The Bush Record on Terrorism

I'm getting so sick of people pointing at President Bush and touting his success and preventing "another 9/11 style attack" and claiming that other people (particularly people from other parties) couldn't have done it.

I think it bears remembering that Bush and Clinton are the ONLY two Presidents in our history ever to FAIL with regard to domestic Muslim extremist terrorism, and of the two, President Bush's administration failed far worse than President Clinton's.

Now, as is the nature of these sorts of attacks and of human beings, any new style attack tends to catch us with our pants down. No one could really conceive of a bomb actually smuggled into the WTC before it happened in 1993. No one could really honestly conceive of someone hijacking planes and flying them into buildings before it happened in 2001. We could discuss them in theory, but in practice... not so much.

But the point is this: We had a little less than 217 years of history without a Muslim extremist attack on this country, and then we had one in 1993. Then we had another 8 and a half years before we had another one. Is it because President Clinton was so good at protecting us, and the next one happened 7 months into the term of President Bush because he let us down? Or is it, more likely, because it took the terrorists that long to work out the logistics and the resources to put their next plan into motion?

And if the second, why would you ("you" meaning those who assert some protective benefit to Bush and the Republicans) assume that less than 5 years later we would have had another attack even if we'd done NOTHING to prevent it?

The fact is, there is simply no reason to believe that President Bush is keeping us any safer than anyone else could. This is not a slam on President Bush, when there are crazy people in the world hell-bent on hitting us at home, sooner or later they're going to succeed. But don't try to tell me that because there hasn't been a SECOND attack this soon after suffering the worst attack on our soil in our history, that somehow this proves what a GOOD President "W" has been.

Oh, and one more thing: The latest reports are that we expect another attack domestically before the end of the year. If this happens, what does that do to the argument that Bush and only Bush (or another Republican) can keep us safe? Me, I'm inclined to think it's more fear mongering, like raising the silly color coded alert level any time it looked like Democrats were gaining in the polls during the last election. But if we really have another attack here, far from raising President Bush's popularity in the polls, it should be final proof that his policies regarding terrorism (much touted in right wing circles) don't work.

Just keep this in mind. If that second attack this year or next materializes, think about what that REALLY says about the nations preparedness under President Bush. (Then again, we already learned that lesson from Hurricane Katrina, and the Fox News meme still remains "Look how much more secure we are under Bush than under one of those liberals.".)

Liam.