Well, yes and no, depends on how you view auditing. You can view (as currently is) just as access log, or you could view it more broader like:
i.e. Windows' security policy lets you define what sort of attempts you want to audit: Success &/| (that would be and-or :-)) Failure.
The fact that auditing works only "after the fact" is just an implementational detail.
Furthermore, as it is now, if one wants to log access denials one has to do it within autohorizer and thus blend authorizer functionality (it becomes an auditor, too).