A Time For Unity and A Premature Celebration

by Butch Bracknell

A Time For Unity

Osama Bin Laden is no more. The latest Afghan war assessment notes frangible, delicate progress, but progress nonetheless. Commanders returning from Afghanistan cite real and substantial advances in the areas for which they were responsible, and even the newspapers give the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan some chance for success. The President names a new national security team well-suited for the responsibilities they are about to undertake, the CIA managed an intelligence operation that constitutes a robust success in the usual sea of anti-Agency criticism, the Congress seems to be —to compromise in the way that the founders envisioned to produce responsible policy and budget choices. American credibility abroad is surging, however slightly, and the President, in a time of crisis, acted presidential by signing a risky covert action finding authorizing the bin Laden raid. A time of tempered American triumph and unbridled unity? Hardly.

The ink was barely dry on the newsprint describing the special operators' successes in the bin Laden raid before the pundits started attacking the President and his team. Rush Limbaugh: ""I, me, my -- three of the most used words in President Obama's media appearance last night. Not a single intelligence adviser, not a single national security adviser, military adviser, came up with the idea ... not one of them ... according to Obama, had the ability to understand the need to get DNA." Washington Times columnist Brett Decker: "He used the words "I," "me" and "my" so many times it was hard to count for such a quick message. Not only is this consistent with his view that everything is about him, it also reflected the reality that this president is weak and perceived by the world to be a lackluster leader who has undermined American power. He needs to grab any opportunity he can to make himself believable as a commander in chief." Conservative columnist Laura Ingraham, on Twitter: "He should have thanked GWB, not reminded us OBL escaped...BHO: 'America can do whatever we set our mind to' ... like keep spending according to my budget and raise the debt ceiling!" Even this author's Facebook circle of friends is abuzz with criticism of the President, deflecting credit to "the troops" and accusing the President of just signing a piece of paper and sleeping in his comfortable White House bed.

Killing Osama bin Laden should send a strategic signal to the world of American unity, relentlessness, diligence, and resolve to defeat radicalism, ensure American physical and economic security, and support freedom and democracy the world over. America's triumphs in this endeavor depend in part on success in the battle of the narrative -- coordinated communications on western, progressive values as a competing vision to the repression inherent in radicalism and authoritarianism. The narrative is undermined by disloyal attacks on the President and his team -- a President who, in a time of crisis, acted presidential. To be sure, if the covert action he authorized personally had failed, like Desert One in 1980 or the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the responsibility would hang around his neck like an albatross.

After FDR's "Date of Infamy" speech to a joint session of Congress, the members gave the president a standing ovation, leading Presidential advisor Samuel Irving Rosenman to observe: "It was a most dramatic spectacle there in the chamber of the House of Representatives. On most of the President's personal appearances before Congress, we found applause coming largely from one side—the Democratic side. But this day was different. The applause, the spirit of cooperation, came equally from both sides...The new feeling of unity which suddenly welled up in the chamber on December 8, the common purpose behind the leadership of the President, the joint determination to see things through, were typical of what was taking place throughout the country." Unity across the political spectrum in the face of a grave threat: what a novel concept.

The future will tell the long-term consequences of killing bin Laden -- will it inspire retributive attacks or cause a leadership vacuum that leads to increased violence as competitors contend for status? Will it drive a stake in the heart of al Qaeda's organization and philosophy by demonstrating the futility of Islamism? Can the west offer a better alternative in the battle of the narrative by demonstrating harmony and civilized conduct in the conduct of our political affairs? Or are we signaling that not even a tactical triumph over evil incarnate is enough to bring American together for more than one news cycle? Instead of turning reflexively partisan, American society might consider, if only for a short while, setting aside partisan biases and celebrating an unbridled success.

A Premature Celebration

Osama bin Laden is dead, radio stations are playing tough-sounding Toby Keith and patriotic Lee Greenwood songs, and the Washington Nationals are even giving away free tickets to military members, in a broad-based gesture of gratitude for 10 years of dogged pursuit of the terrorist rogue. Pundits are deconstructing the raid and its planning to outlandish levels of detail, and some are even declaring the raison d'etre for the U.S. military and civilian mission in Afghanistan to be an expired mandate. Even sports talk radio has interrupted its usual blather about the athletic crisis of the day to focus on the successful raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It is like the bicentennial, a Presidential inauguration, and V-E Day, all rolled into one. Before America gets carried away on the winds of triumph, we need to take a deep breath and unpack what has been accomplished, the strategic second order effects, and the task that remains before us.

The killing of bin Laden will prove to be little more than a first down in an epic championship football game -- a game which has an unknown score, will last an indeterminate number of quarters, and will be played at an unknown cost to the team owners, coaches and players. The popular media is abuzz with calls to bring the troops home, irrespective of the strategic judgments which require U.S. and allied support to the Afghan government -- to develop a functional, stable government that manages the national economy, provides essential services to its citizens, and exercises a monopoly on violence within its borders -- and which therefore provides an inhospitable sanctum for transnational terrorists. In the era of persistent conflict, the U.S. must be wary of a penalty flag for excessive and premature celebration. National pride in the destruction of a murderous and sworn enemy of the state and our society is natural and even commendable. We must take pains to ensure it is kept in perspective. In the words of Winston Churchill, this is not even the beginning of the end, but perhaps the end of the beginning.

Moreover, we must collectively consider the risk that bin Laden's killing poses in the context of the Arab Spring. As freedom and possibility roil the cauldron of repressive and stricken societies from Tunisia east to Bahrain, and from Yemen north to Syria, governments like that of Pakistan, suffering from a legitimacy deficit, are candidates for popular resistance. Especially in the case of Pakistan, such instability could be catastrophic. First, let us be crystal clear about what occurred: the United States inserted a special operations team under CIA operational control to conduct a covert action (a raid) over 100 miles deep into the sovereign territory of Pakistan, well beyond the "normal" strike range of Predators and their Hellfire Missiles in the FATA and Northwest Territory. This raid struck a city just a few miles north of the capital city of Islamabad, resulting in the death of a Muslim inhabitant under the theoretical, if not explicit, protection of the Pakistani government. The raid was roughly the equivalent of a Mexican army hit squad flying 100 miles into Arizona to kill a member of a drug cartel seeking refuge in Tucson -- it clearly constitutes a serious incursion onto the sovereignty and an affront to the authority of an admittedly erratic ally -- one with at least a couple dozen sets of nuclear weapons components and 180 million residents who are skeptical of, if not hostile to, the Zardari government. In the milieu of political unrest generally sweeping Muslim North Africa and Asia, bin Laden's death and the American raid, whether undertaken with the Pakistani government's consent, over the government's objection, or without its knowledge, could serve as a catalyst introducing unprecedented and extraordinarily dangerous instability into South Asia.

American euphoria over bin Laden's death is a rational reaction to the elimination of the face of radical Islamism. Bin Laden's adherents will doubtless seek revenge, if such retaliatory plans are not already in the early execution stages. We must, as a nation, take careful stock of what bin Laden's death means in the continuing struggle against radicalism and consider concepts for mitigating instability in volatile regions.

Butch Bracknell is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps. A career military lawyer with tours in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, he is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, DC.