is the title of this New York Daily News op ed by Richard A. Clarke. Yes, that Richard A. Clarke, the one inside the Bush administration who told the truth to the commission on 9-11, who apologized to their families, saying their government had failed them.
The heart of the op ed is here:
Every President since Ronald Reagan has suffered American casualties to terrorism on his watch. Obama has suffered far fewer than his predecessors, largely because he has kept the terrorist groups off balance by relentlessly attacking them. He has largely eliminated Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan as an effective fighting force. His use of drones and special forces has been aggressive and successful, including in Yemen and Somalia.
Mitt Romney seems fixated on why Washington did not know with better clarity and sooner what went on during a terrorist attack. It is the kind of question that comes from someone who has no experience dealing with terrorism crisis management or, indeed, combat.
I dealt with scores of incidents and military operations over 30 years in the Pentagon, State Department and White House. I never saw a case where there was initial and accurate clarity about what happened.
Let me push fair use with one more paragraph:
If there were not a presidential campaign going on, a campaign in which the incumbent has a stellar record of fighting terrorism, I doubt Romney would care about the details of what happened in Benghazi. In 20 years of running for office, he has never demonstrated any expertise or even real interest in the details of national security.
Clarke expects Romney to "go there" (my term) again on Monday, and suggests when he does we ask ourselves which of the two presidential candidates we would want to call the shots going after Al Qaeda.
i know my answer, and the President demonstrated wy last night at the Al Smith Dinner, about the forthcoming foreign policy debate:
Spoiler Alert: We got Bin Laden.