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Nobody likes to talk about it - not the Administration, not Obama's primary opponents, not even the Republican Party. (Obama's opponents are happy to leave the topic unmentioned - never interfere with a candidate who is self-destructing.) Nonetheless, a year after the failed raid on a suburban compound that left three Americans and five Pakistani soldiers dead, left Osama bin Laden with greater influence than ever before, and left diplomatic ties with both Pakistan and Afghanistan in tatters, a look back is needed.
Sources in the NSC still argue that intelligence made a compelling case bin Laden was in the compound. Informants, aerial surveillance, signals intelligence: no single source was conclusive, but the totality of the evidence gave the top analysts a confidence level in the low 90% range. Not a certainty - but far better odds than any card player, meteorologist, or politician was accustomed to.
The critics don't challenge that. Instead they talk about risk / reward ratios and Jimmy Carter's Desert One operation to rescue American hostages in Iran. Why wouldn't the President learn from history? they ask. Against the possibility of capturing or killing bin Laden, weigh the downside. A failed mission would mean the loss of American lives (eight lost in Desert One), prestige, and the next election.
Many of the critics are political operatives who don't have any special knowledge about geopolitics and national security - but they do know electoral politics. In political terms, they say, the potential cost was enormous - and for the President the potential cost of not acting was near zero. If we missed a chance to take out bin Laden and he launched another attack, it would tend to unite the nation and favor incumbents.
Hindsight is 20/20, they say. A year later - after the two helicopters crashed, captured on videos taken by an ISS that somehow knew of the operation; after the compound's occupant was introduced in that press conference as a retired Army officer; after bin Laden's crowing videos - few will defend Obama's decision. Was it recklessness, or ego, or a bad choice in advisors? His defenders say it was simply a tough decision that he made based on his view of national interests.
They may even be right - but that isn't a campaign slogan, it's a political obituary.
This guess at the worries and deliberations in the White House one year ago is prompted by Mitt Romney's assertion that "of course! Any President would have ordered the raid!"
