Democrats and Republicans, Conservatives and Liberals, pundits and politicians need to shut their eternally flapping mouths if they are trying to blame anyone other than those truly responsible for 9/11. To seek a scapegoat is counterproductive and takes our minds off of the task at hand. Be it Clinton’s eight years or Bush’s eight months, all that matters now is the future. But Chris Wallace and his Fox News Sunday interview with Bill Clinton has begun yet another round in that most popular of human contests: the blame game.

Ignoring the obvious, both the Left and the Right prefer to try and place the blame on one another in an attempt to make the other side look bad, incompetent, soft, or unconcerned. As if either president had a crystal ball in the Oval Office to divine the future. If they did, both presidents could have avoided their women trouble - Clinton’s with Monica Lewinsky and Bush’s with Harriet Myers. But there is no crystal ball- we do not blame Roosevelt for Pearl Harbor, Herbert Hoover for the Stock Market Crash of 1929, or James Madison for the burning of Washington, D.C.

Blaming others did not defeat the Axis, blaming others did not strengthen the economy, blaming others did not rebuild our nation’s capitol. What those presidents and their predecessors in office did — or did not do — afterwards is what matters.

It is absurd and counterproductive for conservatives to attack Clinton for a tragedy that is still hard to believe ever actually happened, much less expect him to see it coming with clear-eyed certainty months before the fact.

It is absurd and counterproductive for liberals to attack Bush for an act that still seems incomprehensible, much less blame him for not acting to stop a plot that — before it happened — would sound almost impossible.

Before the Twin Towers fell, I certainly would have been incredulous at the suggestion of such an idea. Despite a deep interest in history and the awareness of the horrors its study reveals by man towards man — from Christian behavior in the Spanish Inquisition to America’s treatment of Native Americans during the Trail of Tears — 9/11 is still difficult to believe.

While I admire President Bush, I’m no fan of Bill Clinton. Yet I have to be honest with myself — as we all should be — and see the truth. Had either president or their staffs known what was about to happen, they would have done something. That they did not piece it together from intelligence reports, hearsay, and suppositions is not, given the enormity of ghastliness of the plot, surprising.

We must therefore stop going back and wondering why neither man perceived a desert-dweller and his followers to be a threat to the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. 9/11 was a Hollywood disaster movie scenario before that terrible morning now five years ago.

Yes, there were signs; yes, we could have done things differently. But hindsight is 20/20 and “should have, could have, would have” gets us nowhere. That is not to say that examining honest intelligence failures, seeking ways to improve security, and developing new strategies are not valid. Indeed, they are vital.

That is also not to say that both Clinton and Bush could and should have done some things differently. Indeed, that is obvious. But to move forward — to focus on the here and now — we must to get past the energy wasting and time-consuming blame game, an exercise that yields nothing but frustration towards our fellow Americans and creates hostility where there should be unity.

Consider the words of Theodore Roosevelt: “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcomings, who knows the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the high achievement of triumph and who, at worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows his place shall never be with those timid and cold souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Weigh Roosevelt’s words carefully. Then ask yourself how attacks upon Clinton or Bush serve America’s best interests while the real enemy continues to plot against us?

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Jeff O’Bryant is an amateur historian and holds two degrees, a bachelor’s in education and a bachelor’s with honors in history. He is a columnist and staff writer for The Catoosa County News and can be contacted at jeffobryant@catt.com.