Take One Down for Me
Reader Daryl McCullah writes:
That’s what Gore was doing. Clinton *did* take action against Al Qaeda,
and Bush *didn’t* prior to 9/11. It took 3000 deaths before Bush got
serious about Al Qaeda.Al Qaeda was a high priority for Clinton at the end of 2000. Of course
it wasn’t as high a priority as it became for Bush after 9/11. But it
was a higher priority for Clinton than it was for Bush, prior to 9/11.
It hardly makes sense to compare Clinton’s responses to Bush’s responses
after 9/11. A fairer comparison would be Clinton’s response to terrorism
to Reagan’s response to the 1986 Berlin disco bombings. In both cases,
we bombed the people we thought were responsible. In neither case did we
succeed in killing him.Perhaps in light of 9/11, American Presidents will in the future always
respond to any act of terrorism by invading a country and overthrowing
the government.
Have at it, kids.
I’m not in the mood for a sophisticated reply, so I’m left with “This guy is able to feed himself?”
Good Lord. I’ve heard it all now. You have to marvel at anybody who can combine the policies of Clinton and Reagan together as an argument against Bush post 9/11. does any reasonable person think for a minute that Reagan would have waited this long to go at Iraq or, for that matter, finished the job against Iraq in 91. Puu-llleeeaasseee. If Reagan were in office, Iraq would be done and we would be debating the future of Iran by now.
So by action, you mean “lob missles at empty tents in the desert in an effort to distract people from the fact that you diddiled yur intern”? Or does it mean “shy away from any action that might actually mean commitment”? Or does it mean “treat the first World Trade Center bombing as a crime with only a few people involved, despite clear and present signs f Al Queda involvement?” And does it mean “stopping short the investigation of Oklahoma so he could peg it on supposed conservative terrorists instead of looking at the middle eastern connections?”
Reagen had the excuse of the Soviet Union being a bigger danger at the moment. Clinton has nothing.
Its hard to work up the energy to reply to it. The statement practically yells “I lack of discernment, I lack discernment”. Mostly you just pity someone like that. Trapped in a world where up is down, black is white, left is right.
Ha ha ha…oh, wait. I think he was serious.
I’m surprised he can feed himself, too.
Daryl, go join your intellectual equals over at Warbloggerwatch. They would actually appreciate the company.
You know, I actually agree with you people about the political situation, but your ad hominem attacks demean you and your point.
Kris,
This is not kindergarden. This is a blog. Be foolish at you own peril. On the other hand I find that (most of the time) the community is rather forgiving if you err and make a reasonable repentance.
Uh-oh…goofy-headed liberalism turning back on itself again…careful comparing Clinton to Reagan…for starters, it’s a weak comparion…and secondly, wasn’t Reagan a bit of a unilateral guy?
As for al Qaeda being a “high priority for Clinton at the end of 2000,” that’s pure rubbish. There were pardons to sign and goodies to loot. And al Qaeda never affected poll numbers, so why bother?
Daryl has a good point; who knows what extra chaos Al Qaeda could have caused if they weren’t lacking those few camels and tents Clinton destroyed with his cruise missile attack.
Man, it would be cool if Reagan were still president and of sound mind. I bet all the bad people in the Middle East would be dead by now and all that oil would be ours to do with as we please. Maybe gas would be only ten cents a gallon. Plus, we’d never hear a peep out of Europe because they’d be too terrified. I miss him.
“It’s the economy, stupid?” Remember those words? Nobody–not the American people, not the Clinton administration, nobody wanted a middle eastern entanglement that might cause the Dow to start dropping below 10,000 back in 2000.
But that was then, this is now.
Al Qaeda was such a high priority for Billy Jeff that after al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole, Clinton sprang into action, attacking the Taliban, driving them out of power, arresting or killing al Qaeda members left and right.
Oh wait that was what Bush did.
Yeah, Al Qaeda was such a high priority for the Republicans that they DIDN”T spend a year impeaching the Commander-in-Chief for lying about a BJ after their six year witch hunt over a failed two-bit land deal led nowhere…Oh wait…
I was going to hijack the commentarium and post this thing wholesale, but that would be wrong. And annoying.
But it’s relevant, if tangential, to Daryl’s statements, so if you’re interested, the link is below.
Anyway: this is a bit I wrote back in May after the first round of “Bush Knew” nonstories. It deals with the National Security policy documents issued by Bush in the first months of his presidency, and how they differed from the same sorts of documents issued during Clinton’s presidency.
To sum up the salient differences: Clinton didn’t mandate that he or Gore needed to attend National Security Council meetings. Ever.
Bush. however, did make such a mandate. The level of the two Presidents’ respective involvement in the National Security apparatus proceeded from that difference. From the conclusion:
“The fact that time was against him [Bush] is no fault of his, nor can Bush somehow be made responsible for the very nature of bureaucracy.
Bush was attempting, as one of his major administrative priorities, to reform an existing National Security structure that not only impeded the flow of vital intelligence information to the Executive, but was also incapable of formulating effective responses to actual attacks against the country.”
Read: Politics and Paperwork
Ok, everyone here has danced around his main point:
Pre 9/11/01, Bush’s Al-Queda policy was substantially the same as Clinton’s.
This is a true statement that nobody here has contradicted.
Bush had plenty of time to take on Al-Queda and plenty of reasons, but didn’t.
Do I see Smarmy put downs? yes.
Do I facts contradicting the main point? no.
al-qaida’s attacks during the Clinton administration started in 93 with the 1st WTC bombing. They continued with Khobar, the two african embassies, and the USS Cole. al-qaida’s involvement in the Mogadishu fiasco was also clear to intelligence officials.
A Berman says Bush had “plenty of time” to deal with al-qaida. What is plenty of time?
2 years? 4 years? 8 years? Hmmm. In 8 years of pretty much constant attacks against the US by al-qaida, Clinton scored 3 tents, a mosque, an ibuprofen factory, and 2 old camels with bad breath.
Bush had been president for just over 8 months. Plenty of time? Given the shambles that Clinton left the intelligence apparatus in?
KBISFB!
Berman: Wrong. Read the link in my previous post, then come back and talk.
Among Bush’s first acts on taking office was beginning the monumental task of undoing eight years’ worth of damage to our national security aparatus caused by the Clinton administration. As inherited, said apparatus was nearly useless, which is why Clinton, despite having 2 submarines on standby and Predator drones armed with Hellfires, was unable to get a shot off at Bin Laden while he was out and about in Afghanistan.
You can’t get a kill-shot if you can’t find your target, and Clinton couldn’t find his target because he had crippled his intelligence apparatus. Bush’s “al-Qaeda policy” was subsumed in the larger and, at the time, more important task of fixing the mess left by the previous administration.
Furthermore, I don’t know about you, but when I was elected President I had to spend a few months setting up my administration, appointing my Cabinet, and establishing the new Executive as a properly functioning part of the government. I didn’t just pop in and pick up where the previous fellow left off. Maybe when you elected you were all set to go on day one, and had “plenty of time” to fully establish the intelligence picture on the ground in Central Asia.
In addition to Ian Wood’s extended period for assuming office, keep in mind the following:
The election was in, roughly, the first week of November, 2000. BUT, due to the FL fiasco, it was not resolved ’til almost the second week of December (remember how folks were wondering whether FL could even get its recount done by the Electoral College being convened?). Now, at the inside, that’s about four weeks of lost time, because NEITHER Dubya NOR Gore could assume that they were going to win.
So, if it normally takes six months from election day (if you’re lucky) to create a Cabinet, if you’re lucky, you could be seriously thinking about going to war by April. BUT, w/ the FL fiasco, add at least another month—now you’re looking at May/June.
IIRC, there were reports that the Bush people were thinking about a new National Security Strategy draft (no good idea what was in it, probably obe’d by now), around August of 2001. That’s actually about par for both Ian Wood’s hypothetical timetable, and for most Presidents (Clinton, frex, took quite a while just to get all his people clearances).
I heard a couple of reliable sources say that the plan to deal with OBL and terrorism was on the President’s desk by Monday, Sept. 10, 2001.
And indeed, if Clinton had “taken care of business,” it wouldn’t have been a problem for Bush–Klinton was offered the custody of OBL no less than 3 times–and there would have been no 9/11 (and probably no Al Queda in Afghanistan either, if we’d nabbed the bastard before he left the Sudan!)
Hey Stephan, back to you. Do a blog on what you think Reagan would have done, post 9/11 and then Clinton, post 9/11. Let’s see how George W. measures up.
Hey guys, I’m pretty solidly pro-war and all, but he does have a point. There were quite a few terrorist attacks under Reagan’s watch that elicited less than massive retaliation. Now, Reagan was otherwise occupied, and terrorism had “limits” back then, but the guy isn’t a tin-foil head by raising the issue in the first place. A list of these incidents:
April 18, 1983 Bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut
A suicide bomber in a pickup truck loaded with explosives rammed into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Sixty-three people were killed, including 17 Americans, eight of whom were employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, including chief Middle East analyst Robert C. Ames and station chief Kenneth Haas.
Reagan administration officials said that the attack was carried out by Hezbollah operatives, a Lebanese militant Islamic group whose anti-U.S. sentiments were sparked in part by the revolution in Iran. The Hezbollah operatives who carried out the attack on the embassy reportedly were receiving financial and logistical support from both Iran and Syria. [For more on how and why Iran and Syria were helping to direct attacks on the U.S., see FRONTLINE's interviews with Robert Oakley and Robert C. McFarlane.]
The U.S. government took no military action in response to the embassy bombing, although, according to retired Marine Lt. Col. Bill Cowan, a covert military team entered Beirut in order to gather intelligence in preparation for retaliatory strikes.
Oct. 23, 1983 Bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut
A suicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives at a U.S. Marine barracks located at Beirut International Airport; 241 U.S. Marines were killed and more than 100 others wounded. They were part of a contingent of 1,800 Marines that had been sent to Lebanon as part of a multinational force to help separate the warring Lebanese factions. (Twice during the early 1980s the U.S. had deployed troops to Lebanon to deal with the fall-out from the 1982 Israeli invasion. In the first deployment, Marines helped oversee the peaceful withdrawal of the PLO from Beirut. In mid-September 1982 — after the U.S. troops had left — Israel’s Lebanese allies massacred an estimated 800 unarmed Palestinian civilians remaining in refugee camps. Following this, 1,800 Marines had been ordered back into Lebanon.)
In his September 2001 FRONTLINE interview, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said the U.S. still lacks “actual knowledge of who did the bombing” of the Marine barracks. But it suspected Hezbollah, believed to be supported in part by Iran and Syria. Hezbollah denied its involvement.
The president assembled his national security team to devise a plan of military action. The planned target was the Sheik Abdullah barracks in Baalbek, Lebanon, which housed Iranian Revolutionary Guards believed to be training Hezbollah fighters. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger aborted the mission, reportedly because of his concerns that it would harm U.S. relations with other Arab nations. Instead, President Reagan ordered the battleship USS New Jersey, stationed off the coast of Lebanon, to the hills near Beirut. The move was seen as largely ineffective.
Four months after the Marine barracks bombing, U.S. Marines were ordered to start pulling out of Lebanon.
Dec. 12, 1983 Bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait
The American embassy in Kuwait was bombed in a series of attacks whose targets also included the French embassy, the control tower at the airport, the country’s main oil refinery, and a residential area for employees of the American corporation Raytheon. Six people were killed, including a suicide truck bomber, and more than 80 others were injured. The suspects were thought to be members of Al Dawa, or “The Call,” an Iranian-backed group and one of the principal Shiite groups operating against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
The U.S. military took no action in retaliation. In Kuwait, 17 people were arrested and convicted for participating in the attacks. One of those convicted was Mustafa Youssef Badreddin, a cousin and brother-in-law of one of Hezbollah’s senior officers, Imad Mughniyah. After a six-week trial in Kuwait, Badreddin was sentenced to death for his role in the bombings.
Over the following years, the arrest and imprisonment of the “Kuwait 17″ (also known as the “Al Dawa 17″), became one of the most consistent demands of the kidnappers of Western hostages in Lebanon and plane hijackers.
Ironically, when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Iraqis unwittingly released the imprisoned Badreddin and the remaining members of the Kuwait 17. Press reports vary about Badreddin’s current whereabouts.
March 16, 1984 CIA Station Chief William Buckley kidnapped
Buckley was the fourth person to be kidnapped by militant Islamic extremists in Lebanon. The first American hostage, American University of Beirut President David Dodge, had been kidnapped in July 1982. Eventually, 30 Westerners would be kidnapped during the 10-year-long Lebanese hostage-taking crisis (1982-1992).
Americans who were kidnapped included journalist Terry Anderson, American University of Beirut librarian Peter Kilburn, and Benjamin Weir, a Presbyterian minister. While some of the prisoners lived through captivity — Anderson spent the longest time as a hostage, 2,454 days — some, including Buckley, died in captivity or were killed by their kidnappers.
U.S. officials believed that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah was behind most of the kidnappings and the Reagan administration devised a covert plan. Iran was desperately running out of military supplies in its war with Iraq, but Congress had banned the sale of American arms to countries like Iran that sponsored terrorism. Reagan was advised that a bargain could be struck — secret arms sales to Iran, hostages back to the U.S. The plan, when it was revealed to the public, was decried as a failure and anathema to the U.S. policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists.
In August 1985, the first consignment of arms to Iran was sent — 100 anti-tank missiles provided by Israel; another 408 were sent the following month. As a result of the deal, American hostage Benjamin Weir was released from captivity; he had been imprisoned for 495 days. Only two other hostages were released as a result of the arms-for-hostages deal: in July 1986, Martin Jenco, a Catholic priest, was released; and the administrator of the American University of Beirut’s medical school, David Jacobson, was released in November 1986.
Since the funds from the arms sales to Iran were secretly, and illegally, funneled to the U.S.-backed Contras fighting to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, the infamous episode became known as the “Iran-Contra affair.” (See the “Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters.)
Sept. 20, 1984 Bombing of U.S. Embassy annex northeast of Beirut
In Aukar, northeast of Beirut, a truck bomb exploded outside the U.S. Embassy annex killing 24 people, two of whom were U.S. military personnel. According to the U.S. State Department’s 1999 report on terrorist organizations, elements of Hezbollah are “known or suspected to have been involved” in the bombing.
The U.S. mounted no military response to the embassy annex bombing, but it did begin to explore covert operations in Lebanon. Investigative journalist Bob Woodward says that the CIA trained foreign intelligence agents to act as “hit teams” designed to destroy the terrorists’ operations. Ambassador Robert Oakley says the U.S. merely attempted to set up a “protective unit,” a Lebanese counterterrorist strike force.
President Reagan and the CIA called off covert operations when Lebanese intelligence operatives — some allegedly trained by the U.S. — set off a car bomb on March 8, 1985, in an attempted murder of Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the Shiite Muslim cleric who some believed to be the spiritual leader of Hezbollah. Over 80 people were killed in the attack near a Beirut mosque. Fadlallah survived.
Many blamed the CIA for the attack, saying it had directed the intelligence operatives to carry it out. Robert McFarlane, President Reagan’s national security adviser, says that the operatives who carried out the attack on Fadlallah may have been trained by the U.S., but the individuals who carried it out were “rogue operative[s],” and the CIA in no way sanctioned or supported the attack.
Dec. 3, 1984 Hijacking of Kuwait Airways Flight 221
Kuwait Airways Flight 221, on its way from Kuwait to Pakistan, was hijacked and diverted to Tehran. The hijackers demanded the release of the Kuwait 17. When the demand wasn’t met, the hijackers killed two American officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development. On the sixth day of the drama, Iranian security forces stormed the plane and released the remaining hostages.
Iran arrested the hijackers, saying they would be brought to trail. But the trial never took place, and the hijackers were allowed to leave the country. There was no U.S. military response. The State Department announced a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrests of those involved in the hijacking. Later press reports linked Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyah to the hijackings.
June 14, 1985 Hijacking of TWA Flight 847
TWA Flight 847 was hijacked en route from Athens to Rome and forced to land in Beirut, Lebanon, where the hijackers held the plane for 17 days. They demanded the release of the Kuwait 17 as well as the release of 700 fellow Shiite Muslim prisoners held in Israeli prisons and in prisons in southern Lebanon run by the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army. When these demands weren’t met, hostage Robert Dean Stethem, a U.S. Navy diver, was shot and his body dumped on the airport tarmac. U.S. sources implicated Hezbollah.
In what was widely perceived as an implicit, never explicit, quid pro quo, the hostages started being released by the hijackers, followed some days after by Israel starting to free some of its hundreds of Shiite prisoners. At the time, U.S. officials denied there was a deal and said Israel had already committed to releasing the prisoners.
Imad Mughniyah, a senior officer with Hezbollah, was secretly indicted for the TWA hijacking in 1987, along with three others. One of those indicted, Mohammed Ali Hamadei, was arrested in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1989 he was convicted in a German court and sentenced to life in prison. Sixteen years later, Imad Mughniyah is still at large. (Editor’s Note: See the FBI’s list of the “Most Wanted Terrorists,” released Oct. 10, 2001.)
October 1985 – January 1986 Hijacking of cruise ship Achille Lauro;
Bombing of Rome, Vienna airports
On Oct. 7, 1985, off the coast of Egypt, four gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners in Egypt, Italy, and elsewhere. When the demands weren’t met, they killed Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old disabled American tourist. Investigators blamed the Palestine Liberation Front, which some believed to be allied with Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization. Later, U.S. officials were able to link Libya to the PLF and the hijacking.
After the hijackers escaped the Achille Lauro and left Egypt by air, U.S. Navy fighters intercepted their plane and forced it down in Italy. The four hijackers were apprehended, and in 1986, they were found guilty in an Italian court. Two of the hijackers escaped from prison. One, Magid al-Molgi, who confessed to killing Mr. Klinghoffer, was caught and returned to prison. The man identified as the mastermind of the hijacking, Abu Abbas, was released by Italy despite Washington’s pleas that he be held for trial.
Then on Dec. 17, 1985, airports in Rome and Vienna were bombed, killing 20 people, five of whom were Americans. This time, U.S. officials said they were able to link Libya to the bombing attacks. In January, U.S. officials decided to send the Navy and its warplanes to patrol the Gulf of Sidra — in territorial waters claimed by Libya — in an effort to provoke Qaddafi. The White House warned Qaddafi that any Libyan forces further than 12 miles from shore were subject to attack. (The U.S. and other nations used an international standard, set at only 12 miles from Libya’s coast, to mark the country’s territorial waters; Qaddafi said that Libya’s territorial waters extended more than 100 miles from the coastline.) At this point, the face-off between the U.S. and Libya escalated.
April 5, 1986 Bombing of La Belle Discotheque
An American soldier was killed when a bomb was detonated at La Belle, a discotheque in West Berlin known to be popular with off-duty U.S. servicemen. A Turkish woman was killed, and nearly 200 others were wounded. U.S. intelligence sources identified Libya as being responsible for the attack. [For more on the evidence pointing to Libya, see interviews with Paul Bremer, Caspar Weinberger, and Robert Oakley.] In Berlin, five individuals were tried for carrying out the bombing of the discotheque. In November 2001, four of the defendants were convicted and sentenced, while the fifth was acquitted. The court found only Verena Chanaa guilty of murder; she was sentenced to 14 years. Prosecutors said Chanaa, a 42-year-old German national, brought the bomb into the disco in a handbag. Three other defendants were all convicted of multiple counts of attempted murder. Yasir Shraydi, a Palestinian who was said to have assembled the bomb, was sentenced to 14 years, while Musbah Eter, a Libyan diplomat, and Verena Chanaa’s former husband, Palestinian Ali Chanaa, were sentenced to 12 years apiece. Verena Chanaa’s sister, 36-year-old Andrea Haeusler, was acquitted. She had accompanied Verena Chanaa to the disco on the night of the bombing.
After U.S. intelligence intercepted Libyan government communications implicating Libya in the La Belle disco attack, President Reagan ordered retaliatory air strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi. The operation on April 15, 1986, dubbed Operation El Dorado Canyon, involved 200 aircraft and over 60 tons of bombs. One of the residences of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qadaffi was hit in the attack, which, according to Libyan estimates, killed 37 people and injured 93 others. As a result of this American operation, U.S. national security officials say Libyan-sponsored terrorism ceased “for a long time.” (See interviews with Robert Oakley and L.Paul Bremer.)
Two days after the U.S. retaliatory attack, the bodies of three American University of Beirut employees — American Peter Kilburn and Britons John Douglas and Philip Padfield — were discovered near Beirut shot to death. The Arab Revolutionary Cells, a pro-Libyan group of Palestinians affiliated with terrorist Abu Nidal, claimed to have executed the three men in retaliation for Operation El Dorado Canyon.
December 21, 1988 Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York exploded over the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 people on board were killed, along with 11 on the ground. According to the State Department’s “Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1991,” released in April 1992, the bombing of Pan Am 103 “was an action authorized by the Libyan Government.” Though there were reports that Syria and Iran also played significant roles in the attack, U.S. officials were never able to tie the two countries to the bombing. No one has ever taken credit for planting the bomb.
In May 2000 the trial of the two Libyan intelligence officers charged with planting the bomb started in the Netherlands. It ended in February 2001 with the conviction of defendant Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi; he received a life sentence. The other defendant, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted and set free.
It’s true that those groups weren’t Al Qaeda, but bin Laden did cite the Marine Barracks bombing (and I think some of the others) along with the stuff that happened under Clinton’s watch (Khobar, Embassy, Cole, etc.) as proof of America’s softness and unwillingness to strike back.
That’s not to say that Reagan wouldn’t have handled 9/11 well; I think he would have, though I think Bush is doing a pretty good job. (Though domestically he’s got major problems…).
However, Reagan did have a seminal event that probably should have shaped his response to terrorism: the Iran hostage crisis. Massive retaliation against terrorism of the sort we see today was probably impossible due to the presence of the USSR, but that’s an argument that needs to be made.
Godlesscapitalist, you are correct. The Reagan record is not blemishless. But, it is still plainly absurd to argue that Clinton was as assiduous as Reagan about guarding and advancing America’s interests. I think your second post hits closest to the mark – the existence of the Soviet Union inhibited any large scale action. The first task was to get rid of that obstacle. This, Reagan did.
Notice that I wrote a very calm, measured letter (it was private email, as a matter of fact—Stephen neither asked my permission to post it, nor did he inform me, nor did he spell my name correctly). I didn’t insult Mr. VodkaPundit, nor any of his loyal fans. Every sentence I wrote was true. Al Qaeda wasn’t a priority for Bush prior to 9/11. Clinton’s responses to terrorism were no less vigorous than Reagan’s. When troops were killed in Beirut, Reagan didn’t declare war, he got out. When servicement were killed in the Berlin disco, he didn’t declare war, he bombed Libya. Those are the facts.
You can argue about the implications of my statements, but the statements themselves are all true. In contrast, the responses to my letter were the verbal equivalent of throwing rotten tomatoes.
Thanks to Godless for actually thinking before responding.
You can bat counterfactuals about all night. The only ones that seem to me to be interesting are these:
A) If September 11th had not occurred, what would the current Bush Administration stance on al Qaeda be?
B) If Gore had been elected, what would his Administration’s stance be given i) Sep 11th ii) no Sep 11th?
C) Had Bush 41/Unknown Republican been in power for the eight years of the Clinton government, how would counterterrorism policy have differed?
To my mind, (A) is the most interesting of these, and the only one that could lend itself to substantive criticism of Bush. By this I mean, it would be instructive to ponder how different counter-terrorism policy would have looked like on, say, November 10th, if the WTC/Pentagon attacks were to happen on Nov 11th. What was the trajectory of policy review, and how did it differ from a likely Gore Administration’s?
Finally, given that after the most devastating terrorist attack against the US in history, there are still voices raised against a pre-emptive attack against Iraq, in what way could Bush’s stance have been substantially different from the previous Administration’s? Mark Steyn puts it beautifully in this article in the Sunday Telegraph:
Ok, Mr. McCullough, I’ll step up and take a swing at your argument.
Gore’s speech in San Francisco was tantamount to political sepuku. Possibly, to serve as a lightning rod to indirectly assist those Democrats in positions of active governmental debate, who knows. But whatever can be said about the speech, it isn’t exactly accurate to say that he was ‘trying to help’ or ‘furthering the national discussion’. He offered no alternatives except to sit around and hope for sunny weather. He attempted scaremonger to an outlandish degree, almost to the point of making his diatribe incomprehensible.
I would dispute sir, that a comparison of the actions of Clinton and Reagan are fair. Aside from a completely different geopolitical dynamic, I’d point out that Clinton did the very minimum he could do – sending robotic devices against questionable target sets, versus Reagan doing as much as he possibly could given the situation. Reagan by no means had the same latitude of possibilities as Clinton, simply because all of his calculations had to be factored through the Cold War balance of power rules for dealing with the other guy’s clients.
To say that Bush was not serious about al Queda is speculative, at best, a specious lie at worst. Evidence indicates that it was a priority item. Something has to be fairly ‘front burner’ for a fledgling administration to make it the subject of a major policy review and course of action determination within very few months of taking office – particularly with the type of semi-hostile handover that the incoming administration had to deal with.
If you you want to be ‘fairer’ about the assesment, then you have to concede that absolutely nothing was a priority for the Clinton Whitehouse with the exception of the Presidential Approval ratings in the polls, and that those events in which Clinton actually ‘took action’ have highly coincidental timing to ‘rough spots’ having absolutely nothing to do, apparently, with the actions taken.
If it is examination of missed opportunity, or failure to act that you wish to examine, then do not perform such scrutiny of the Clinton years with an unbiased eye and resaonably expect any respect or desire to defend the man to survive the process. If it is a search for a scape goat that is desired, I would submit that such is a colossal waste of time and energy, although I’m sure we would be at odds as to who bears the larger share of the burden of responsibility for the situation.
I evaluate your statement, as quoted by Stephen, as a massive oversimplification that completely misses the point. The policy shift is much more fundamental than that of being more aggressively reactive to threats to US National Security after the fact, but to a stance of pro-activity, to disrupt, disable, and deny such threats the chance to fully evolve.
You can not have it both ways – reasonably. One can not on the one hand decry inaction in advance of disaster, while on the other hand advocating further inaction as the course for the future.
If you have an alternative plan, or vision, by all means, elaborate them please. Mr. Gore failed to do so. As yet, Mssrs Daschle, Gephart, Kennedy, and a host of others have failed to offer any course other than what, to this point, has been mostly ineffective in reducing the potential of threat, and demonstrably been a great burden to the Iraqi people.
Give us an actual alternative to debate. Otherwise, withdraw, and cease whining about getting ‘roughed up’ for getting the same kind of low-brow treatment you so willingly dished out in the President’s direction.
Been away for a while.
Ok, still, we’ve seen plenty of rationales why Bush could not make OBL a priority pre 9/11.
None of them hold water.
I remember Bush talking a lot about his Tax Cut, I don’t remember a single speech about Bin Laden.
And if Clinton left the military in such shambles, then why were we able to go into Afghanistan October 6th? Bush just happened to fix the problems that Clinton left him so that ONE MONTH AFTER AMERICA WAS ATTACKED WE WENT IN! BullDinkies. If we were attacked in May we would have gone in in June. If we were attacked in November, we would have gone in in December. And if we weren’t attacked, we wouldn’t be there.
A Berman: The fact is the eviscerated American military was pushed to the limit in Afghanistan. One of the reasons for the long delay in going after Iraq has been the need to replenish the military’s war fighting capability. If a plane makes it to land with one engine out and the other on fire, it does not mean that the maintenance procedures are adequate.
If you knew any military people at all, you would know how much they, almost to a man (or woman), loathed and despised their previous commander in chief. They did not much relish the idea of Al “I went to Vietnam” Gore, the Army journalist whose rich and powerful Senator daddy kept him well away from the front lines.
The looming threat that Al Qaeda posed is all the more reason that Gore was supremely irresponsible to contest the Presidential race as long as he did. In a similar situation, Richard Nixon allowed Mayor Daley’s dead voters to elect Kennedy, avoiding a crisis that would have encouraged the Soviets to take advantage of the turmoil. (As it turned out, Kennedy screwed the pooch on the Bay of Pigs and invited just such a crisis with the Cuban missiles anyway.)
Maybe if the transition had not been so tumultuous, Bush would have had an easier time drawing a bead on the worst of the many awful legacies of Clinton-Gore (such as the recession that we now know started 6 months before the election, but was hushed up by the Clinton White House – such as reviewing all the felons that Clinton pardoned in his last week in office – or, how about just having f___ing W’s on their computer keyboards! The most ethical administration in history!!! What a f___ing joke!)
As for “And if we weren’t attacked, we wouldn’t be there.”, you don’t know that, in fact, all indications are to the contrary. This is a President who stands up to the nation’s enemies, not like super-wimp Al Gore, who so recently confirmed (widescreen) his total uselessness as putative commander in chief to safeguard the interests of the American people. If you think the Bushies would make up the fact that they were planning action prior to 9/11 when such an assertion can be so easily checked through official records then, I can’t help you, except to say, this is not the previous administration, which lied even when it didn’t need to, which lied just for the hell of it, 24/7, just to have so much fun getting away with it.
A Berman: The fact is the eviscerated American military was pushed to the limit in Afghanistan. One of the reasons for the long delay in going after Iraq has been the need to replenish the military’s war fighting capability. If a plane makes it to land with one engine out and the other on fire, it does not mean that the maintenance procedures are adequate.
If you knew any military people at all, you would know how much they, almost to a man (or woman), loathed and despised their previous commander in chief. They did not much relish the idea of Al “I went to Vietnam” Gore, the Army journalist whose rich and powerful Senator daddy kept him well away from the front lines.
The looming threat that Al Qaeda posed is all the more reason that Gore was supremely irresponsible to contest the Presidential race as long as he did. In a similar situation, Richard Nixon allowed Mayor Daley’s dead voters to elect Kennedy, avoiding a crisis that would have encouraged the Soviets to take advantage of the turmoil. (As it turned out, Kennedy screwed the pooch on the Bay of Pigs and invited just such a crisis with the Cuban missiles anyway.)
Maybe if the transition had not been so tumultuous, Bush would have had an easier time drawing a bead on the worst of the many awful legacies of Clinton-Gore (such as the recession that we now know started 6 months before the election, but was hushed up by the Clinton White House – such as reviewing all the felons that Clinton pardoned in his last week in office – or, how about just having f___ing W’s on their computer keyboards! The most ethical administration in history!!! What a f___ing joke!)
As for “And if we weren’t attacked, we wouldn’t be there.”, you don’t know that, in fact, all indications are to the contrary. This is a President who stands up to the nation’s enemies, not like super-wimp Al Gore, who so recently confirmed (widescreen) his total uselessness as putative commander in chief to safeguard the interests of the American people. If you think the Bushies would make up the fact that they were planning action prior to 9/11 when such an assertion can be so easily checked through official records then, I can’t help you, except to say, this is not the previous administration, which lied even when it didn’t need to, which lied just for the hell of it, 24/7, just to have so much fun getting away with it.
The big honking factual error of your letter is that, “In both cases, we bombed the people we thought were responsible”.
Wrong. Reagan bombed the people we believed responsible and the guy responsible for harboring them, thouroghly enough that even though we didn’t hit Qaddafi, we did get some Libyan officials, Qaddafi’s house, memebers of Qaddafi’s household staff, and some of Qaddafi’s relatives. Clinton bombed a pharmeceutical factory and a long-abandoned campsite of no significance, his aim coming nowhere near those responsible and also nowhere near the harboring Taliban.
Now, did Bush act as quickly as he theoretically could have? Well, no. On the other hand, does anybody seriously think that Bush could have gotten overflight permission from Taliban-allied Pakistan by saying “You know, several months before I was elected, a Yemeni blew a hole in the USS Cole”? Afghanistan is landlocked — attacking Al Qaeda without Pakistani permission would have been an act of war. Does anybody think Bush could have gotten permission to go to war with Pakistan before 9/11?
On the other hand, the international atmosphere right after the embassy bombings would have allowed Clinton to launch a lot more Tomahawks at a lot more targets than he did in 1998 — some even aimed at the Taliban for harboring Bin Laden. He could have also launched a bunch right after the USS Cole. Sure, it wouldn’t have been the same response the WTC attacks allowed, but it could have been much more than he did.
Bush has used all of his post-9/11 levergae and then some — thus the complaints of unilateralism. Reagan did the same thing — remember the complaints about Libya? Clinton used less force than Reagan despite the fact that he could have used more than Reagan did before causing complaints from allies. That’s the difference.
Berman: It’s the intelligence ommunity that matters most in this case, and that’s what a) the Clinton administration “eviscerated” and b) Bush made an absolute priority within weeks of taking office.
I’ll put the link in again, even though you seem to have ignored it once. Try to engage the facts: Politics And Paperwork.
We can manufacture required war materiel as needed. We can’t build the on-the-ground human resources required for proper intelligence gathering as quickly or as effectively. This is not a war with a mechanized industrial Axis, where we can simply out-manufacture the enemy if we have to. This conflict requires information.
It is the information-gathering capabilities of this country to which Bush assigned administrative priority, and those are the capabilities that we need to win the war.
He officially began that process on February 13, 2001, when he issued his first National Security Presidential Directive.
But again: go. Read.
http://hnn.us/articles/565.html
http://makethemaccountable.com/whatwhen/index.htm
How brave.
I agree with the general consensus of this website: Bill Clinton did a better job with terrorism than Reagan.
Well then Mr. Barouth, you’ve read this website as well as you’ve analysed Presidential handling of Terrorism.
*smuffle*
Let us not forget that morale is one of the most important aspects of battle. The morale of the military was in the pits for 8 years, and improved remarkably as soon as Bush was elected.
But yes, the military intelligence process was effectively gutted under Clinton.
It must be nice to be able to ignore the most important points of history from our lifetimes if it makes your political views easier to sell. Reagan could not have responded in a way similar to Bush in Afghanistan because Iran and Syria were client states of the USSR and were considered by the USSR to be in their ‘sphere of influence’(in fact they considered the entire Middle East to be such). In comparison to how the Russian mind would respond, the Chinese only got a little upset and jumpy about our crossing the 38th parallel in Korea and moving towards the Yalu. Just as we had a policy of no more Pearl Harbors, the USSR was not going to give an enemy a land corridor to invade the Rodin. They were not going to have that kind of suffering on their home turf that they weren’t directly inflicting. Reagan could have increased the number of men in the area and provoked a standoff the likes of the Cuban Missile Crisis, or he could leave the inadequate force in place for target practice, or he could leave the area. When faced with Libya, who was a client but not in the SOP, Reagan had more freedom to act, but could not directly invade.
What was the restraint on Clinton?? A sharp rebuke form someone somewhere? Blowing that chance to be liked on the fashionable upper west side? To anyone that wants to cry about the impeachment occupying all of his time or the big bad Republicans not letting him escalate a war, I point to our current President. Leaders lead. That is what they do. They outline where they want to go and what they want to do, and then go about making the hard choices and living with the consequenses of their actions. Clinton was never willing to do either, and we as a country suffered for it.
The only time Reagan and Clinton should be linked is when someone says Reagan winning the Cold War allowed the country the frivoloty of a Clinton Presidency.
So let me see if I understand this: Al Qaeda was a higher priority to Clinton in the last months of his term (when he was not much able to do anthing about it), than it was to Bush in the first months of his (when he was even less able to do anything about it).
If you ignore the fact that administering a country generally involves being able to do things, then that’s a real poser. Let’s try both defendants on what they put at the top of their “To Do Soon” lists while sitting in the waiting room, your honor. I’m sure one of them is a scoundrel.
So okay, I’ll go along, I’ll ignore the basic irrelevance. What remains is the question: if Bush’s increase in defence spending does not indicate a shift in priorities, what would? He would not have increased defense spending… stay with me… unless he thought that not enough was being spent on defense. By the Clinton administration, to whom those terrorists were such a high priority.
Clinton’s top priority that last year may have been the recession. I wouldn’t blame him for that. I just think it’s foolish to evaluate priorities by clandestine memos and word-of-mouth; look at where the money was. Anybody have any numbers?
One more point: you seem rather contemptuous in that last paragraph of our chosen means (“invading a country and overthrowing the government”). May I presume that you believe it was a little extreme? Perhaps mongerish? Especially in relation to what little concern you saw from the Bush administration prior to 9/11. That makes sense. And I’m sure you can think of dozens of reasons why Bush was willing to use those 3000 deaths as an excuse to pull down the Taliban… real reasons, like oil or… or something. Maybe he was a member of RAWA. Who knows.
My hypothesis: Bush’s money allocations show where his priorities were, but he’s the leader of a democracy, and to the people of his country, Al Qaeda was NOT a priority until after 9/11. It didn’t take 3000 deaths for him to notice, it took them for most of us to notice. And once we did, we called for the action that he had been quietly preparing for already.
But that’s just a hypothesis. I have no idea what he was thinking, nor do I know what Clinton was thinking, or Reagan. What we were thinking was more important; that’s why Gallup never polls the president.
I’ll tell you one thing: if, in the future, the majority of Americans respond to acts of terrorism by wanting to invade a country and overthrow the government, then that is exactly what a good president is going to do. Quit calling hypocrisy on the cowboy without talking to the maddened horse first.