Well, I didn’t vote for Clinton. I never supported the airstrikes in Serbia either. Not only that, but Clinton was exceeding his Constitutional authority at the time. My only regret is that the American people chose such a President to lead my country.
So I reject the idea that I or some conservative President succeeding Obama can’t take the moral high ground because someone we never supported did something we never supported. Reagan didn’t let Carter’s old policies tie up his Presidency, Bush didn’t get strung up by Clinton’s misdeeds, and neither will I.
In my view, only Constitutional treaties and legislation ratified by Congress and signed by the President are not transcient between Presidential terms. Clinton never got Congress’s permission for Kosovo, he just invoked executive authority and did it himself. Breaking the War Powers Resolution passed by Congress along the way.
He also ignored Congress and intervened abroad repeatedly even when Congress explicitly told him not to. Haiti, anyone? Clinton was acting unconstitutionally beyond the Powers he was granted upon electoral victory. Because of this, I wouldn’t feel duplicitous at all supporting a different President who did everything he could to stop other countries from doing what Clinton and Obama did.
I fully expect a future conservative President to refuse to apologize for past Presidents and do whatever he can to stop countries from supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, support the return of secularism in the Middle East and prevent other countries from doing their own Kosovo’s and Arab Springs.
Would it seem duplicitous on the part of the United States when just a few years ago, the United States itself was doing the opposite of these things? I would say...not at all. Because the President was abusing his authority, lacking Constitutional power or explicit permission from Congress to do what he did. On top of that, conservatives never voted for him, nor did conservatives ever support what he did.
There is one massive problem here. While you are free to reject the idea all you like, All the countries that Bill and Barry hosed ARE NOT rejecting it. And they, not Americans, are what matters in this scenario.
Here is just one simple example. Somewhere in the world exists a tiny muslim nation that never attacked America. In actuality there are several. Are you (not personally, I mean the general ‘you’) going to trust them? Ever? Why not?
Well, if you are thinking straight, you say to yourself “Their loyalty id to the Koran’s teachings and in the future, the Sultan of Good Feelings may be replaced by another Ayatollah type.
Every other country in the world now looks at America and thinks just what the Polish newspaper writer said. “The problem is with the people who would elect a “Barack Obama”. They see clearly that America of the modern age is not the America of the Reagan age. They see a country that cheers people because they are gay and fires them for harsh language. They see our leaders lie to the world blatantly on any number of subjects. they know that the likelihood of an end to NSA spying is zero regardless of who is in charge.
Who in their right mind would trust us now? Who? We keep screwing allies like Canada and forcing the Ghey on others under threat of foreign aid, regardless of their cultures. We keep electing lesser evils that stand for winning and nothing more when we don’t choose the lesser evil to begin with. We have a congress that is rated below the media by the people that elected it. We don’t trust ourselves. How in Gods name are we supposed to think anyone would trust us?
It would take a looooong time to even get back to break even. I don’t know if we can ever even get back to where we were under Bush, much less Reagan. And it is meaningless to think just because we want something to happen, that it will because we say so.
Actions have consequences even for us.