Democrats are charging Republicans with playing politics, hoping to damage a potential presidential bid by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton is a clear front-runner for the 2016 nomination, and painting her as asleep at the switch on foreign policy will definitely buoy any GOP candidate’s bid. It certainly won’t hurt them in this year’s mid-term elections either.

Democrats and Republicans will trade barbs, but the American people ought to look beyond any partisan bickering and learn Libya’s most valuable lesson.

When a U.S.-led NATO mission to aid Libyan rebels toppled Moamar Ghadafi’s regime in 2011, Democrats were quick to portray the President as a new kind of interventionist — as if disaster couldn’t afflict the varsity squad.