Every time former President Clinton faces criticism about his actions as President he attempts to undermine the critics by suggesting there is a vast right-wing conspiracy leading the charge against him. It is pathetic to say the least that instead of dealing with the criticism based on reality the former President brings to life the fictional character he created during his time in office of a vast right-wing conspiracy out to do him harm with the aid and comfort of the right-wing media. To most on the right the President's claim of a right-wing media conspiracy is comical given the fifty-year domination of liberal thought over our nation's media airwaves. However, President Clinton apparently strongly believes in the right-wing conspiracy and thus liens on it like a crutch to explain away his failures as a President.

The more plausible deduction from the criticism he faces is that there is a large segment of the country that views events differently than he does and finds fault in many of his decisions. A conspiracy? Hardly. More to the point it is how free countries work. Elected officials govern, those who take issue with the choices of their elected officials air their grievances, and people decide whether those choices were right or wrong. To believe that opposition to Clinton's decisions constitutes a conspiracy essentially boils down to a belief that free countries conspire against the very people they elect to govern. Such a view is unbecoming of a former President.

Turning to the substance of President Clinton's assertions on Fox News Sunday, it is truly remarkable to watch him attempt to claim his administration deserves credit for its actions in hunting al Qaeda before he left office. It is astonishing that he seeks to shift the blame to the Bush administration's alleged inaction for eight months as compared to his inaction for eight years in office. Clearly, neither Bush nor Clinton did enough to combat the growing threat against this country. Neither one of them deserves credit for how they addressed terrorism prior to September 11th. They both failed to recognize the enemy we faced and to proactively implement sweeping changes within our government to prevent the devastating attacks of September 11th and to kill those who sought to do us harm. It does no good to dwell on laying blame, but President Clinton's outrageous claims demand a response.

The Clinton administration spent eight years in power during which al Qaeda grew stronger and more capable by the day. Terrorist attacks against this nation's interests occurred several times during his time in office. Al Qaeda struck us in 1993, 1996, 1998, and 2000. Given the growing threat, the Clinton administration put up walls between our intelligence community and our law enforcement community. The purpose of these and other similar barriers were to protect citizens from abuses of power by the officials we elect to protect us in the first place. To be fair, there are legitimate reasons for concern about the misuse of our intelligence and law enforcement capabilities. However, instead of greater oversight of such information sharing, the government thought it was better simply to prevent the agencies designed to protect and serve the people from talking to each other. At the same time the Clinton administration built these walls it relied heavily on the FBI to find the culprits of previous attacks, build a legal case, and bring them to justice in our nation’s courts (a frustratingly slow process made even more difficult by the rules the administration put in place).

The Clinton administration did spend many high-level meetings discussing proportionate responses to the growing threat. As a result, they fired cruise missiles into Afghanistan once. Proportionate responses for the enemies’ attacks were all the rage during the Clinton administration. How it was not clear to them that these types of actions were totally pointless in the struggle against the emerging enemy we faced is beyond me. In their eyes we were facing an enemy that could be deterred through our actions. To make matters worse the Clinton administration never picked up the first Bush administration’s plans to reform the military to prepare for life after the Cold War. Instead, Clinton’s policy was to reduce the military while keeping the basic Cold War structure in tact. The plans to reform the military sat in the Pentagon until George W. Bush took office at which point reforming the military became a high priority for our country. The Cold War mentality of our military prior to 2001 is painstakingly clear by the fact that the only military planes we managed to get in the air on September 11th headed towards the Atlantic expecting a threat coming inbound from the Soviet Union.

At the Clinton administration’s high-level meetings there was an expressed desire to kill Bin Laden, however, there was never a commitment to place this nation on a war footing or to take proactive steps to eliminate the threat we faced. The mentality was totally defensive in nature with everyone running around from threat to threat hoping to stop attacks without any thought as to how our nation could defeat the threat we faced (other than hoping to kill Bin Laden). The well-documented instances in which the Clinton administration had opportunities to kill Bin Laden show how serious his administration was about actually following through. The administration never acted in a timely manner because other world concerns got in the way. Killing Bin Laden could not possibly have been the highest priority as Clinton officials often like to claim if other world concerns took precedence over clear opportunities to attain their goal. In short, the Clinton policy towards terrorism boils down to: proportionate responses, meetings, walls, and hesitation.

History now shows that when President Bush took office he should have immediately placed this nation on a war footing and launched an all out military strike against Afghanistan overthrowing the Taliban and destroying al Qaeda’s safe haven. He should have taken aggressive steps to monitor electronic communications of suspected terrorists as well as the international financial exchanges transferring money into our country. He should have ordered our law enforcement community to identify, detain, and interrogate anyone suspected of terrorist ties within this country. He should have drastically reformed our nation’s intelligence and homeland security organizations. In the absence of September 11th these steps clearly would have sparked domestic and international outrage against a man who his critics like to say was selected and not elected. In fact, even after September 11th many of these programs have generated intense opposition by a large segment of our country and the world.

Instead, the Bush administration evaluated the current plans and wanted a more robust strategy to eliminate al Qaeda dealing with both Afghanistan and Pakistan which were crucial to any long-term solution. While Bush’s instincts were right, it is clear now we did not have the time for a long drawn out policy review to formulate a more aggressive approach. Immediate action was necessary since the threat we faced was fully operational and operatives were already in this country planning the attacks by the time Bush took office.

During his first eight months the Bush administration’s FBI still conducted its investigations of suspects in this country and abroad, the CIA continued its covert actions against Bin Laden, and the entire intelligence community ran from threat to threat hoping to stay ahead of the next attack. If you believe The 9/11 Commission Report, Bush knew we needed a new approach to comprehensively deal with the al Qaeda threat during the first eight months in office. President Clinton never understood a new strategy was necessary until well after he left office.

Unfortunately, our elected officials never fully understood the urgency and magnitude of the threat we faced prior to September 11th. Frankly, this entire discussion is pointless but given Clinton’s attempts to cast himself as a noble terrorist fighter only to have everything screwed up by President Bush and his right-wingers is too much to take.

President Clinton’s approach to terrorism was diametrically opposed to what was necessary to deal with the threat we faced. It was limited, risk averse, and destine to fail. As The 9/11 Commission Report concludes, September 11th was a failure of imagination by those charged with the responsibility of protecting us. Hopefully, moving forward our leaders will never forget the lessons learned from the failures of the past. Coming to grips with those failures is the first step to preparing for the future. From Clinton’s comments it is clear he has not fully come to terms with the magnitude of his failure to imagine what was necessary to deal with the threats we faced during the 2,292 days he spent in office.