Teresita, if I may belatedly respond, it’s my recollection that Pres. Bush was indeed heavily questioned and criticized in the wake of 9/11. There was much talk about a failure to connect the dots, remember? Personally, I don’t give either Bush or Clinton high marks in dealing with bin Laden/al Qaeda prior to the attack. But then, even post attack there were many who refused to see the danger.

The difference as I see it between Bush’s situation pre-9/11 and Obama’s should he be elected is this: Bush was in effect continuing the Clinton policy of not taking al Qaeda as seriously as warranted. In fact, Bush campaigned on a non-interventionist foreign policy platform. It was bin Laden’s miscalculation that changed his mind and affected his subsequent course of action. Obama on the other hand says he will change the Bush policy and de-emphasize Iraq. To what extent he does is still open to question. But the danger for him is that he will upset what is increasingly becoming perceived as a successful policy. The war is won, we are now being told. No doubt some saying this mean to help Obama make Iraq seem irrelevant. But this tact might well backfire. If Iraq was won under Bush then how does Obama explain if under his direction things go all to pieces? I suppose he could say, “It’s all Bush’s fault” and get more than a few to nod along. But that’ll be a hard sell to make in other quarters.

On a side note, I believe you at one point said you voted for Bush in 2004. At another juncture you’ve stated the reason the Left supports Obama’s Afghanistan policy while rejecting Bush’s Iraq policy is that the former doesn’t carry the ‘blood for oil’ taint. But if my memory is correct and you supported Bush even after the invasion, then you must have initially rejected this calumny. What turned you around?