Posted on 11/22/2004 11:05:11 AM PST by mhking
Watching coverage of last week's dedication of the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., I was reminded once again that the Republicans are right.
It really is all Bill Clinton's fault.
And no, I'm not kidding.
One of the favorite debating topics among historians is whether great people change the course of world events, or whether world events create great people. For example, did the civil rights movement create Martin Luther King Jr., or did King's leadership create the civil rights movement?
There is also, however, a little-known third category, in which the course of world history is altered by what amounts to little more than an accident. The best example I can imagine occurred the night of Nov. 15, 1995, when Clinton was confronted in the Oval Office by a young woman bearing pizza, neither of which Clinton could resist. At that moment, I would argue, the course of world events was altered in ways we have only begun to realize.
For example, without that tawdry act of presidential self-indulgence nine years ago, we would not have 140,000 troops in Iraq today, struggling to pacify that brutal country. The more than 1,000 U.S. troops who have died in that fight so far would probably still be alive, many of them still in their civilian lives. The tragic events of Sept. 11 would still have taken place, but the international alliances that we need to combat and defeat international terrorism would today be in much better shape if Monica Lewinsky never had delivered that pizza. We would also have a military option in dealing with challenges in Iran and North Korea that is not available to us today, not with every available soldier already committed to Iraq.
All of that, just because Clinton did too have sex with that woman?
Yes. And the explanation is pretty straightforward.
First, the Monica scandal and subsequent perjury and impeachment tarnished not just Clinton, but everybody else in his administration as well. That included his vice president, Al Gore. Without that scandal, there is no question that Gore would have been elected the 43rd president of the United States. Even with that heavy baggage, he managed to win the popular vote.
Second, while a President Gore would certainly have gone after Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the wake of Sept. 11, there's no reason to believe that Gore would have used 9/11 as an excuse to launch an unrelated invasion of Iraq. There's not much room for doubt about that either. After all, Gore has been highly critical of the decision to invade Iraq, as have most members of what would have been his foreign policy staff.
All of that, I think, is absolutely certain. From there, if you choose, you can venture still further into probables and further still into possibilities. For example, if Gore had been president, he might have launched a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan instead of holding back manpower and other resources for later use in Iraq, as President Bush did. And if he did that, we might have succeeded in capturing or killing bin Laden.
Of course, none of this what-if history matters anymore. What's done is done. Nor am I trying to add to Clinton's already considerable burden by dumping this mess all on his shoulders. He had no way to foresee the serious consequences of his mistake that night, a mistake that had been made by countless people before him and countless people since. (Clinton did, however, know that he was president, and that he was risking much more than anyone else for his few minutes' gratification.)
It is also true that to get us into Iraq, a lot of other decisions had to be made by a lot of other people since November 1995. While Clinton has made this state of affairs possible; he did not by any means make it inevitable.
Still, it's remarkable to me how so much can be changed so quickly, how a relatively tiny little event can become an unexpected pivot point of world history, permanently altering millions of lives.
That weird thought crosses my mind every time I see Clinton, and I shake my head in wonder.
• Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Mondays and Thursdays.
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WILLIAM CLINTON
HILLARY RODHAM
JOHN KERRY
...were all on the side of our Terrorist Enemy, Communist Vietnam Dictator HO CHI MINH, and against US all during the the Vietnam War.
During the 1990's...
WILLIAM CLINTON
HILLARY RODHAM
...refused 3 free offers from the Sudan to give us our No. 1 Terrorist Enemy OSAMA bin LADEN on a Silver Platter, offers that would have prevented us from having to deal with him now after 1,000's have lost their lives here.
Remember the Lost and Suffering on September 11, 2001
http://www.TheAlamoFILM.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33
NEVER FORGET
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With all due respect you forgot the BARF ALERT!!!!
The hole in this logic is that Saadam was intimately tied to terrorism...
And the proof of this is where?
Oh yeah, funny how the writer doesn't mention how AQ grew in both numbers and strength under Clinton-Gore.
I don't have any respect for liberals who base all of their arguments on watery assumptions that have no basis in fact and that has always been Bookman's mo. He does too much of the 'everybody knows' crap.
There is enough illogic and unprovable stuff in this paragraph to choke a horse.
Six degress of idiocy.
The hole in this logic is that Saadam was intimately tied to terrorism...
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Actually, there are SO MANY holes in his logic, it is difficult to decide which one to drive the bomb-laden truck through!
Especially when there is plenty of reason to believe that Gore could have gone to war with Iraq for no reason at all (see Kosovo/Serbia for a good example of this during Clinton's second term in office).
I got my decoder ring, freeper handbook, and I've been flamed by just about everybody for something or other..... what am I missing???
For example, if Gore had been president, he might have launched a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan instead of holding back manpower and other resources for later use in Iraq, as President Bush did. And if he did that, we might have succeeded in capturing or killing bin Laden.
QUOTE
This is nuts. You don't need 120000 troops to catch one person. Just a few Navy Seals and INFORMATION where he is. We'll get the SOB. Stupid writer!
Well, I think the pajammahadeen don't take ANY restrictions (even those merely implied tongue-in-cheek from a counter-point post) on their FReeping lying down.
BTW - did you get the new, super-secret digital encoding/analog decoding (DE/AD) ring??? ;-P
Gore is a product of '3 missiles and you're out' school of x42i and a certain aspirin factory. His war would have lasted 2 days and we would have lost.
Then, obviously, Lieberman would have spiked his ice tea, took over, executed Yes-sir Youarafat, nuked Iraq and gave it to Israel.
Obviously. :-)
Thank God, liberals are no longer in charge. If you want to see what happens to a country with liberals in control with a RINO in lead, look no further than California. Now they are thinking of taxing us for the miles we drive......God help us, if they figure a way to tax us for sunny days....
Yes, but I got the one with the flip-top make-up kit by accident. :-(
I agree. This is good one. This anti Clinton, anti Bush pro Gore article that is pure unadulterated Irish BS.
I agree only with the premise that Clinton is to blame for the death 3000 American on 911 and state of islamic terrorism in the world pre Bush.
However, I would venture to say that the decline started in the Carter administration that allowed Islamic extremists to take root in Iran and other countries.
nick
No doubt. However the short-sighted MSM would *never* so much as imply that trouble was brewing back then - and on a dimrat president's watch, no less.
Nope. Instead, we have to put up with mindless drivel such as this article passed off as being a journalistic cutting-edge epiphany.
As soon as I saw the name of the newspaper, I quit reading.
Only in hindsight and only in an attempt to damage Bush. He supported intervention in Kosovo after all and there was less justification for that than there was for intervention in Iraq.
Gore would have gone after Bin Ladin? I doubt that very much
Red
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