Whenever someone stands up to the President, the Republicans rally around him and say that any such criticism "emboldens our enemies." The misconception here (a point which is always overlooked) is that the enemy of this sort didn't just appear out of nowhere on Sept. 11th.
Forget the names of terrorists, just remember, American involvement in the middleast can be dated back to the 40's, in our agreements to secure gasoline pipelines. Keeping this in mind, let us not forget the terrorists that existed and high-jacked airplanes in the 1970's. These are all the same brand of people. In some cases, even the same individuals.
So then, it is hypocrtical of the Republicans to say that criticizing the President emboldens our enemies. The Republicans sure weren't thinking about accidentally "emboldening our enemies" while relentlessly attacking Clinton for 8 years. To an extent, corrolating how abrubtly terrorists attacked us into Bush's presidency, with all the planning involved, one could assume Republicans emboldened those particular enemies years prior when trying to impeach a President because of a blowjob. One could argue further that Kenneth Star alone caused 9/11 with his sniffing and posturing and wasting of millions of tax payer dollars.
In the end we all know that line is a bunch of bullshit. If we are to believe that crap, then we can assume what Chris Matthews believes, which is that Bin Laden himself watches shows like Hardball to make sure the Democratic party is doing his bidding. The only enemies "emboldened" by criticism against the President are his own, which at this point is over 60% of America, 20% of republicans and just about every democrat not named Joe Lieberman, Henry Cuellar or Ron Silver.