I have seen again on the blogs the canard that the Clinton administration somehow 'failed' in their handling of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center because it failed to prevent 9/11. This begs the question: Can someone be labeled a failure if they haven't anticipated and prevented every possible bad thing that could happen to them?

This line of thinking is ridiculous. The United States government caught, convicted and sentenced the 1993 WTC attackers. But to argue in spite of all this that Clinton somehow 'failed' because he didn't anticipate and prevent 9/11 is just ridiculous. His was not a 'failed strategy.' The administration responded accordingly and achieved justice.

If you seek evidence of a 'failed strategy' then consider how we have tried to manipulate the rest of the world and it's wealth (mainly oil) to our own selfish advantage since WWII. I concede that the effort of containing Communism during the Cold War somewhat justified some of it, but not all of it -- and now that Communism is dead, how can we continue to justify our selfish foreign policy?

We use economic and military pressure to get all the oil we want at bargain prices, never mind which oppressive dictators we keep in place to facilitate that. We have bullied and invaded countries for 60 years to get what we wanted, and to hell with the impoverished citizens of these nations who suffer grievously due to our machinations.

So when those impoverished citizens rise up and attack western interests in the only way they can we blindly label them terrorists. We do not take into account the desperation, oppression and exploitation that drives them down this most extremist and indefensible road.

I am not justifying or excusing terrorism. But when another pundit parrots the 'why do they hate us?' line, why is it that so few really know a good answer to this question?

If we treated the world more fairly then there wouldn't be so many in the world who *do* hate us.

See Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival."