Obama’s deployment of America’s now highly tuned military forces has just wiped mockery and derision off the faces of both friend and foe.

By Gary Scarrabelotti*

I’ve never been an Obama fan. If I were an American citizen, I would be in the Republican camp. But there is no denying it: Obama has done America proud.

In taking the decision to send special forces into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden in his lair, and then to carry off his body, and one of his wives, and all the intelligence that could be scoured from the place, President Barack H. Obama has taught Americans and the World quite a few lessons: lessons about leadership, about what it means to be an American, and about the folly of risking war on America and its interests.

Obama showed political and strategic intelligence of a high order. He resisted the option to bomb the Abbottabad villa off the map. He knew that he needed a body and that he needed to prove that it was bin Laden’s; and he also knew that he needed to dispose of that body in such a way that its burial place could not become a point of pilgrimage for madmen.

He also showed patience. For, having likely found his man in August 2010, he waited. He waited to prove up the case that bin Laden was living in the so-called “mansion” of Abbottabad – from the outside, an ugly, unkempt, three-story pile. Then, finally, he showed the kind of courage that a serious commander-in-chief must show: the courage to roll the dice and to take the risks – and these were many. There was the risk that there was an undetected flaw in the intelligence or the reasoning based upon it. There was the risk of finding bin Laden “not at home”. There was the risk of destroying America’s tenuous relations with Pakistan for no gain. There was the risk of an operational cock-up à la “Eagle Claw”, the failed 1980 Delta Force operation to rescue American hostages from the US embassy in Teheran – everyone, especially the President, must have been thinking of this as they watched the real-time images from battlefield cameras showing a US helicopter slam into the security wall surrounding bin Laden’s compound. There was the risk of Obama’s presidency imploding Carter-like in the wake of disaster. Yet Barack Obama took the decisions and saw them through. No doubt there was much debate among his advisers about the best course: to bomb or to send in special forces. No doubt credible cases were made in support of either option. The fact remains, however, that the President clearly had the acumen to steer his government through the debates and the courage to drive the decision to its conclusion. And finally, he ended the operation with a flawless speech to Americans and to the World.

I have no doubt that George W. Bush was capable of the same courage, discipline, and determination, if not the same rhetorical skill and prudence, that Obama displayed in destroying bin Laden. Bush’s weakness, unfortunately, was his unflagging faith in his Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, whose small footprint military strategy was behind the failure to capture bin Laden during Operation Anaconda in March 2002, as it was behind the near failure of US forces to get on top of the Iraq insurgencies. Once he had rid himself, albeit reluctantly, of Rumsfeld and adopted Petraeus’ “surge” strategy in Iraq, Bush laid the ground for Obama’s later Afghanistan surge and a higher tempo of operations against al-Qaida and Taliban targets in Pakistan. Far from dumping Bush’s work, Obama, in fact, built on it to accomplish the goal that eluded his predecessor.

Obama, as has been said in a thousand commentaries already, has not destroyed al-Qaida. But he has deployed the World’s by now most experienced and most expert counter insurgency and counter terrorism armed forces to such deadly effect that it wipes the mockery and derision off the faces on Arab Street and off those poised over the desks in Europe’ s effete defence and foreign ministries.

America’s power to endure, to learn from its mistakes, and to reach out and touch its enemies with deadly effect, has sent, via Obama, a message like a scorching pulse of energy around the globe: those that who have not yet joined Americas’ enemies should dread the prospect of doing so.

The “Long War” is far from over, but America is at the top of its game and that is where Australia needs the USA to be. A world in which America is not feared is a world unsafe for us.

*Gary Scarrabelotti is Managing Director of Aequum: Political & Business Strategies. This article was originally published on HenryThornton.com