"Obama, to his credit, admitted in a recent interview with The Atlantic that his biggest mistake as president was Libya—specifically, failing to plan for the aftermath. He has also blamed U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron for getting “distracted” and the French for not following through to secure the country.

But his owning up to the mistake was nonetheless breathtaking, for a very obvious reason: Obama was elected in part for his opposition to a dumb war run by an administration that had no clue what would happen once Saddam was gone. That *his* administration—the purveyors of “smart power’’—would forget Colin Powell’s famous “Pottery Barn” rule—you break it, you own it—is beyond ironic.

It also poses a problem for Clinton, and forces her to answer for her role in the debacle—something the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has not yet had to do in detail, in part because Republicans became obsessed with the four deaths at the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. That tragedy, it turns out, was but a harbinger of a much bigger, far more dangerous problem, whose menace grows by the day."