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 Last week, much of the chattering class seemed preoccupied with who deserved credit for killing Osama bin Laden.
Did President Barack Obama deserve the entire credit, or should some be given to former President George W. Bush?
This sophomoric line of questioning ignores a key aspect of presidential history.
The hunt for bin Laden was decades in the making. In 1996, Georgetown adjunct professor Michael Scheuer headed the bin Laden tracking unit at the Counter Intelligence Center for the CIA. These efforts were intensified after 9/11.
Does Bush deserve some credit? Absolutely. But credit is also due former President Bill Clinton. Bin Laden was the beneficiary of an ongoing process spanning several presidential administrations.
What can't be dismissed is bin Laden was killed on Obama's watch. In presidential history, that matters most.
But the killing of bin Laden is viewed as a positive. Let's examine how this looks in the wake of presidential setbacks.
How many supporters of former President Dwight Eisenhower engaged in the process of revisionist history to suggest Ike should take some blame for the Bay of Pigs fiasco?
The formation of the Bay of Pigs invasion began under Eisenhower's watch. But it was President John F. Kennedy who gave the approval for the mission.
Likewise, far more historians place the blame of Vietnam at the feet of President Lyndon Johnson. But many, myself included, would argue, while Johnson deserves criticism for his decisions, the Vietnam policy that Kennedy left behind the day he was assassinated was an untenable quagmire that would have been difficult for anyone to achieve a positive outcome.
What we are witnessing in the kerfuffle about who deserves credit for killing bin Laden hearkens back to the words by Kennedy when taking responsibility for the failed Bay of Pigs effort, "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan."
If the mission had failed, there would have been talking points developed to ensure Bush receives a portion of the credit?
This debate, while interesting at the dinner party level, is about as important to the public discourse as the 1954 debate among New Yorkers: Who was the city's best center fielder? Was it Duke Snider, Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays?
What matters now is not who gets credit for killing bin Laden, but where does America go from here? That is a question on that neither Bush nor Clinton, or for that matter, any of the other 42 men who have previously occupied the Oval Office can answer?
In the spirit of Kennedy's observations about defeat and victory, there are obviously far more willing to take credit for killing of bin Laden than the two illogical wars that the United States continues to wage.
It is popular to suggest that America is spending blood and treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan, but who's blood and who's treasure? The blood comes courtesy of the small percentage of Americans who comprise our armed forces and the treasure, well, that's for our grandchildren to figure out.
It is rather immoral when one considers the catchphrases used to justify war have greatly outpaced the limited sacrifice that has been demanded collectively.
Can we at least have a conversation about the future of the Patriot Act?
For nearly 10 years, Americans have lived under this sweeping legislation, passed on the heels of 9/11 with very little debate. The Patriot Act expands several exceptions to the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable search and seizures.
In 2008, then-presidential candidates Sens. Obama and John McCain left their campaigns so they could return to Washington to vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act.
Do we still need an act that was rooted in reactionary fear? As the ACLU notes, most of the changes to surveillance law made by the Patriot Act were part of a long-standing law enforcement wish list that had been previously rejected by Congress.
The audacity to question the Patriot Act in 2001 would have meant political suicide for many members of Congress. But, 10 years later, there is no need to have such fear.
Whomever receives the lion's share of credit for killing bin Laden is not nearly as important as answering the question: Where do we go from here?
One hopes the current president will lead the nation out the dark chapter in our history that erroneously believed 9/11 was the exception to the document that begins: We the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union.
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