WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s historic announcement late Sunday night that Osama bin Laden is dead represents a huge national-security victory for the United States and a milestone for his administration, bringing to a close the most relentless mission by U.S. intelligence and military forces over the past 10 years.
Obama’s announcement, which came just before midnight on the East Coast, was grounds for celebration for a country still scarred by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, producing a rare moment of national unity at a time of deep divisions on many domestic and foreign-policy issues.
The spontaneous flag-waving crowds that gathered outside the White House, cheering and singing the national anthem and “God Bless America,” were a small symbol of the emotional relief that swept across the country as the news broke late in the evening.
Bin Laden’s death will not end the threat posed by al-Qaeda to the United States and other parts of the world. But the demise of the person most responsible for the 2001 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, represents a major psychological setback to the terrorist organization and a sizable boost for the president and the country.
“Justice has been done,” the president said in a nationally televised statement to the nation.
There have been other victories over the past decade as U.S. intelligence officials have pursued and killed other top members of the al-Qaeda organization. But nothing compares in significance to the declaration Obama was able to make Sunday night.
As the president put it, the killing of bin Laden marks “the most significant achievement to date in our efforts to defeat al-Qaeda.”
Even before Obama was president, he made headlines — and drew attacks from some of his rivals — for announcing that, if he were president and had actionable intelligence, he would not hesitate to send U.S. forces across the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan to take out terrorists.
That is exactly what happened Sunday, according to the president’s statement. Obama said he earlier had directed Leon Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, to make the pursuit of bin Laden the agency’s top mission. On Sunday, based on intelligence information, a small team carried out the mission that killed the terrorist leader inside Pakistan. Experts called it one of the greatest intelligence victories in the history of the country.
The president will almost certainly receive a boost politically from the killing of bin Laden, but it could also bring greater calls for him to bring the war in Afghanistan to a close even more rapidly than was planned, with a July deadline to begin drawing down U.S. forces there.
But the death of bin Laden will probably bring the country together. To Americans, bin Laden became a hated man. The sense of relief and, even, triumph that accompanied the news underscored how the 2001 attacks had scarred the nation’s psyche and how much the killing of bin Laden was seen as a measure of justice having been done.
