Discussing Sen. Joe Biden’s (D-DE) recent comments that the world will “test the mettle” of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) with an international crisis if he is elected, right-wing talker Rush Limbaugh and former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani indirectly blamed the terrorist attacks of 9/11 on former President Bill Clinton. “Every time Clinton was tested, he failed, and that’s why they tested Bush on 9/11,” said Limbaugh. Giuliani agreed:

RUSH: Mr. Giuliani, do you realize how many times Bill Clinton was tested by Al-Qaeda, starting in 1993 through Mogadishu to the USS Cole, and every time Clinton was tested, he failed, and that’s why they tested Bush on 9/11.

GIULIANI: Yeah.

Listen here:

The fact that Giuliani so easily agreed with Limbaugh is surprising, considering that in 2006 he said it was wrong to “cast blame on Clinton” for 9/11:

The idea of trying to cast blame on Clinton [for the 9/11 attacks] is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don’t think he deserves it.

Though Clinton has freely acknowledged that he “failed” to get Osama Bin Laden, his administration aggressively pursued terrorism.

For instance, a June 1995 Presidential Decision Directive issued by Clinton emphasized concern about terrorism “as a national security issue” for the first time, instead of just a matter of law enforcement. Clinton’s directive declared that the United States saw “terrorism as a potential threat to national security as well as a criminal act and will apply all appropriate means to combat it.” For the last three years of his presidency, Clinton “raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important speech he gave.”

In his book, Against All Enemies, former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke — who served under Reagan, both Bushs and Clinton — wrote that Clinton did more right than he did wrong in combating terrorism, such as declaring “a war on terror before the term became fashionable.” As Clarke notes, Clinton did not shy away from using force to respond to terrorists. For example, after the African embassy bombings, he ordered strikes on terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a chemical plant in Sudan.

Yesterday Team McCain held a conference call to try to make an issue out of Joe Biden’s assertion that an international crisis would “test the mettle” of the new president.

On the call, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani responded to Biden by insisting that “it is not uniformly the case that the mettle of American presidents is tested…Senator McCain would not present that same risk that Joe Biden seems to be worried about.” Giuliani also called Biden’s statement “extraordinary.”

Senator Joe Lieberman, one of John McCain’s closest allies, disagrees. Appearing on Face the Nation back in June, Lieberman insisted that “our enemies will test the new president early.”

Watch it:

Another remark, this one from McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, provides a good insight into McCain’s perception of foreign policy. Scheunemann stated that “in foreign policy, it is weakness that is provocative.” As I wrote last week, these sorts of arguments about credibility and reputation are inherently subjective. Sure, weakness can be provocative. But strength can also be provocative.

For example, after 9/11, Scheunemann and McCain were among those who helped sell the Iraq war to the American people as a way of “showing strength” in response to an attack on our homeland. Amazingly, it turned out that “showing strength” by invading and occupying Iraq turned out to be both incredibly provocative and disastrous for America’s security, attracting thousands of militants to Iraq, fueling unprecedented levels of anti-Americanism around the world, and bleeding the U.S. of resources for the last five years, with more to come.

The neoconservative obsession with “strength,” which McCain clearly shares, is thus not particularly relevant or useful except inasmuch as it bolsters my theory that all neoconservatives were picked on as kids. The correct question is not whether a president is “strong” or “weak,” but whether his policies are effective. There is a general consensus among analysts that Al Qaeda will, at some point, attempt another attack here in the U.S., and that attack will likely be generated from Al Qaeda’s new base in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. Dealing effectively with tomorrow’s threats will require the next administration to use the full range of U.S. power — diplomatic, economic, and military — and eschew the focus on military solutions that has resulted in an intact and active Al Qaeda, seven years after 9/11.

Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

One issue swept under the rug by the cheerleading about how the Iraq “surge” has worked is the plight of religious minorities in Iraq.

This weekend, National Public Radio’s Corey Flintoff reported on the pervasive climate of fear among Iraq’s Christians in northern Iraq. In recent weeks, thousands of Christians have fled Mosul in the face of attacks and persecution, seeking refuge in villages north of the city in the Ninevah Plain.

This religious persecution is part of a wider problem that has led to internal displacements and the exodus of tens of thousands Christians from Iraq –- a phenomenon noted last year in this op-ed from Center from the American Progress associates just as the 2007 surge was being implemented:

While conservatives in America have warned of a cultural war against Christians by liberals and secularists in the United States, an actual war of attrition on Christians is unfolding in Iraq. Indeed, the plight of Iraq’s Christians points to a cruel irony — an American president whose tight grip on conservative Christian voters at home helped propel him to the White House has stood by and watched the destruction of some of the world’s oldest Christian communities.

An editorial in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times underscores the religious cleansing that is taking place not only in Iraq but the broader Middle East -– in places like Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, Christians feel less welcome and less secure. Read more