It may be focused on the wrong site, I'm not enough of a strategist to figure that one out. Some very smart people here think it is, but we'll have to wait and see what bears out, I guess.
For what it's worth, I don't think we'll be able to prevent another attack on our soil forever. After all, we have be right 100% of the time, and they've only got to be right 1% of the time. I can live with that, but I get worried that some of my fellow citizens won't, and that we'll go all squishy and give up. This is the biggest reason I voted for Dubya, because I just didn't believe that Kerry or the Dems have it in them, as yet, to carry on a serious national defense.
Serving the last 8 of my 21 years in the military under President Clinton, I mainly observed a ping-ponging and lack of focus in the use of military force. We did a good enough job in Serbia, but we've still got troops sitting over in Bosnia (we haven't completely disengaged and handed over 100% of the task to the Europeans), and I think Bush has rightfully stayed the course. In this instance, I think a President Gore would also have cut and ran. Sorry, but that's what I think.
To be fair, Bush 41 handed Clinton the Somalia situation, but he and Les Aspin didn't do a sterling job in managing our exit strategy from that situation and it certainly looked as if we tucked tail and ran from there, too, eventually. Here's what I've seen since I first went in (turn on the waaaaaay back machine to '78 ;-)
President Carter (Democrat)
1979: Carter allows Shah of Iran to be deposed. Later, Muslim "students" storm our embassy in Iran and take the staff hostage. Carter retaliates by canceling Iranian visas. We then have a hugely disasterous military operation crash and burn around our ears in the Iranian desert.
President Reagan (Republican)
1981 (Inauguration Day) All American hostages at the Embassy released.
1982: U.S. Embassy in Beirut is bombed by Islamic fundamentalists, Reagan sends in Marines to try and separate warring factions (Christian Phalangists, Druze, Shia, Sunni militias, Syrian troublemakers, PLO types etc. You name 'em, they were there)
1983: Marine Barracks blown up by Islamic fundamentalists. Dems in Congress go all squishy and come up with a resolution demanding our troops' withdrawal. Reagan caves in an election year and withdraws troops. But not before bombing some Syrian-controlled areas in the Bekka Valley. The Dems wail about that one, too. I was with a MAG unit on the other side of town when the Barracks got hit. Tough days over there, for sure.
1985: The Achille Lauro cruise ship is taken over by yet another militant Muslim fundamentalist group. They kill one American Jew (Leon Klinghoffer) and throw his body overboard. Later, the ringleader is heard to remark "maybe he tried to swim for it". Klinghoffer was elderly and wheelchair-bound. After the terrorists are given safe passage, and were being flown to safety on an Egyptian Air 737, fighter jets from Navy carriers stationed in the Med force the plane down at the joint US/Italian NATO base at Sigonella, Sicily. The terrorists were taken off the plane and turned over to the Italians, who then released them to Iraq. Duh.
1986: A disco in W. Berlin is bombed by Muslim extremists from the Libyan embassy. This attack kills an American serviceman (the disco was heavily frequented by Army troops). About 10 or so days later, Reagan orders an attack against Libya. France, naturally, refuses us the use of their airspace, so most of the F-111s and some other long-range bombers have to leave from bases in Great Britain and fly around and through the Straits of Gibraltar. The Americans bomb Khaddafi's residence, killing an adopted daughter, and also dropped a bomb on the French embassy. By "mistake" ;-) On the return leg, one F-111 crashes into the Med, taking both crewmen down with it.
Regan also played Iran and Iraq against each other, and won the final victory over the Soviet Union.
President Bush the First ("Moderate" Republican)
1988: Pan Am flight 103 was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland, by Muslim fundamentalists. Darn, there go those pesky Islamic types again ;-) President-elect Bush vows to continue Reagan's policy of retaliation against terrorism, but immediately goes soft. Without Reagan to back her play, Margaret Thatcher also goes wobbly, stating that there'd be no revenge for the bombing.
1990: Saddam invades Kuwait.
Early-1991: Bush and the coalition goes to war against Iraq the way John Kerry would have liked: with UN approval, and all of our "allies". Still, even though the "Global Test" was met, a majority of Democrats, including John Forbes Kerry, oppose the war. They demand that we stop before rolling up Baghdad. But then, after 9/11, they all complain that Bush didn't "finish the job" with Saddam. Duh.
President Clinton (Democrat)
1993: The World Trade Center is bombed by Mohammad and the rest of the boys. They kill 5 people and injure hundreds. Clinton treats the matter as a criminal justice issue, rounds up as many of the guys as possible and throws them in jail after lengthy trials. Still, no attempt is made at retaliating against their backers, or even finding out who their backers were.
1993: In Somalia, in October, 18 American troops are killed in a night and day-long firefight in Mogadishu. The corpse of one of the troops is dragged through the streets as all the Somalians cheered. Clinton retaliates by......ordering all of our troops home. Osama bin Laden later relates to an ABC news crew that "our men knew, more than before, that the Americans were nothing more than paper tigers, and after a few strikes, ran in defeat". Not exactly true (we did kill something like 1,000 or more of the bad guys), but you see where this is going, right?
1995: Five Americans are killed by a car bomb in Saudi. Again, those little stinkers, the Muslim fundamentalists, are pegged as the culprits. Clinton does nothing. Preferring once again to send in the FBI and treating it as a criminal justice issue. The Saudis, naturally, refuse to allow FBI interrogation of suspects etc.
1996: The Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi is bombed by Muslim extremists (I was wearing out the term "fundamentalists", so I figured I'd changed the wording a little). Clinton does nothing.
1996: Saddam attacks Erbil, which is a Kurdish-controlled city. Much death, and Clinton retaliates this time. Yeah, he lobs in some cruise missles and bombs from a B-52 strike. But they land hundreds of miles away from Saddam, it appears.
1997: Iraq refuses to allow UN weapons inspectors to do their jobs and threatens to shoot down one of our U2 spy planes. Bupkiss from the Clintonistas.
1998: Clinton threatens Iraq with a bombing campaign. UN says no, so Clinton calls it off.
1998: August. In a brilliant tactical blow, OBLs boys manage to blow up TWO U.S. Embassies, in Kenya and Tanzania. Again, this being a Clinton operation, the FBI is rushed in to handle it as a criminal investigation and nothing really becomes of it. It's only since 9/11 that we've begun getting at the goons who did this, and in fact, have the ringleader in our custody.
1998: August 20th. Clinton uses cruise missles against Afghanistan (in an effort to hit OBLs terrorist training camps) and the Sudan, which manages to hit a camel and an aspirin factory, apparently. Coincidentally, this is the same day Monica Lewinsky goes before the grand jury to testify.
1998: December 16th. Clinton orders major airstrikes against Iraq. About time. Again, it's just coincidence that the House of Representatives prepares to impeach him the next day.
1999: Clinton bombs the hell out of Serbia, a country which was fighting Muslim radicals in Kosovo. Good intentions, but you have to admire the surrealism of the fact that we end up going to war against a country in support of Muslims being oppressed by Serbians.
2000: The USS Cole is bombed in port in Aden, Yemen. Muslim troublemakers again, it seems. Clinton didn't seem to be able to do anything in retaliation, though, and again, it's only been since 9/11 that these gomers have been rounded up and tried. A couple of them are now awaiting fulfillment of their death sentences in Yemen.
President George Bush, II (Republican)
After 7 month of being in office and on 9/11, 3,000 people are killed in the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. Those naughty Muslim fanatics again :-(
Since 9/11, Bush has won wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, captured Saddam Hussein, put OBL on the run and immobilized his al-Qaeda organization so that it hasn't been able to hit American targets since, and begun the process of creating the only functional democracy in the Middle East, outside of Israel. And in almost every step of the process, Democrats opposed it. Wait, I take that back...they did support Afghanistan. And then immediately complained about it and said it would be a Vietnam-style quagmire. And of course, John Kerry voted for the war before he voted against it. And the Democrats have pretended to be outraged that Bush didn't do, in the months before 9/11, everything that they've been opposed to doing since 9/11.
Now you know why I don't trust Dems with national security.
(props to Ann Coulter for the majority of the timeline work I used)
K