Others have argued that Clinton was being persecuted by the Republicans and so was unable to function properly as president when the al-Qaida threat was looming. This, of course, has an element of truth to it. Some (but not all) of the attacks on Clinton were unwarranted and extreme in the period from January 1998 onward. But that still doesn't excuse Clinton's negligence up until 1998, the period of the most serious failures, when al-Qaida was most vulnerable to disruption. And it assumes, as all such Clinton defenses assume, that the president could have done nothing about the scandal. This is a false assumption. A president who put his country ahead of himself would have settled the Paula Jones suit. He would have realized that the presidency is not a part-time job, and that it is more important to be free to tackle vital matters of state than to avoid the humiliation of a settled sexual harassment suit. A responsible president puts his constitutional duties first, the most important of which is the protection of American citizens from attacks by foreign entities. By fighting the Jones suit to the bitter end, by lying under oath and adopting brutal political warfare to defend himself, the president essentially put his own interests above the nation's. At the time, many of us believed we were simply lucky to have such a scandal in what we saw as peaceful times. We were wrong. While Clinton was defending himself, al-Qaida was girding to attack a defenseless nation.

Was Clinton the only one to blame? Surely not. Plenty of bureaucrats put their own petty turf wars before a successful anti-terrorist strategy. Others responsible include a hostile Congress, an inept FBI and CIA, and a general public insouciance toward a threat that few took seriously. But none of this exculpates the commander in chief. It is his job to warn the country of danger. It is his job to bang bureaucratic heads together to avoid a national security disaster. Again, it is simply not true that the public would have balked at serious measures to deal with terrorism if the president had taken the initiative. Dick Morris' own polls showed this. And Clinton had seen those polls in his first term. Indeed, Clinton had all the information he needed and all the authority he needed and all the luck he needed to do what had to be done. And he didn't do it.

No objective review of the Clinton administration's record on terrorism can escape this simple conclusion. The bulk of the domestic responsibility for the security and intelligence failures that led to Sept. 11 must be laid at the feet of the commander in chief for the bulk of the previous eight years. No, he was not responsible for Sept. 11. Full responsibility lies with al-Qaida. But he was more responsible than anyone for the gaping holes in national security and intelligence that made Sept. 11 possible. The buck must stop with him -- this time. The most damning verdict is in the words of a "senior Clinton official" who said the following to Joe Klein of the New Yorker: "Clinton spent less concentrated attention on national defense than any other president in recent memory. He could learn an issue very quickly, but he wasn't very interested in getting his hands dirty with detail work. His style was procrastination, seeing where everyone was, before taking action. This was truer in his first term than in his second, but even when he began to pay attention he was severely constrained by public opinion and his own unwillingness to take risks."

In most matters, this kind of caution, wishful thinking and procrastination can be forgiven and even overlooked. In matters of vital national security, it is close to criminal negligence. The Clinton legacy may have many good things in it -- economic growth and welfare reform among them. But it must also be revised now to include thousands of casualties in the ashes of ground zero -- ordinary people who trusted their president to protect them, and whose president ultimately betrayed that trust.

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