Obama's Bin Laden speech is a long way from the 2008 candidate's smug diction, “we’re no longer about bluster and unilateralism and ideology"

While [Barack Obama's presidential volley of star-spangled rhetoric, including 10 I’s, a me and a my in Sunday night’s 11-minute got-him announcement] sounds a lot like flag-wrapped, and probably effective, pre-campaign politicking, the raid leading to Bin Laden’s death takes a stone off the country’s heart. Mr. Obama, with seemingly justified pride and moral legitimacy, could well say (and did) — although the International Federation for Human Rights in Paris finds the operation’s legality open to question — “Justice has been done.”

But this is also a long way from the diction of a candidate who ran for the White House in 2008 with the phrase “we’re no longer about bluster and unilateralism and ideology,” and the suggestion that the United States’ potential for worldwide reach and military commitment has ever-increasing limits.

Pointing out the Apologizer-in-Chief's contradictions, John Vinocur notes in the International Herald Tribune that "this America has no other victories in sight".

In proclaiming the elimination of Osama bin Laden a victory for “the greatness” of America (and by obvious extension that of his own leadership), Barack Obama hopes to create an image of forcefulness for his foreign policy — and at the same time assure his re-election next year.

Consider this language: Killing Bin Laden “is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people.” And, “As a nation, there is nothing we can’t do.”

Add to that, “We will never tolerate our security being threatened.” Plus, “We will be true to the values that make us who we are” and “relentless in the defense of our citizens and our friends and allies.”

Call it a presidential volley of star-spangled rhetoric, including 10 I’s, a me and a my in Sunday night’s 11-minute got-him announcement, followed up by a trip Thursday to New York and the ground zero of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America.

… Now, Mr. Obama is pitching We’re No. 1 to a country that, as Bill Clinton said, “hires you to win” — its Iraq intervention being regarded mostly as a fiasco, but one where the 2007-8 U.S. military surge avoided a dishonorable departure.

Yet this America has no other victories in sight that would rid North Africa of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, or Afghanistan of the Taliban, and everyone else of the departed terrorist-in-chief’s globally dispersed followers.