Obama, by contrast, is now fused in the public imagination with the most successful American military operation since Inchon. Symbolically, it’s the opposite of the Carter Iran mission; in fact, it’s America’s Entebbe. ~Peter Beinart

The operation to kill bin Laden was clearly a success, and the administration deserves full credit for it, but these comparisons that Beinart is making can’t be taken seriously. The most successful American military operation since Inchon? Entebbe? Why not liken it to D-Day while we’re at it? It is not to disparage the soldiers who carried out this mission to point out that these other operations were far more complicated and risky.

The flip side of what Beinart is praising is that Democratic administrations for much of the last century have historically been too ready to resort to force and too willing to intervene in conflicts overseas. It’s not as if Obama needed to prove his support for taking military action more than he already had. Before this weekend, he had escalated one war and helped start another. Admittedly, these were not “Jacksonian” policies, but there couldn’t have been any serious belief that Obama was averse to using military force.

The difference, as Beinart understands perfectly well, is that the brief, successful operation to kill bin Laden is universally popular in the U.S. because everyone accepts that it was legitimate, they understand the reason for it, and because it was short and completely successful in its very limited objective. The war in Libya has no strong popular support because none of these things is true of the Libyan war. The public has grown weary of the war in Afghanistan because the objectives have become unclear, and they have lost patience with what seems to be an interminable mission.

Quick, decisive action that leaves no obvious loose ends is the sort of thing that Americans like to see, which is the exact opposite of much of what Obama has been doing for the last two years. Put another way, everything that Obama may have gained for himself and for Democrats with the killing of bin Laden may yet be frittered away and wasted if Libya drags on and the administration does not begin withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan this year as it had originally promised to do. Indeed, the speed and success of this operation will underscore just how prolonged Afghanistan has become and how ill-advised the Libyan war has always been.

Something good that may come out of this is that there may be fewer liberals in the future who feel obliged to support misguided wars because they remain stuck in the post-Vietnam “defensive crouch” on national security.