Of course. As I said, how could it not be? Clinton atleast had to make it look like that was his intent. I only question whether or not he truly wished for such action to be taken and cared for it to be gone through with. No "facts" will ever inform us of such details, this is just my opinion. As martin would say, the people don't always know what's best for them. Just because he was supported by the public doesn't mean he always made the right decisions. "required"... interesting. The thing about that is that there are different levels and understandings of when action is required. I believe that Clinton used military force whenever he felt it was required, but that doesn't mean he took it whenever I felt it was required.
Nor does it mean he made the wrong ones either. martin's truisms are quite often obtuse, you know. American citizens are very well-informed and this is a democracy not a monarchy. Collectively we usually know what is best. Democracies must follow the will of the people or it is no longer a democracy. Public support suggests that Clinton had the interests of the democratic nation in mind. The lessons of Vietnam as determined by our own military assesments were (I paraphrase): 1. Don't start a war you won't finish 2. Don't fight a war by the enemy's rules 3. Stay out of other peoples civil war 4. Never wage war without the support of the citizenry Fair enough. Exactly when did you feel that Clinton failed to use military force when it was in our interests to do so? Be specific. Which military requirement did Clinton not respond to?
I can't really do that with doing a bunch of research, since I was only 14 during most of this and can't recall many specifics. I'm sure I'm not the only person that felt this way. Maybe somebody else can list specifics.
fine i just wanted to be clear that "overwhelming force" wasnt the solution this time. it only is when clinton says it is.
if i was forced to use only one word to describe my precious truisms, i would use "obtuse" and be pretty satisfied. that word was made to describe my truisms i will call it red's postulate: M's Ts = oo. martin's truisms are often obtuse. this should be invoked whenever i go off on one of my rants.
Ok, I'll do it for you. You are a thoughtful and reasonable feller and I sometimes forget that I have hats that are older than you. :wink: I'm just curious why you feel that way when you have no particular reason for it. There is a lot of misinformation out there, of course. Clinton's personal moral failures are sometimes used to characterize his performance as a President, which is a mistake. Clinton is most usually criticised for failing to use military force over the matter of the Rwandan genocide. The whole world stood by and let it happen. In his defense: 1. America has no vital national interests in Rwanda. 2. Africa has generally been the political "turf" of the former European colonial powers. Usually the French or the Belgians get involved in solving African disputes. They failed to do so in this one. Both the US and the Euros were preoccupied with Bosnia and Kosovo. 3. Everybody was slow to realize what was going on there until it was too late to stop it--even the media. Tribal conflict involving mass murder by juveniles with machetes is just not the kind of "war" that modern countries are familiar with. . . . Of course, Rwanda might have turned into another Lebanon, Somalia, or Iraq and we could have ended up with troops occuping Rwanda to this day, trying to stop a civil war between two groups that both hate us. Perhaps this was another good call by Clinton. We are not the world's policeman. Still, it might have been something we could have stopped. But Clinton took no chit from the Iranians, Iraqis, Libyans, Russians, or North Koreans that I'm aware of. You know, the traditional enemies.
Cparso, I'll will tell you the truth about military use during the Clinton admin., when I get a little time to type it. I was in for the last year, or so, of Bush 41, thru Clinton, and the first three years of the current pres. Red is way off base. I'll prove it later. Stay tuned.
>>Link<< Based on what I have read and heard, I agree with these two statements. Whether bin Laden wasn't viewed as a real threat by Clinton or he just didn't have what it took to go after him is debatable, but I don't believe he was actively pursuing the man. I think Bob Kerrey summed it up pretty well regarding both administrations when he said:
Then read Richard Clark's book, too. He was the terrorism expert for Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2. Both administrations could have done more but the key difference is 9/11 itself. Bush failed to pick up where Clinton left off when he took office. He took no action against Al Qaida until September 12, 2001. Before 9/11 bin Ladin had not attacked the US directly, only our overseas assets and he was just one of many islamic terrorist groups that had done that including the Libyans, Hezbollah, the Palestinians, etc. Clinton had at least attacked bin Ladin directly on two occasions and was prepared to do it again if intelligence presented him with a target. Clinton also hit four al Qaida targets in Sudan. LINK Clinton, according to Clarke, understood the gravity of the situation and became increasingly obsessed with stopping Al-Qaeda. He had developed workable plans but was hamstrung by political infighting and the sex scandal that led to his impeachment. But Bush and his advisers, Clarke says, didn't get it before 9/11 and they didn't get it after, taking a unilateral approach that seemed destined to lead to more attacks on Americans and American interests around the world. LINK The 9/11 Commission Report backed up everything Clark testified to. LINK "After launching cruise missile strikes against al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the embassy bombings, the Clinton administration applied diplomatic pressure to try to persuade the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to expel Bin Ladin. The administration also devised covert operations to use CIA-paid foreign agents to capture or kill Bin Ladin and his chief lieutenants." "During 2000, President Bill Clinton and his advisers renewed diplomatic efforts to get Bin Ladin expelled from Afghanistan. They also renewed secret efforts with some of the Taliban’s opponents—the Northern Alliance—to get enough intelligence to attack Bin Ladin directly." "The transition to the new Bush administration in late 2000 and early 2001 took place with the Cole issue still pending. President George W. Bush and his chief advisers accepted that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the Cole, but did not like the options available for a response. Bin Ladin’s inference may well have been that attacks, at least at the level of the Cole, were risk free." "During the spring and summer of 2001, U.S. intelligence agencies received a stream of warnings that al Qaeda planned, as one report put it, “something very,very,very big.”Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet told us,“The system was blinking red.” Although Bin Ladin was determined to strike in the United States, as President Clinton had been told and President Bush was reminded in a Presidential Daily Brief article briefed to him in August 2001, the specific threat information pointed overseas." -- 9/11 Commision Report Executive Summary
