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I'm tired of all these guys coming out of the woodwork and blaming terrorism on the administration...
"Former FBI Director Louis Freeh has written a book detailing his career, including his eight years as head of the bureau during the Clinton administration – where he describes his frustration over the fact that Bill Clinton wouldn't take his warnings about the terrorist threat seriously. "
He probably has a book deal ;)
I'm not sure what Clinton would have done vis a vis the FBI, but I do wish (and he does too, he's said so in interviews) that he had been a lot more aggressive in going after Bin Ladin
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Seems to be Harry S. said it best, "The Buck Stops Here". The President should be the responsible person for everthing that happens under his tenure, don't you think?
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
"The President should be the responsible person for everthing that happens under his tenure, don't you think?"
Depends on a couple of things:
(1) Degree of control--Most presidents get blame or credit for a bad or good economy, when very, very little of the economy can be influenced by a president.
(2) Inheritance of a situation--Economy is another good example. Most people don't know about leading economic indicators. Therefore, a president can get credit for a recovery that was underway before he took office, or blamed for a recession that was already starting as well. In the case of 9/11, Bush was in office for 8 months prior, but we know terrorists were attacking us all through the Clinton administration with little or no response. So, to say the "buck stops" with Bush would be, to a degree unfair, because some of it should "stop" with Clinton. Kind of like people calling Vietnam "Nixon's War" when several previous administrations did various things to get us in there.
Now don't get me wrong--I am not saying all was done right under Bush prior to 9/11. The blame goes way, way back. We have had weak responses to terrorism for a long time--all the way back to the 1970's. Our weakness did nothing to appease and everything to encourage.
I think we/one should also add to that the historical perspective (related to inheritence of course). It is extremely hard to do at this point, but at the time most people (to my knowledge) thought Clinton was doing a decent job of responding to the perceived threat level. If we view Clinton's terms with post- 9/11 views then of course we say he stunk. But at the time he was doing about what most people considered to be appropriate, because not many people were concerned with this. The focus was on making money and Monica.
I can remember the response after the first attempted bombing of the WTC. It was almost a "eh, so what?" attitude.
Now, I also must say I wish we had done more. But I say that about all previous Presidents, but I can only "blame" them for what I think they should have done given their times.