It seems that some members of the former mainstream media are suffering from a serious bout of amnesia. Last week CNN ran a promo for its "Situation Room" program, hosted by Wolf Blitzer, their Washington correspondent. The promo posed the question: "What would Clinton do… about aIDS, africa, terrorism…?" The short answer, of course, is not much.
I am frankly surprised that CNN would walk down that path, as history has already dealt with what Clinton would and would not do. Clinton, whose silver tongue managed to mask his more obvious shortcomings, has probably done more to encourage anti-western terrorism than any previous president, except, perhaps Jimmy Carter.
When Saddam Hussein refused to co-operate with UN weapons inspectors and thumbed his nose at the rest of the world, Clinton wrung his hands and warned of the potential danger his regime posed to the West and then lobbed a few missiles into Iraq before returning to play "hide the cigar" with White House interns.
In 1993 after the first attempt by Islamic fundamentalists at toppling the World Trade Center, Clinton treated the entire episode as a law-enforcement matter rather than an attack against the U.S. This betrayed a serious misreading of the situation on Clinton’s part, as subsequent attacks against U.S. interests became more brazen and more destructive.
In March of 1996 the government of Sudan offered to turn Osama bin Laden, the founder of the al Qaeda terrorist network, over to the U.S. Clinton turned down the offer claiming that the U.S. had no "legal" authority to arrest the arch terrorist. Clinton’s shortsighted largesse resulted in dire consequences for america.
On august 7, 1998 al Qaeda terrorists bombed two U.S. embassies in africa, which resulted in more than 200 deaths and thousands of serious injuries. Clinton’s immediate response was to pledge that every effort would be made to catch the bombers. His first orders were to send counter-terrorism experts along with FBI agents to the scene of the "crime".
"These acts of terrorist violence are abhorrent, they are inhuman," Clinton told a White House press conference. "We will use all the means at our disposal to bring those responsible to justice," he added.
His idea of justice was to initiate a cruise missile strike on an aspirin factory in the Sudan as well as a suspected terrorist base in afghanistan, neither of which actually caught any of the plotters.
On October 12, 2000, two al Qaeda terrorists pulled a bomb-laden boat alongside the guided missile destroyer USS Cole, and detonated the explosives, causing a 12m X 12m hole in the side of the ship and killing 17 sailors. In response, Clinton dispatched FBI agents to aden to investigate. again, he treated an act of war as a law enforcement matter. It wasn’t until November 3, 2002, under the Bush administration that an appropriate retaliatory action took care of the planner, abu ali al-Harithi, who was killed by a U.S. Hellfire missile guided by CIa agents in Yemen.
During the Clinton administration Yassar arafat, the arch-terrorist and murderer responsible for the 1972 Olympic village massacre of Israeli athletes, visited the White House more often than any other foreign "dignitary". What does this say about Clinton’s sympathies?
So the real question should be: "who cares what Clinton would do
now"? In my opinion, he’s done enough to last the U.S. for generations.
Rather than pontificate about what he might do in a similar situation and
try to second-guess Bush, Clinton would be well advised to keep his mouth
shut and do what he does best. I’m sure there are still lots of women in
the world that he hasn’t groped yet.
For over two centuries american presidents who have left office have had a tradition of declining to comment on their successor’s actions. Only two presidents, Carter and Clinton, have broken with this tradition. Both were southern Democrats, and more importantly both were disastrously bad presidents. The least they could do is keep their yaps shut, fade away and let their fellow citizens forget about them. and the least CNN could do to improve its declining audience numbers is to get off the Clinton bandwagon.