Opinion by Peter Bergen, CNN national security analyst

This week, President Joe Biden made two decisions that belied his reputation as a dove. It approved the deployment of 3,000 U. S. troops to Eastern Europe due to the growing number of Russian forces deployed near Ukraine. And it legalized the special forces raid on Wednesday that killed Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.

It seemed like a sea change for the president. Over the past decade, Biden has been much more cautious about deploying troops or force. Biden withdrew all U. S. troops from Afghanistan in August, prompting the departure of thousands of NATO ALLIED troops and U. S. contractors, precipitating the Taliban’s seizure of power in the country.

Biden also oversaw the withdrawal of all U. S. troops from Iraq in December 2011, when he was vice president. After ISIS seized much of Iraq in 2014, then-President Barack Obama ordered thousands of U. S. troops to return to the country.

Biden also opposed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011 because of the dangers of conducting a raid in Pakistan in which U. S. forces could be captured or killed.

Yet just over a decade later, Biden appears to be in another position when it comes to the use of force.

Obama’s resolve to conduct Operation Bin Laden is valued and compared to Biden’s resolve to authorize the raid that ended the life of the ISIS leader.

These two operations had much in common. These were risky floor operations conducted through U. S. special operations forces. The U. S. Military department avoided large-scale civilian casualties that would most likely have resulted from the undeniable bombing of the compound in which bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan or the bombing of construction in Syria where ISIS leader locked up.

In the end, Operation Bin Laden was good fortune because the SEAL Six team, which conducted the raid, repeated the operation several times, while Obama’s national security team spent many months making thoughtful plans for each eventuality, adding whether one of the helicopters in the raid crashed. A helicopter crashed in the raid on bin Laden’s compound, but that did not prevent the operation.

Similarly, with Wednesday’s raid that killed the ISIS leader, U. S. forces repeated the operation several times and plans continued for many months.

And although a helicopter from the syrian raid against the ISIS leader evolved with a mechanical challenge and had to be destroyed, the operation was good fortune from the standpoint of getting rid of the ISIS leader, who blew himself up with members of his family. .

Operations against bin Laden and al-Qurayshi resulted in civilian casualties; the wife of one of bin Laden’s bodyguards was killed, while an as yet undetermined number of civilians were killed in the attack on the ISIS leader.

A broader question is whether this week’s raid will make a lasting difference. Beheading moves that kill the leaders of terrorist or rebel teams have some effect, but less than many assume.

After the death of their leader, jihadist teams regularly temporarily appoint another leader and move on. Look at the Taliban today: Their leader, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, was killed in a U. S. airstrike in Pakistan in 2016, which was described as an “important step” through Obama, who ordered the operation. However, now the Taliban throughout Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda’s core in Pakistan and Afghanistan never really recovered after bin Laden’s death, it was already particularly weakened in the years following the September 11 attacks due to CIA drone movements and the arrest of key leaders. The current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has not been able to resurrect the hard core of al-Qaeda.

Where such movements can have genuine continuous application is when U. S. forces have the ability to carry out what they call SSE, Exploitation of Sensitive Sites.

During bin Laden’s raid, the SEALs recovered computers, USB sticks and documents, some 470,000 files.

This led to a much greater understanding of how bin Laden looked at al-Qaeda and its affiliates around the world and also led to more movements against al-Qaeda leaders that further broke up the group.

During Wednesday’s operation, U. S. forces were in Syria for two hours, according to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.

Kirby said it was a “non-unusual practice” that the U. S. military had done so. The U. S. would recover everything it could locate in a raid, and it would defy common sense if U. S. forces were to recover everything it could locate in a raid, and it would defy common sense if U. S. forces were to recover everything else. UU. no search for the space in which the ISIS leader was hiding in search of computers. , key thumbs, mobile phones and documents that may be useful in the fight against ISIS in the future.

However, more than two decades after September 11, jihadist teams such as ISIS and al-Qaeda and their affiliates around the world continue to be capable in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Killing a guy, of course, does not kill the ideology of militant jihadism, which will place the takers, especially in the failed or failed states of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Biden may know the limits of special operations raids, but this time he decided to launch one. This shift toward a stronger foreign policy may also pay off at a time when Biden’s popularity is waning.

El-CNN-Wire™