Negligence: The Clinton Legacy On National Defense

Bill Clinton is back where he wants to be -- in the news; no doubt intent on developing a post-presidential image as one who is a far-sighted, wise First Citizen. This Tuesday, he took it upon himself to dispense advice to his party at the annual meeting of the Democratic Leadership Conference.

Clinton told the DLC that his party had a "heavy responsibility to cooperate in uniting this country on security issues." Certainly, any desire that Democrats have to display true bi-partisanship by working with President Bush on improving our national security must be welcomed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but I think we must see it occur before we can really believe it to be a sincere sentiment. Just think about how the Senate Democrats were willing to tie up the legislation establishing the Department of Homeland Security because they did not want to grant President Bush and the Administration flexibility in terms of administrative matters. The Democrats did this simply to please the unions representing government workers. It does not follow that what is good for the Democrat Party's coffers is good for our national defense.

There's a whole side to the Clinton legacy on national defense that should not be forgotten, and I am not talking about his disgraceful effort to avoid serving his country in uniform during the Vietnam War. That is well-known and makes many military veterans turn red with anger whenever they think that someone like him was ordering American troops into conflicts to brave the bullets that he once tried so hard to avoid having to face. Clinton demonstrated that their distrust and anger was well-placed by his actions in office. Not only did he demonstrate his lack of character; he also demonstrated his lack of concern about our nation's armed forces. His short-changing our national security represents his legacy too.

Recall, if you will, how Clinton's constant travels that took a big chunk out of the Pentagon's budget?

Thanks to the work of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, the actual tab of Bill Clinton's globetrotting is not just buried away in government reports and microfilm boxes of old newspapers, and on tapes of old TV newscasts. It's all there in an easily readable form on the SRPC's website.

In March 2000, the President, with Chelsea and his mother-in-law, took a trip to Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Oman, and Switzerland. The SRPC noted that both ABC News' World News Tonight and the Air Force Times estimated the cost of the trip at $50 million, a record for the cost of an overseas trip by a president. Used on the trip were 14 C-17 Globemaster IIIs, 12 C-5 Galaxys, 3 C-141 Starlifters, and 2 C-130 Hercules. A large number of other Air Force planes were to deploy.

"Ninety percent of the costs [cited by the World News Tonight anchor at $50 million] are for airplanes, drawn from an Air Force that is already stressed meeting military and humanitarian commitments overseas. When a President travels, all the public ever sees is Air Force One, but consider this: Seventy-seven other Air Force planes are being used on this one trip, including 26 of the biggest transports, C-5s and C-17s."

"Military sources say that represents more than one-third of the Air Force's entire inventory of these planes that are ready to fly on any given day."

When the President took trips in 1998 to Chile, China, and Africa, the tab came to $72 million. Over sixty million came from the defense budget.

One could argue that Bill Clinton's trips were related to official business. But it appears that what he really wanted to do was to take his own taxpayer-funded Cook's World Tour at the expense of the Pentagon budget. Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart said at a White House press briefing on October 19, 1999 that his boss had yet to visit Panama, then added: "There are a few places still left on the list he hasn't been, and we have 15 months to rectify that." If the defense budget was not so parched back then, then Bill Clinton's trips might not be an issue.

But people forget that we nearly ran out of smart bombs in Kosovo. The money that Bill Clinton took from the defense budget for his 1998 trips to Chile, China, and Africa could have purchased 3,000 smart bombs.

Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is as strong an advocate for military readiness as he is a tough critic of the Clinton legacy of negligence on national security. A simple chart that he uses shows the true Clinton legacy. If defense spending had kept pace with inflation during his years in office, the budget would have reached well over $300 billion during FY 2001. Instead, the defense budget in real spending dollars during his years in office falls consistently below the budget level of approximately $270 billion (measured in real spending dollars) that he inherited in 1993. Bill was a consistent opponent of missile defense, and did nothing of consequence when weapons inspectors were ejected by Iraq, or to prevent missile and weapons technology transfers by Red China to such bad-boy nations as North Korea, Iran, and Iraq.

And it may take some effort by Americans to recall that it was President Clinton who told the nation in a televised address in August 1998 that we needed to take on the bin Laden terrorist network. He ordered strikes against terrorist-related facilities after attacks on U.S. embassies.

"We will not yield to this threat," he proclaimed. But coming at the height of the controversy over Monica Lewinsky, the news media thought his actions resembled the scripting of the movie "Wag the Dog," staging military action to deflect attention from his personal problems at home. In retrospect, they were right because Bill's record on confronting terrorism -- or rather, his lack of one -- since that address, makes one wonder just how sincere and comprehending he was about the true threat of terrorism. Don't forget the attack on the USS Cole occurred two years after that address. Bill fired back words at our enemy, but failed to back up his talk with the only thing they would respect: real force. Perhaps Bill just lacked the "strength, courage, and endurance" to take real, hard-hitting action against our enemy. Those were the very qualities that Clinton said would be needed for our country to prevail over al-Qaeda.

Bill Clinton failed to take seriously one of his most important duties as defined by the Constitution; serving as the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces. We became a softer, weaker nation under Bill Clinton's leadership. We had prosperity, but Bill Clinton failed to spend our money wisely, neglecting to provide the funds needed to upgrade our armed forces and improve our intelligence capabilities.

Bill Clinton is pinning his hopes on Americans having incomplete memories. He wants us to remember the good times, associating the prosperity of the late 1990s with the handiwork of his Administration. However, the farther we move away from the days that Bill, Hillary and the whole gang of Clintonistas were in the White House, the more apparent the glaring deficiencies in his record become, particularly on national security.

It would be nice to think that Bill Clinton has finally come to recognize the true importance of national defense. But the question remains: Why was he AWOL so often on issues involving national defense during his presidency? Maybe it's because he was so busy taking trips at the expense of our armed forces when not fighting to save his own skin from an enraged Congress during his scandal-ridden presidency.

thx for the heads up!

Bill Clinton is pinning his hopes on Americans having incomplete memories. He wants us to remember the good times, associating the prosperity of the late 1990s with the handiwork of his Administration. However, the farther we move away from the days that Bill, Hillary and the whole gang of Clintonistas were in the White House, the more apparent the glaring deficiencies in his record become, particularly on national security.
It would be nice to think that Bill Clinton has finally come to recognize the true importance of national defense. But the question remains: Why was he AWOL so often on issues involving national defense during his presidency? Maybe it's because he was so busy taking trips at the expense of our armed forces when not fighting to save his own skin from an enraged Congress during his scandal-ridden presidency.
Some legacy, huh?

Negligence: The Clinton Legacy On National Defense

www.aim.org | December 6, 2002 | Paul M. Weyrich
Q ERTY6 utter failure BUMP!

There is a great deal of interest in how history is going to view Bill Clinton...Our first indication from the public does little to suggest that Clinton's image has become more positive in the 14 months since he left office. Just 51% of Americans now say they approve of the job Clinton did while in office, and a substantial 47% say they disapprove (the second-highest disapproval rating, behind only Nixon's). This marks a drop from the higher ratings he was receiving as he left office, and a slight drop even from his overall two-term average.

Clinton continues to drop in retrospective poll data. Only Nixon lower.

Gallup News Service

A C-SPAN survey of 58 U.S. historians has concluded that Bill Clinton is the president with the lowest 'moral authority' -- beating out Richard Nixon for last place, Monday's NEW YORK TIMES is set report.

----C-SPAN PRESIDENTS POLL: CLINTON JUDGED LOWEST IN MORALS

clinton's ranking will likely get worse over time. Economic issues fade in importance over time. Moral issues presist and grow. (paraphrase)

------Douglas Brinkley, history professor, on Washington Journal discussing C-SPAN poll

I think that history will view this much differently. They will say I made a bad personal mistake, I paid a serious price for it, but that I was right to stand and fight for my country and my constitution and its principles...

-----the First Psychopath

...[bill clinton], a man who will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest presidents.

-----Al Gore at clinton's post-impeachment rally

It is not the strength but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men.

-----Nietzsche

I suspect that, to spite us all, Arthur Schlesinger will live to 120
just so he can write the definitive clinton hagiography.

--------Mia T, Musings: Senatorial Courtesy Perverted


History Lesson by Mia T

Someone--was it Maupassant?--
once called history "that excitable and lying old lady."
The same can be said of historians.

Surely it can be said of Doris Kearns Goodwin,
the archetypical pharisaical historian,
not-so-latently clintonoid,
Lieberman-Paradigmatic
(i.e., clinton is an unfit president;
therefore clinton must remain president),
intellectually dishonest,
(habitually doing what the Arthur Schlesingers of this world do:
making history into the proof of their theories).

The Forbids 400's argument is shamelessly spurious.
They get all unhinged over the impeachment of clinton,
claiming that it will
"leave the presidency permanently disfigured and diminished,
at the mercy as never before of the caprices of any Congress."

Yet they dismiss the real and present--and future!!--danger
to the presidency and the country
of not impeaching and removing
this admittedly unfit, (Goodwin)
"documentably dysfunctional," (NYT)
presidency-diminishing, (Goodwin)
power-abusing,
psychopathic thug.

Doris Kearns Goodwin and those 400 other
hog-and-bow-tied-save-clinton,
retrograde-obsessing historiographers
are a supercilious, power-hungry,
egomaniacal lot in their own right.

For them, clinton validates
what Ogden Nash merely hypothesized:
Any buffoon can make history,
but only a great man can write it.

POSTSCRIPT:

Weekly Standard writer Tucker Carlson has dubbed Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz "loser of the week" for his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week. The New York Times described his testimony as "gratuitously patronizing."

"Why would Wilentz risk his reputation to join the already bulging ranks of Clinton throne-sniffers?" Mr. Carlson asked Marxist historian Eugene Genovese, who guesses that "the pressure of time and the passions of the moment" got to Mr. Wilentz.

"As for why anyone would cite the Framers in defense of Clinton, Genovese seems baffled" Mr. Carlson wrote.

Mr. Genovese told Mr. Carlson: "I come from a rather tough working-class neighborhood where attitudes toward women left a great deal to be desired. ... But if anybody had said in the local pool room" some of the things President Clinton reportedly did to Monica Lewinsky, "the attitude would have been, 'That's degenerate. You don't do that to a girl, not even a whore.' The idea that the United States of America, the supreme world power, would tolerate a man in office who is a palpable moral degenerate -- the Founding Fathers would have choked."

The Washington Times---Inside Politics

Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history

Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize

Bill Clinton may not be the worst president America has had, but surely he is the worst person to be president.*

---GEORGE WILL, Sleaze, the sequel

Had George Will written Sleaze, the sequel (the "sequel" is, of course, hillary) after 9-11-01, I suspect that he would have had to forgo the above conceit, as the doubt expressed in the setup phrase was, from that day forward, no longer operational.

Indeed, assessing the clinton presidency an abject failure is not inconsistent with commentary coming from the left, most recently the LA Times: "Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize."

When the clintons left office, I predicted that the country would eventually learn--sadly, the hard way--that this depraved, self-absorbed and inept pair had placed America (and the world) in mortal danger. But I was thinking years, not months.

It is very significant that hillary clinton didn't deny clinton culpability for the terrorism. (Meet the Press, 12-09-01), notwithstanding tired tactics (if you can't pass the buck, spread the blame) and chronic "KnowNothing Victim Clinton" self-exclusion.

If leftist pandering keeps the disenfranchized down in perpetuity, clinton pandering,("it's the economy, stupid"), kept the middle and upper classes wilfully ignorant for eight years.

And ironically, both results (leftist social policy and the clinton economy) are equally illusory, fraudulent. It is becoming increasingly clear that clinton covertly cooked the books even as he assiduously avoided essential actions that would have negatively impacted the economy--the ultimate source of his continued power--actions like, say, going after the terrorists.

It is critically important that hillary clinton fail in her grasp for power; read Peggy Noonan's little book, 'The Case Against Hillary Clinton' and Barbara Olson's two books; it is critical that the West de-clintonize, but that will be automatic once it is understood that the clintons risked civilization itself in order to gain and retain power.

It shouldn't take books, however, to see that a leader is a dangerous, self-absorbed sicko. People should be able to figure that out for themselves. The electorate must be taught to think, to reason. It must be able to spot spin, especially in this age of the electronic demagogue.

I am not hopeful. As Bertrand Russell noted, "Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. "

Mia T, hillary clinton blames hubby for terrorism: (SHE knew nuttin')
Meet the Press, 12-09-01

*George Will continues: There is reason to believe that he is a rapist ("You better get some ice on that," Juanita Broaddrick says he told her concerning her bit lip), and that he bombed a country to distract attention from legal difficulties arising from his glandular life, and that. ... Furthermore, the bargain that he and his wife call a marriage refutes the axiom that opposites attract. Rather, she, as much as he, perhaps even more so, incarnates Clintonism

Q ERTY3 co-rapist bump!

Q ERTY9

BUSH: "I will not wait on events, while dangers gather."

Q ERTY6

utter failure

Q ERTY8

_{rodham-clinton} ^{reality-check}

Democrat Debacle of '02

BUMP!

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