On Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney finally uttered the word the White House had been careful to avoid when mentioning the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the ambassador. The word was “terrorist.”

“It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack,” he said. So why did he insist for more than a week that the uprisings against U.S. properties and personnel were merely the conduct of “extremists” protesting a bad movie? As The Washington Examiner pointed out, both Carney and President Obama referred to the Benghazi attackers as simply “extremists” before Thursday. Why Thursday?

On Wednesday Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, testified before Congress that the U.S. ambassador to Libya was killed “in the course of a terrorist attack.” After that, the White House acknowledged the truth, as though no one had ever suggested otherwise.

So now it is official: The United States has sustained a terrorist attack on American soil on Obama’s watch. That raises two “self-evident” questions.

1. Was the administration adequately protecting U.S. personnel on the anniversary of 9/11? The answer is a definite “no.” As a Wall Street Journal story detailing numerous security lapses in Benghazi and across the Middle East put it last week: “The State Department chose to maintain only limited security in Benghazi, Libya, despite months of sporadic attacks there on U.S. and other Western missions.”

2. How is Obama’s strategy of engagement with the Muslim world working out? Recall that Obama during his campaign for President said he would change the way Muslims perceived the United States by making sure they knew he was listening to them and understood them.

Our naive President really understands little about the people whose desire to kill Americans cannot be assuaged by pretty speeches.