Who lost Libya? Indeed, who lost the entire Middle East? Those are the questions lurking behind the endless stream of headlines about "Benghazi-gate". Here's the question we should really ask...: How did a tragic but isolated incident at a US consulate, in a place few Americans had ever heard of, get blown up into a pivotal issue in a too-close-to-call presidential contest?

[The] short answer: the enduring power of a foreign policy myth that will not die, the decades-old idea that America has an inalienable right to "own" the world and control every place in it.