The Risk-Taker

Whatever you think of President Barack Obama, you'd be hard-pressed to say that he is the kind of politician who puts his own best interests first all the time. Or that he backs away from a difficult decision.

As the details continue to emerge from Sunday's killing of Osama bin-Laden, it's striking to contemplate what a huge risk he took by personally authorizing a military strike that could easily have failed in any number of ways.

You can just imagine how disastrous this raid might have turned out had bin-Laden been surrounded by a larger group of alert, well-armed colleagues, as opposed to (apparently) just three men and a large number of women and children.

Or if the Pakistani military had intervened.

Or if large civilian casualties had occurred.

Or if the helicopters had crashed.

Or if the intelligence that suggested bin-Laden might be there had turned out to wrong, and innocent people had been killed in what by any standard of international law was an illegal operation.

Even though none of those things happened, any of them could have, which is why Obama actually put his entire career at risk by taking this decision.

Meanwhile, the decision from the White House today to release the information that bin-Laden was unarmed when he was fatally shot is somewhat puzzling, frankly. This entire operation was classified, at the highest level of national security classification, and from my perspective as a journalist, I'm not aware of any previous example of an administration declassifying sensitive information so quickly.

Since everyone with access to the details of what happened holds the highest security clearance, none of them would be considered a likely candidate to leak a detail of this sort.

Yet the White House today chose to admit that bin-Laden had no weapon when he was shot twice and killed, apparently in his bedroom.

At some point, probably very soon, the administration will be forced to release the photos of his dead body, since many in Pakistan seem to doubt that this news is true.

That problem -- the credibility problem -- will probably go away with time, and from the realization by the doubters once they see the photos. But a new controversy may build, about shooting an unarmed man in his bedroom after midnight, no matter what a human monster he may have been.

Remember that in the eyes of the world, the U.S. is not so much the victim of 9/11 but a dangerous, powerful, aggressive power that imposes its military might on people whenever and however it chooses to do so.

President Obama has just successfully carried out perhaps the most daring and most satisfying (from an American perspective) unilateral act of justice in our country's history.

But there will be repercussions. One of which, however, will not be damage to Obama's political career. He would appear as of this moment to be unbeatable next year. In politics as in many realms of life, taking great risks reaps great rewards.

He will, therefore, in all likelihood, win re-election next year, and many would argue, this act of leadership justifies that very result.

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