Take that, Osama.
The World Trade Center regained its status yesterday as the city’s tallest building, even as Americans celebrated the one-year anniversary of the death of the top evil-doer behind the attacks that brought down the Twin Towers on 9/11.
With the installation of the first column of the 100th floor, 1 WTC’s height grew to 1,271 feet — some 21 feet higher than the Empire State Building.
The notable milestone comes at a most auspicious time.
Recall that al Qaeda’s terrorist-in-chief, who now thankfully sleeps with the fishes, had thought that destroying the Twin Towers would permanently wound America.
US resilience has proved him wrong.
Meanwhile, a year ago, President Obama gave the go-ahead to Seal Team Six to head into Pakistan and bring final justice to Osama bin Laden, fulfilling a key post-9/11 objective set by President Bush.
Certainly, Obama deserves credit.
And he hasn’t been shy — during this election year — about claiming it.
Which is fair enough.
But you do have to wonder about his use of ex-President Bill Clinton as a top cheerleader for the courageous deed.
For starters, Clinton, in an online ad, heaps mounds of praise on Obama, stressing, “You hire the president to make the calls when no one else can do it.”
The ad quotes Romney saying in 2007 that he wouldn’t “move heaven and earth” to get bin Laden.
Actually, Romney put things in context shortly thereafter: “We’ll move everything to get [bin Laden],” he said. “But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch that this is all about one person . . .It’s more than [about him]. But he is going to pay, and he will die.”
Romney, of course, was right: The War on Terror wasn’t, and still isn’t, “about one person”; even after bin Laden’s demise, it’s far from over today.
But Clinton’s appearance is even more ironic: After all, as president, he had multiple chances to “make the call” against bin Laden — and fumbled them, including when he rejected Sudan’s 1996 offer to turn the terror kingpin over to Washington.
Everyone knows what happened instead: Al Qaeda grew bolder — staging attacks on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and USS Cole in 2000.
And then the horrific blow on 9/11.
So, sure, credit Obama for making the right call. But suggestions by Clinton and Obama that Romney wouldn’t have acted similarly are simply absurd.
As Romney said yesterday, “Of course, even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.” (Well, maybe.)
Meantime, New York can rejoice in another triumph over terror — at Ground Zero.