Obama, Tell W You're Sorry for Mocking His Policies

President Obama’s national security policy has been surprisingly close to his predecessor’s—a policy he hammered on the campaign trail. For that, he “owes George W. Bush an apology,” writes Clive Crook in the Financial Times. But his supporters also deserve an apology. His election rhetoric “misled” them: “In office he has found that the issue is more complicated” than he presented it.

Still, Obama’s administration is doing the right thing: maintaining extraordinary tactics to deal with the extraordinary threat of terrorism, yet “making itself accountable and seeking proper legal authority” for its actions, unlike the Bush administration. Meanwhile, the stances of “the non-compromisers” on each side of the issue are marked by “threadbare logic and refusal to acknowledge moral complexity”—they’re “almost interchangeable,” Crook writes, and "equally useless."