I've written plenty about this in the past, but given its importance again tonight I want to circle back one more time to make this point:
When the history of this entire campaign is written - and here I mean both the primary and the general election - I think historians will come to see Obama's commitment to hunt bin Laden across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as one of the major turning points of the election. Perhaps more importantly, I think they will look back and wonder how it was that both Clinton and McCain allowed that to be so.
Everyone knows that the US would order a strike on bin Laden anywhere and anytime. It's not a secret. Even bin Laden knows it. That's one of the main reasons he's been so damn hard to find.
And yet... at separate times and in separate places, both Clinton and McCain each questioned why Obama would dare say something so "naive," "dangerous," and "absurd."
Both Clinton and McCain supported the invasion of Afghanistan to depose the Taliban and destroy al Qaeda.
Both Clinton and McCain supported a preemptive war against Iraq to prevent the possibility that bin Laden might one day get his hands on WMD.
McCain has sung songs about "boming Iran."
But cross the border into Pakistan? Heavens no! Anything but that! What would the world community think?
You can't spend years cheerleading a war of choice and then act outraged when someone suggests that a small special forces team cross an undefended border to take out the guy who took down the Twin Towers. It just makes no sense.
