid in a laundry list of national-security achievements, the best he can do is argue that he can be trusted to keep waging a global war that no one actually talks about successfully ending.
To do so requires taking a risky political choice. As Rand Paul learned when he argued that it’s time to let the Patriot Act expire, politicians who argue that the terrorist emergency is a waning threat are constantly at risk of being slimed. Yet unless political leaders finally make that choice, they’ll find their broader geopolitical ambitions constrained. Obama talks a lot about “pivoting” to a focus on core U.S. commercial interests in Asia, yet his real foreign policy is found in the climbing tally of drone strikes worldwide. If Obama wants to change that — and the GOP gave him the chance to — the place to start is Charlotte.
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