Since there's been a lot of talk about history lately I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents worth.
As far as I can see, for the last six years George W. Bush has been fighting terrorism extremely incompetently, in a way that makes the world more dangerous and increases terrorism overall, with the help of a largely complicit (though with some honorable exceptions all along, and more and more as time has gone on) Democratic minority in congress.
For much of the eight years before that, William J. Clinton was fighting terrorism moderately competently, despite the perpetual obstructionism of a Republican majority in congress.
But the point I really wanted to make was this. The 'Path to 9/11' didn't start with either of these Presidents - it started with George H. W. Bush, back in 1991, during the 'successful' first Gulf War where we diplomatically faked out Saddam Hussein into attacking Kuwait and then demolished Iraq's infrastructure badly enough to kill roughly 150,000 innocent civilians from starvation and thirst.
As the war was winding up, the decision was made to put permanent US military bases in Saudi Arabia, right next to the cities of Mecca and Medina in a region regarded as holy by the vast majority of Muslims.
This was a slap in the face to the Islamic world and was what turned Osama bin Laden and countless others permanently against us. Imagine Iran putting military bases right outside Vatican City, Jerusalem, Salt Lake City, or other non-Muslim religious capitals - it's a similar sort of deal. I remember talking to US Muslim friends about it at the time and all of us expressing incredulity at the decision - didn't they know how this would be perceived? Didn't they care?
It was really then that the US started to be perceived as 'crusaders', an occupying power, to much of the Islamic world.
So Rumsfeld is shutting down these bases, but 15 years too late. Unfortunately, he's moving the troops nextdoor to permanent bases in Iraq (remember how we weren't going to have any of those?), which at this point are likely to be perceived in the same way.
There were many steps on the path to 9/11. But let's not forget that a big inspiration for any number of these terrorists was the colossal idiocy of GHWB in establishing these military bases in the first place. If you want to know why 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, you don't have to look any farther than that.