September 10th Yet Again

September 10th is almost over. But for large segments of our population, September 10th will continue when midnight passes.

For all the controversy over the ABC docu-drama about the pre-9/11 decade, I never blamed President Clinton for our failure to destroy bin Laden in those days. I don't think in the over four years I've written this blog that you can point to a single post that blames President Clinton for our problems. Oh, I've attacked the Clinton record--but only in response to the bizarre claims of his defenders that his 8 years were a focused effort to kill bin Laden in contrast to the failure of President Bush's 8 months. It is sheer partisan politics to slam President Bush while asserting President Clinton was focused like a laser beam on terrorism.

I wasn't focused on terror. I was aware of bin Laden and even wrote an article I've yet been able to get published that quoted bin Laden, but I did not see him as anything other than one more threat to our nation. I did not see 9/11 or anything like it coming. I was merely worried that we would let our defenses slide in the post-Cold War world in the false belief that we had no defense worries left after Moscow imploded.

And despite Secretary Cohen's famous television address using the five-pound bag of flour to represent the amount of bio agents needed to kill millions, our country was not ready to confront an enemy. We had won the Cold War and our nation had no stomach for war. Even if President Clinton had tried to rally the nation to fight al Qaeda, I don't think our nation would have followed him. We desperately wanted the peace of the victory we'd won over the Soviet Union.

And the idea that President Clinton would have tried to lead us is nonsensical. I never respected President Clinton much. I never hated him, however, I am proud to say. I never bought the conspiracies and I didn't fume over his electoral victories or damn the voters for electing him. He won. I didn't like that fact. But he won. I basically don't think that President Clinton was prepared to be the president. Oh, he liked being the president. He loved being the president. But he never really became a president. He simply presided over the bubble economy in the period between the falls of the Berlin Wall and the Twin Towers that defined this vacation from history. President Clinton was a place holder while we debated whether history had ended. President Clinton sure hoped it had ended. That made the job of president pure fun and games without the pressure of decisions and leading the nation.

So while I cannot blame our leaders of either party for failing to lead us in our September 10th world against the jihadi threat, I cannot fathom how anybody can fail to see the threats that September 11th showed to all of us so horrifyingly clearly that morning five years ago.

It is only a half hour to September 11th. How many Americans will still fail to turn their calendar to September 11th for the fifth straight year?

How can it be a terrorist Groundhog Day yet again?