“Any president that was put in that position would have probably made the difficult choice,” he said. “I don’t care what political stripe they are, they would have done it.”

Lippold, who commanded the USS Cole when it was attacked by al-Qaeda during a 2000 refueling stop in the Gulf of Aden, has substantive reasons for opposing the Obama ad: “I lived with the consequences of the disconnected national security policy between two administrations,” he said, “and I do not like to see national security decisions or events politicized to try to score political points during a presidential election year.”