It has been a given of the Macho Right that Clinton was weak because he treated "terrorism" as crime and Bush treats it as "war". While this sounds great almost any analysis would show this to be pure nonsense.
First, terrorism is the use of violent crimes to obtain political objectives. Therefore preventing those crimes would thwart the terrorists. Had we been able to prevent the hijackings on 9-11 the terrorists would have failed. In 2000 the terrorists failed in a bomb plot because of law enforcement. We should realize that terrorists are going to use criminal methods and prepare for that. The terrorists are not going to lead a column of tanks or attack us with a division of soldiers pressing down from Canada.
Second, on 9-11 we used law enforcement to identify those who were responsible. Yes we did use the military to go after the terrorist headquarters and we did use intelligence to try to locate the terroist headquarters no one should ever suggest that we can not use all the assets we have to counter terrorism. However it is still wisest to use law-enforcement as the first line of defense.
Third, the military is organized to achieve military objectives not law enforcement. Yes the military can perform both small and large scale operations but its primary purpose is to fight wars. Fifty more aircraft carriers or twenty more tanks would not have prevent 9-11. However, fifty more FBI Agents might or might not have stopped the hijackings.
Finally we should not denigrate law enforcement. Hyper-terrorist Timothy McVeigh was arrested, tried and executed and is no longer with us. The same can not be said of Osama Bin Laden.