Perhaps more could/should have been done prior to 9/11 by the newly-installed President to take down al Qaeda. What action taken would have thwarted the attack and follow-on efforts? First the hijackers would had to have been picked up and imprisoned. The word for that nowadays is illegal detention. The next necessity would have been a unilateral pre-emptive attack on a sovereign country which would have been decried an illegal war and occupation. Granted, Bush may have in so doing prevented an imminent attack no-one in the wider population would have credited as being feasible. Anyone suggesting such a thing as happened was possible would have been called either manipulatively evil or delusional. The President would have been impeached and ended his presidency after one term in utter disgrace. A Democrat (name your pick) would have replaced him and Saddam Hussein would be supporting terrorism inside and outside his country to this day. And perhaps bin Laden would have escaped nonetheless, in which case our 9/11–perhaps administered with a nuclear kicker–would have come sooner or later regardless.