Re “The ghosts of Carter” (Op-ed, Sept. 23): Jeff Jacoby would have us believe that President Obama’s foreign policy and national security policies are fundamentally flawed because four Americans were killed in a recent terrorist attack in Libya. He holds up Ronald Reagan as a model of grit and merit; however, doesn’t the loss of 241 American servicemen in the 1983 terrorist attack in Beirut make Reagan at least mathematically worse than Obama?
The fact is that if George W. Bush had heeded and acted on the repeated and urgent warnings provided to him by the CIA in advance of 9/11 that an attack was imminent, American intervention in and public antipathy toward the Islamic world might never have developed the way that it has.
The present mess in American relations with the Islamic world and the ensuing national security threats are a result of the Bush administration’s ineptitude.
Now, in foreign policy as in the domestic economy, Jacoby and like-minded pundits howl about the fact that Obama hasn’t completely rectified the staggering mess he inherited from what is arguably the most calamitous presidency in American history.