Posted on 06/18/2013 3:34:32 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The ex-president's willingness to speak out on Syria spells disaster for Obama in more ways than one.
I wish that when President Bill Clinton started spouting off the other day about the need for President Barack Obama to intervene in Syria's horrific civil war or risk looking like "a total fool," Obama had followed the example set by his wife when she was recently confronted by a heckler. I wish that Obama had leaped from his bully pulpit, got in Clinton's face and silenced him with a withering put-down.
But of course, that didn't happen. Instead of resisting the intensifying pressure from political enemies like Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and ostensible allies like Clinton to take the first steps down the slippery slope to another quagmire in the Middle East, Obama caved.
Trapped by his own rhetorical warning that the Syrian government would cross a "red line" if it used chemical weapons against its opponents, Obama has authorized shipments of small arms to the rebels. That aid, the president's critics warn, is too little and too late to turn the tide against the Bashar al-Assad regime, which has backing from Russia, Iran and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah. His critics will now try to bully Obama into taking more drastic action, such as imposing a no-fly zone.
And the next thing you know, we may be up to our necks in another bloody and horrifically expensive Middle Eastern conflict that, as my Washington Post colleague Eugene Robinson warns, "will not end well."
What troubles me most about this slide into another potential disaster is what it tells us about Obama's lack of political strength. Less than six months into his second term, his presidency appears to be dead in the water.
(Excerpt) Read more at theroot.com ...
1) Clinton’s own words show his often expressed innate hostility to, and utter contempt for, the core principles of the American founding:
``If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.’’ -- President Bill Clinton, August 12, 1993
``The purpose of government is to reign in the rights of the people’’ –- Bill Clinton during an interview on MTV in 1993
``We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans…that we forget about reality.’’ -- President Bill Clinton, quoted in USA Today, March 11, 1993, Page 2A, ``NRA change: `Omnipotent to powerful’’’ by Debbie Howlett
“When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly… that they would work for the common good, as well as for the individual welfare… However, now there’s a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there’s too much freedom. When personal freedom’s being abused, you have to move to limit it.” – Bill Clinton, April 19, 1995
2) Clinton inevitably pursued his own political advantage at the expense of American interests and national security. Here is just one of many possible examples:
It is well documented that Clinton and the Democrats took illegal campaign money from groups and individuals tied directly to the Chinese People’s Republican Army. It is therefore not surprising that In January 1998 Clinton went against the advice of then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Pentagon experts by lifting long-standing restrictions against the export of American satellites to China for launch on Chinese rockets. Not only did he move control over such decisions from the more security-focused State Department to the Commerce Department, but he intervened in a Justice Department investigation of Loral Space & Communications, retroactively enabling Loral to sell critical missile technology to the Chinese. Interestingly enough, Clinton’s decision was made at the request of Loral CEO Bernard Schwartz, whose earlier $1.3 million campaign donation made him the single biggest contributor to the Democratic election effort.
The result, as stated eloquently by syndicated columnist Linda Bowles, was that “the Democrats got money from satellite companies and from Chinese communists; China got supercomputors, advanced production equipment and missile technology; Loral got its satellites launched at bargain basement prices . . . and the transfer of sensitive missile technology gave China [for the first time] the capability of depositing bombs on American cities.” Incidentally, Loral ultimately failed to benefit from this permanent injury to America’s security interests: in July 2003, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, and in order to raise cash was forced to sell its most profitable business – a fleet of communications satellites orbiting over North America.
3) On two occasions, Clinton used military action for the specific purpose of distracting the American public from the fallout of the Lewinsky affair:
• On August 20, three days after Clinton finally admitted publicly to the Lewinsky affair, the news media was poised to focus on that day’s grand jury testimony by Monica Lewinsky. That same morning, Clinton personally went on national television to gravely announce his bombing of a Sudanese “chemical weapons factory,” and a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. It was the first time most Americans ever heard the name of Osama bin Laden. The factory bombing in Sudan killed an innocent night watchman, but accomplished little else. It later was proven that the plant was making badly needed pharmaceuticals for people in that poverty-stricken part of the world, but no chemical weapons.
Several months later, the U.S. Center for Nonproliferation Studies, part of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, stated: "...the evidence indicates that the facility had no role whatsoever in chemical weapons development." Kroll Associates, one of the world's most reputable investigative firms, also confirmed that there was no link in any way between the plant and any terrorist organization. As for the Afghanistan bombing, it failed to do any damage at all to bin Laden or his organization. Clinton’s action was accurately characterized by George W. Bush when he said right after 9-11: "When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt.
Clinton’s pointless and murderous military actions did not make Americans safer that day, although they did destroy an innocent life, and for all the good they did certainly could have been delayed in any case. But they did succeed in diverting media attention from Lewinsky’s grand jury testimony for a 24-hour news cycle, which was the main point. So I guess, they weren’t a total loss.
•On December 16, 1998, on the eve of the scheduled House vote on his impeachment, Bill Clinton launched a surprise bombing attack on Baghdad. As justification for this exploit, he cited the urgent threat that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction posed to America, and the need for immediate action. Almost immediately, the House Democrats held a caucus and emerged calling for a delay in the impeachment proceedings. House minority leader Dick Gephardt made a statement: "We obviously should pass a resolution by saying that we stand behind the troops. I would hope that we do not take up impeachment until the hostilities have completely ended."
Conveniently, a delay so near the end of the House term would have caused the vote to be taken up in the next session – when the newly elected House membership would be seated with more Democratic representation, thereby improving Clinton’s chances of dodging impeachment.
The Republicans did, in fact, agree to delay the hearings, but only for a day or two. Amazingly, Clinton ended the bombing raid after only 70 hours -- once it became clear that in spite of the brief delay, the vote would still be held in the current session.
Once the bombing stopped, Clinton touted the effectiveness and importance of the mission. As reported by ABC News : “We have inflicted significant damage on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs, on the command structures that direct and protect that capability, and on his military and security infrastructure,” he said. Defense secretary William Cohen echoed the point: “We estimate that Saddam's missile program has been set back by at least a year.”
Whether or not one buys Clinton’s assessment of that mission, it is difficult to believe that its timing was so critical that it required commencement virtually at the moment the House was scheduled to vote on the impeachment. I think the most reasonable conclusion is that Clinton cynically deployed US military assets and placed military personnel in harm’s way for purely political reasons.
4) Clinton’s reckless sexual behavior was a threat to American national security:
Clinton and his supporters have been very effective in persuading large numbers of Americans that the Lewinsky scandal was “only about sex.” But I see a bigger issue here, because Clinton is on record as saying that he would have done anything to keep knowledge of the Lewinsky affair from becoming public.
To me, that statement raises a very serious question: What if, instead of sending her recorded Lewinsky conversations to Ken Starr, Linda Tripp had instead secretly offered them for sale, say, to the Chinese government? Or to the Russians? Or even to agents of Saddam?
What kind of blackmail leverage would those tapes have provided to a foreign government in dealing with America on sensitive trade, security or military issues? One of the few things Clinton ever said that I believe is that he would have done anything to keep the Lewinsky affair secret. Given his demonstrated track record of selling out American interests for personal or political gain (and there are more examples that I could have cited here), how far would he have gone in compromising America’s real interests in order to protect his own neck when threatened with blackmail?
Pretty far, I believe. Equally distressing is the prospect Clinton might, in fact, have succumbed to foreign black mail on other occasions in order to hide different sexual episodes that ultimately did not become public. There is no way to know, of course, but I prefer presidents for whom such a scenario is not a plausible possibility.
And don’t even get me started on the war crime in Kosovo.
During Bill Clinton’s 1999 NATO-led war in Kosovo – which according to some estimates cost as much as $75 billion – we bombed Belgrade for 78 days, killed almost 3,000 civilians, and shredded the civilian infrastructure (including every bridge across the Danube.)
We devastated the environment, bombed the Chinese embassy, came very close to engaging in armed combat against Russian forces, and in general, pursued a horrific and inhumane strategy to rain misery on the civilian population of Belgrade in order to pressure Milosevic into surrendering.
Why did we do all that? The US did not even have an arguable interest in the Balkans, and no one ever tried to claim that Serbia represented any kind of threat to our nation or our interests.
But for months the Clinton administration had told us that Milosevic was waging a vicious genocide against Albanian Muslims, and needed to be stopped. The New York Times called it a “humanitarian war.” In March 1999 – the same month that the bombing started – Clinton’s State Department publicly suggested that as many as 500,000 Albanian Kosovars had been murdered by Milosevic’s regime. In May of that year, as the bombing campaign was drawing to a close, Secretary of Defense William Cohen lowered that estimate 100,000.
Five years after the bombing, after all the forensic investigations had been completed, the prosecutors at Milosevic’s “War Crimes” trial in the Hague were barely been able to document a questionable figure of perhaps 5,000 “bodies and body parts.” During the war, the American people were told that Kosovo was full of mass graves filled with the bodies of murdered Albanian Muslims. But none were ever found.
The more they say the more we know them.
And the first rule of war is to know your enemy.
Shut up and zip up!!
Look at how much money Soros made on this. Then, you will understand why Hillary and Obama had to have a military intervention in Libya.
Wow! This guy, the author, is a freaking brainiac.
I’m impressed.../s.
Billions earned by defense contractors and firms in on the rebuilding. The boards of directors of those firms are all nwo.
Political lines redrawn according to nwo’s desires.
Bill Clinton is a Rhodes-scholar nwo type political operative.
Look up Cecil Rhodes and Fabians, Rothschilds.
New world order, new world order, new world order, new world order, new world order, new world order, new world order, new world order, new world order.
On top of that, he(Barry) doesn't seem to have any friends.
When you lie to everyone that befriends you, eventually there isn't anyone left to lie to.
This is the time when Obama's fellow Democrats ought to be rallying to his side. Instead, some of them, like a bombastic chorus of black left-wingers, are blasting him for not pushing a so-called black agenda that has absolutely no chance of being enacted. Others, like Clinton, are taunting him, suggesting that paying heed to widespread public opposition to deeper involvement in Syria would make him seem "like a total wuss."
That is not the kind of language politicians use about presidents they respect. That is not the kind of language used by politicians who believe that the support of the incumbent president would benefit the grandiose ambitions of their spouses. Nor is it the kind of language they use about presidents they fear. It is the kind of language they use when they, like proverbial rats, start running down the gangplank from a sinking ship.
Poor, poor Barry. Yesterday the toast of the town, today just toast.
Then people wonder why America is no longer the subject of history but has become the object of history.
I say let him keep talking. Foot-in-mouth disease knows no limits!
Fuel for the Hillary Express. There can not be two masters of the Democrat party, and Barack Obama will not be it.
(Disclaimer: I am a woman, a wife and mother, FWIW. Sexist language use doesn’t count)
This just proves, for all his multitude of faults, Clinton is not a p****y. BO, on the other hand, is.
Thank you for the two post recap.
If Hillary runs in 2016, we are looking at another 4-8 years of an unconstitutional Clinton “co-presidency”.
I scrolled down before posting to see if anyone else had figured it out. This was the opening shot in Hillary’s Presidential campaign. There will be more, much more.
Keep talking Bill, invite crazy Joe over for some beers.
Invite the UK Media.
Not scientific, but very accurate.
The probability of Clinton shutting up is equal to the probability of Obama manning up. Zero.
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