A What-If Decade

So many of the TV talk shows this week have concentrated not on the year 2009 but this decade which will be dragged to an end this coming year. Several of the guests on Morning Joe today were speculating on whether we are in the worst decade in American history primarily because of 9/11, but also the economic crises and the seemingly endless Middle East wars on terrorism, extremist Islam, or however else the 'enemy' can be described. I'm not sure the decade of the 1860s can be written as being the worst, what with the Civil war and the deaths of over 650,000 Americans, the present decade is arguably a close second at least.
In my most cynical mood, I can see 9/11 as hideous as it was with the slaughter of 3000 innocent citizens the thing that made the George W. Bush presidency, labeling him a wartime president who therefore deserved a second term. All presidencies are somewhat accidental, defined by events over which the office holder often has no control.
Imagine how President Obama and his team must feel this very day as more information unfolds about the young Nigerian who attempted to blow up the American flight on Christmas day. Now as it appears that he was part of a well defined plot with backing and training by Al Queda. Mr. Obama, his administraton and the Democratic Party would have self destructed had that young radical been able to explode his device when the president had described the event as a lone happenstance with no connection to any Islamic group.
If that chemical mixture had worked there would have been no time for the president to play catch up. As the experts have said now for two days, the dots were clearly there but our apparently ill prepared intelligence apparatus took too long in connecting them. It was only yesterday that the president went before the microphones to say that our intelligence system had failed.
Think what a position the American leader would face had young Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab been able to correctly manipulate the stuff he'd hidden in his diaper.