"What would Mitt have done?" What's the point???

I see that Al O'Bama's advisors have decided that a good re-election strategy would be to emphasize that it was he who gave the order to take out Osama bin Laden. He's the decision-maker-in-chief, dontcha know. And he didn't hesitate to give the order to do what had to be done. Unlike Mitt Romney, who -- for all we know -- might not have given the same order had he been in the same position at the same time.

Or maybe he would have. Who knows? Speculating about what might or might not have happened in the past is a form of mental masturbation in which Walt does not indulge. Nor should you, gentle reader. Obama was the president, he did give the order, and bin Laden is no more. Even if we may think now that it wasn't such a great idea [Get on with it! Ed.] what's done is done.

The real question we should be asking ourselves is not "What would Mitt have done?" but, what has been gained by the assassination of bin Laden? Or, perhaps, what has been lost?

If I understand the plan correctly, the idea was that cutting off the head would destroy the body of the beast that is al-Qaeda. A year later, al-Qaeda still exists, though in a wounded and weaker form. They don't seem able to carry out large-scale attacks any more...as far as we can see.

But the law of unintended consequences has asserted itself. The fragile alliance between the US-led West and Pakistan, has been ruptured, seemingly beyond repair.

The fact that bin Laden was found in Pakistan, where he had been living for years while the ISI (Pakistan's answer to the CIA) looked the other way has caused a certain amount of suspicion in Washington and the Pentagon. And the Pakis aren't exactly thrilled about American forces having gone over their heads -- literally -- to waste the Evil One's earthly incarnation.

Of course investigations are being made -- indeed so -- but as yet no-one has been held accountable for helping bin Laden hide in plain sight for all this time. Pakistan continues to deny any knowledge of bin Laden’s presence, and the decision-maker-in-chief has apparently decided not to call them on it.

Stephen Cohen, of the Brookings Institution, was quoted today as saying, "[We think] we have been taken for fools by the Pakistanis. [They] think we’re still using them the way we would a Kleenex or a condom. We use them, then throw them away." Result? Each side views the other with simmering suspicion, and the relationship between the USA and Pakistan has fallen apart.

So what? Well...the trouble is that the NATO forces (or what's left of them) still need Pakistan's help if they're to have any chance of keeping Afghanistan stable and out of the hands of the Taliban.

Bin Laden was almost a spent force before he was killed. His papers, released just now, show that he was having difficulty even in communicating with his network. The various branches or cells of al-Qaeda were slipping out of his control. He was even thinking about "rebranding" al-Qaeda, we are told, to regain the influence which had been lost while he was in hiding.

Thus bin Laden's death did almost nothing to change the conflict on the ground in Afghanistan. All that was accomplished was the exacerbation of tensions between Washington and Islamabad.

Perhaps, then, the Prez's decision wasn't so great after all. Walt humbly suggests -- as an alternative to "What would Mitt have done?" -- a question for Mr. Obama: What are you going to do for an encore?