On The Vietnam War And President Clinton

On The Vietnam War And President Clinton

The war supporters, and Bush himself (the nerve), have tried to paint the Democratic Party as anti-war or "weak" on defense. They frequently cite the Vietnam War as an example, saying that if the Democrats had not withdrawn we would have eventually won the war and the subsequent killing of millions of people in Cambodia would have been avoided and Vietnam would be a democracy. Of course, there are those who dispute that. They say it was the war, itself, that led to the destabilization of Cambodia. Vietnam, although not a democracy, is a prosperous country now.

I was thirteen years old in 1972. To have been old enough to vote during that time would make you over fifty years old now. While many of our representatives have indeed reached that ripe old age, the war supporters are, in effect, discounting the opinions of an entire generation that never actually were involved in the Vietnam war and who have never lived through a war of that magnitude and therefore may have an entirely different perspective on that engagement and on war, itself.

What they are saying is that American can do no wrong, never has, never will. If your president says we should start a war, he must be right. Four and a half years later, in spite of everything, Bush must be right. This is simple-minded and I don't like it.

Many war supporters have likewise smeared President Clinton, relentlessly - he didn't do enough to catch or kill bin Laden after the embassy attacks and the attack on the USS Cole.

It was reported that Clinton testified at the Congressional hearings that he was "obsessed with bin Laden" and had signed an order to have him killed. Unfortunately, there was disagreement with the wording where the CIA, etc. were not comfortable, considering America's dark history, of assassinating him and there never was "actionable" intelligence. Clinton testified that he gave the Bush administration a war plan for al-Qaida but that Bush and Condo Rice was more concerned about China.

Like all cheap tricks, the sword cuts both ways. Here are some differing opinions.

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"Clinton became obsessed with capturing and convicting Ramzi Yousef [the mastermind of the attack]." U.S. officials apprehended Yousef in Pakistan in 1995, and he is now serving a 240-year sentence for his crimes -- hardly an abject failure of policy...

However, the manner in which the attack on the USS Cole was handled does more to damage the Bush administration's reputation than it does Clinton's, as his term expired three months after the bombing of the Cole.

In June 2001, five months after Bush had been sworn in, al Qaeda released a videotape claiming responsibility for the Cole operation. If the Bush administration needed a casus belli to destroy al Qaeda, here it was, broadcast around the world. Instead, the response was to do absolutely nothing...

…The American inability to truly comprehend the al Qaeda threat was a systematic failure of many institutions, including the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI and the media, failures that cannot be pinned on any one administration. Beyond all that, you, gentle reader, are also at fault. There was no political will to go to war against al Qaeda because there was no public will to do so. The public had made it very clear during the '90s that even small numbers of U.S. military casualties were unacceptable, whether in Somalia or in the Balkans.

All that changed with Sept. 11. Now two wars later, at the cost of hundreds of American deaths, thousands of Afghan and Iraqi civilian dead and untold billons of U.S. taxpayer money, the Bush administration is still "losing bin Laden" -- two years after Sept. 11...

Peter Bergen is a fellow of the New America Foundation and the author of "Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden." ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8174-2003Nov6?language=printer

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The Blog From Another Dimension: Further Proof Damning Bush for 9/11 (as if it were really needed)

March 21, 2004

With the recent revelations brought forth by Richard A. Clarke (former counter-terrorism coordinator from both Clinton and Bush 43 administrations), the picture of the Bush administration's malfeasance regarding terrorism has been made more complete.

We already knew that Clinton had put together a solid plan to fight terrorism. Clinton, in fact, had gone after al Qaeda as best he could, and the Republicans had even termed Clinton's attacks on bin Laden as excessive, just an excuse to avoid attention on more important matters, such as whether or not he had gotten sexual favors from an intern. Of course, after the 9/11 attacks, suddenly Clinton was attacked as having been soft on al Qaeda, and the whole mess was his fault. But we found out soon that Clinton, in fact, had a bold plan to hit back at al Qaeda after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in late 2000, and had presented those plans to Bush.

However, Clinton was perhaps too much more a considerate president leaving office than he should have been. In 1992, Bush Sr. decided to send troops into Somalia while he was a lame duck, essentially sticking Clinton with the check, forcing him to either accept a losing battle in the country or look weak by pulling out the troops. That is one of my greater criticisms of Bush 41, that he played politics with soldiers' lives to give Clinton a black eye as he entered office. Bush never would have engaged in a military action in Somalia had he won reelection.

Clinton, instead of starting a major military offensive at the end of his term and sticking it in turn to Bush Jr., instead gave the new administration his battle plans and let them make the call.

And the Bush people crashed and burned, ignoring the advice and letting their guard slip dangerously. Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and Richard Clarke briefed Condoleezza Rice on the plans just a few weeks before Bush took office, making their urgency and utility well-known to the Bush White House. And the Bush White House shut them down, cold. Part of the reason for this was that Bush was busy pushing a missile defense shield, and the idea of terrorist attacks played contrary to that. After all, it would be inconsistent to be fighting an active war on terrorism while developing a missile shield which, by nature, was completely ineffective in countering terrorist threats.

And now we hear from Clarke not only a solid confirmation that the Clinton plan was shunted aside, but that further reasons included the fact that Bush & Co. were far too busy planning an attack on Iraq to be bothered with minor-leaguers like al Qaeda. This despite Bush's campaign pledge against nation-building, as he secretly planned for regime change and nation-building in Iraq.

So focused were they on Iraq, that when 9/11 happened and it was clear that the enemy was in Afghanistan, Donald Rumsfeld pushed for attacks on Iraq, suggesting Afghanistan--where bin Laden was--be left alone. Why? Clarke claims that "Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq, and we all said, 'No, no, al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan.' Rumsfeld said there aren't good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq."

It strains credulity that more Americans do not hold Bush culpable for the disastrous errors that led up to 9/11, and the obvious prior intent Bush & Co. had to invade Iraq, no matter what evidence they claimed. And this is not just people who worked for Clinton speaking, that includes Bush's own man from the Treasury Department, Paul O'Neill, confirming Bush's intent to invade Iraq pre-9/11.

Add to that the fact that Bush selfishly refused to create a commission to research the security deficits that allowed 9/11 to happen, and then created a hand-picked executive commission (avoiding a congressionally-appointed one) only when his hand was forced--and even still today demonstrates strident unwillingness to assist that very commission.

The answer could not be more clear: Bush screwed up on 9/11, big time, and he knows all too well exactly where the blame lies. Clarke's new disclosures on the matter simply bolster that particular conclusion.

Posted by Luis at March 21, 2004 10:03 PM |
http://www.blogd.com/archives/000518.html

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