Posted on 08/29/2004 5:48:25 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
| Tuning into BBC Radio Ulster on Thursday morning, I experienced what can only be described as a 'Troubles' flashback. The newsreader announced shortly after 7am that Bill Clinton would be holding talks in Belfast later that day with the main political parties in a bid to boost the peace process. Clinton had travelled north following a triumphant visit to Dublin which included pressing the flesh with the Taoiseach and imploring northern politicians to reach a lasting settlement. His wife, Hillary, meanwhile, would be chairing a discussion between women from across the community before addressing an audience at the University of Ulster's Magee campus in Derry. How the Women's Coalition must have dreamt they were back in halcyon days. All that was needed was Van Morrison's 'Days Like These' and we would all be back in the summer of 1994. For a few minutes, there was an eerie sensation of being transported back to exactly 10 years ago when the world used to be interested in what happened in this small soggy northwest corner of the EU. An American President personally intervening in the dead pool of Northern Ireland politics; talks in Belfast perched on a knife edge and the world watching for an historic breakthrough that would shine as an example of peacemaking for other troublespots around the world. Just under an hour later, on the platform of Belfast Central Station, the sight of a dishevelled, open-shirted, tired looking but ultimately decent politician brought me back to the realities of the present day. Sean Farren was, until Stormont was suspended two years ago this autumn, a talented minister in the power-sharing executive. His SDLP used to be the leading nationalist force in northern politics as well as the party with the greatest moral authority in the province. Sean travelled around in ministerial cars surrounded by civil servants and briefing boxes. A decade on, his party has been supplanted by Sinn Fein while he is out of a job and has to go standard class to Dublin. The Clinton's magic no longer performs political miracles (if it ever did) and the only thing you can say about Bill and Hillary's love-in with Ireland is that wherever they go on this island the couple can be assured that the Irish media coverage will remain uncritical and fawning. Only Eamon McCann was prepared last week to break the cosy consensus and question the Clinton legacy regarding not only Northern Ireland but wider foreign policy. As with Mo Mowlam's supposed vital contribution to the peace process, the Clintons are given far more credit for securing some semblance of stability and compromise in the north than they deserve. Because, if you cast an objective eye on their record regarding Northern Ireland from the time of the first cease-fire to their exit from the White House, their achievements aren't so impressive. Take, for example, Clinton's first visit to Belfast and Derry in the late autumn of 1995. Behind the gushing media hysteria and the misty-eyed sentimentality of a populace made to feel somehow important by a presidential visit, there were several reminders that all was not well with the fledgling peace process. In the very days leading up to Air Force One touching down at Aldergrove Airport loyalist thugs beat a Catholic man to death in north Belfast's Waterworks simply because of his religion. Meanwhile, somewhere in deepest south Armagh, the IRA's top bombmakers were already planning for a spectacular strike on London that would kill two men and unleash a short but deadly resumption of Provo violence. Indeed, the IRA army council had already made its mind up to go back to 'war' prior to the Bill and Hillary show turning up at Belfast City Hall. If the Clinton magic really worked so many wonders, then why did the sectarian killings go on and the IRA's leading cadres risk incurring Washington's wrath by returning to 'armed struggle'? However profoundly you disagree with President Bush's decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, he is a President who means what he says. When al-Qaeda took American lives in east Africa, Clinton bombed a civilian pharmaceutical factory in Sudan; when bin Laden's terror network struck at the heart of the United States on 11 September, Bush toppled the Taliban tyranny. Where Clinton maintained a policy of economic sanctions that hurt ordinary Iraqis and caused no pain for the Saddam Hussein dictatorship, Bush heeded the call of the Iraqi opposition and overthrew the Baath regime. Eamon McCann quoted Norman Mailer last week, who famously quipped that with Clinton there was no bottom line. You may, like me, never dream of voting for Bush in a million of years but you've got to admit one thing - that, unlike Bill Clinton, at least Dubya has a bottom line.
|
He got a hummer.
Well,Clinton's aids group did lower significantly the price of aids drugs in Africa by putting together deals with Indian generic companies. The price for a years drug is now likke 50 bucks when it used to be thousands.My numbers are not right but the lowering is significant. And his group did that. He then lost interest and hasn't done anything else but I have to grant him that.
That said, he hasn't done much else that I am aware of other than enrich himself and travel around probably boinking everything in sight.
He dumbed down America even further than the DNC could have hoped.
Slowly but surely the scales are dropping from the eyes of the fawning. Soon everyone will know what we've known all along. Clinton never accomplished anything except conning people into believing that he did.
If the Legacy Squad has lost Norman Mailer, you can put a fork in ex-President Dickhead. He's done.
Clinton is like the hillbilly in the holler that tells everyone about how he's gonna fix up his beat up old Camaro that's up on blocks and make a race car out of it, and year after year it's still up on blocks rusting away.
Yes... That's our Bill.
Clinton engineered oil crisis last May [2000]
Like Jimmy Carter's a foreign policy based on self importance, self rightousness, and an absurd notion that soverign countries can be "talked" into settling problems. And, like Carter, every major summit was heralded by a fawning media and then ignored when in short order everything fell apart because neither party had a stake in the settlement.
I didn't realise Eamon McCann was still knocking about.
Not a bad piece from the Guardian, I suppose.
If Bush wins big and the Congress falls further into Republican hands, it will be on Clinton's shoulders.
LOL! But that's the plan. Destroy the 2 Johns and run Hillary in 2008.
Well put.
50 years from now the most popular relic of the Clinton era will be the blue dress.
And there's the rub. There are too many people out there who are so reflexively Democrat (or "progressive" in the author's case) that they don't even stop to analyize the values that are held and actions that are taken by the people running the party they support.
If the average American Democrat held their values up against the values of John Kerry and his colleagues, Bush would take 80% of the vote. But following what you have always done is easier than thinking.
He lowered the bar so Kerry has a chance.
Are you a frickin psychic or something? That's word-for-word, the first damn thing I thought when I read the headline. Co'workers are busting up big time!
Toon had UBL in his sights at least half a dozen times and let him get away unscathed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.