White House's Middle East policy: blame Clinton

When discussing 9/11, one of Fearless Leader's favorite tactics was to say that America grew complacent in the 1990s, lulled into a false sense of security because things were pretty peaceful. Code language for saying it's Clinton's fault we were attacked, and a handy way to dodge the pesky revelations that the Bush administration had ignored a number of intelligence warnings related to the plot.

Taking another trip to the well, in his recent press conference with Tony Blair Bush used the same code to blame Clinton for the current violence. Not only that, but he retools the tactic of falsely linking 9/11 with Saddam Hussein and even throws in one of his classic straw man "some people say" lines. In short, he's responding to the chaos by campaigning-- the only thing he knows how to do.

BUSH: It's an interesting period because, instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability.

For a while, American foreign policy was just, "Let's hope everything is calm" -- kind of, managed calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested on September the 11th.

And so we've taken a foreign policy that says: On the one hand, we will protect ourselves from further attack in the short run by being aggressive in chasing down the killers and bringing them to justice.

BUSH: And make no mistake: They're still out there, and they would like to harm our respective peoples because of what we stand for.

In the long term, to defeat this ideology -- and they're bound by an ideology -- you defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom.

And, look, I fully understand some people don't believe it's possible for freedom and democracy to overcome this ideology of hatred. I understand that. I just happen to believe it is possible. And I believe it will happen.