“Tuesday September 11 2001 dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States. Millions of men and women readied themselves for work. Some made their way to the Twin Towers, the signature structures of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. Others went to Arlington, Virginia, to the Pentagon?.?.?.?”

So begins the 9/11 Commission report, the US government’s official investigation into the worst terrorist attacks in US history. Almost 3,000 people were killed on that day. The Twin Towers are no more. So grave were the wounds to the American psyche that the phrase 9/11 became a permanent fixture of the English language. It follows that the US, its friends and Barack Obama, its president, have every right to feel lifted by the news that, after a manhunt lasting nine-and-a-half years, US forces have finally killed Osama bin Laden, the unrepentant mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

The success of the operation testifies to America’s unmatched military reach, its formidable intelligence capabilities and – for a country often suspected of having too short an attention span to pursue long-term national goals – its grim determination to track down its most elusive enemies. Yet bin Laden’s elimination also offers the Obama administration a golden opportunity to press ahead with the reshaping of US foreign policy on which the president embarked upon taking office in 2009.