This and the parent comment might be correct, but also, the US has one of the largest intelligence agencies in the world and the US defence budget dwarfs everyone else’s.
They failed spectacularly in the role they exist to perform. This deserves criticism.
'Keeping Americans safe' is not on their agenda. If it were, they wouldn't be sticking America's hand into Middle Eastern quagmires, like the one that radicalized OBL and provided a training ground for his friends and allies. If it were, they wouldn't be working half as hard in demonstrating to hundreds of millions of people that yes, America does, in fact, mean them harm, and is happy to inflict that harm on them.
Not really.
When you look back, seeing how things turned out, history looks different than it almost certainly felt to most people at the time.
It took 250-300 years for the Roman Empire to collapse. You could make a pretty strong argument that the US has been in decline for decades, and that cracks in Pax Americana were already forming during the Vietnam War era.
They did a reorg, and Richard Clarke, who was the terrorism and Bin Laden “guy” was in effect demoted and lost access to the president.
The timing was bad for the US. Clinton was deeply personally engaged in this stuff. Bush was an arms length guy who delegated. Personally, I think Bin Laden and his cronies had a really good read or an instinct in this dynamic.