Maybe I just don't remember it, but I don't recall any demands for Clinton to apologize for the first WTC attack, for the Oklahoma City bombing, for the Khobar Towers bombings, for our African embassy bombings, for turning down Sudan's offer to hand over Bin Laden in 1996, for the US Cole bombing, etc, etc, etc.
In hindsight, there were things that the administration could have done that might have prevented or lessened the magnitude of 9/11. But demanding that Bush personally apologize for it, especially when Clinton was never asked to do the same for attacks that happened during his tenure, is a double standard that's just beyond the pale.
And keep in mind that an incoming president inherits the various governmnet agencies from the previous administration. Change in bureacracies doesn't happen overnight so the argument can be made that, if Bush bears personal responsibility, then Clinton bears some as well for leaving Bush the agencies in the state he did. Just as Bush Sr. left the agencies to Clinton and inherited them from Reagan.
Hawkins says later in the post:
But Al-Qaeda's not running for office in November and Bush is. Besides, the whole idea that Bush should apologize fits in perfectly with the Democratic approach to the war on terrorism. They'd rather promote the false idea that we can win on defense, that we can prevent attacks solely by beefing up our internal security. So if something goes wrong, if an attack gets through, that means WE must have screwed up and we'll just have to spend more money and give the government more power to deal with the problem. That allows Democrats to sit back, like Clinton did and Kerry plans to do, and pretend that we're taking significant steps against terrorism while actually doing very little of significance.
The terrorists are the ones to blame. Not us, not Bush, not Clinton, but those who planned and carried out the attacks.
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