Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Clinton-hatred explained
Jerusalem Post ^ | 9-26-03 | Bret Stephens

Posted on 09/26/2003 5:46:34 AM PDT by veronica

I saw Bill Clinton the other night, at the "after party" for Shimon Peres's 80th birthday. Little wooden doves of peace were mounted on poles; colored lights lit exotic foliage. Everyone was there: F.W. De Klerk and Pnina Rosenblum; Terje Roed-Larsen and Ron Lauder; Lord Levy and Achinoam Nini. Also, there was a young lady in a J-Lo number with glitter sprinkled suggestively from her sternum to her navel. But I didn't catch her name.

Anyway, Clinton was there. Already he had brought the crowd to its feet at the Mann auditorium in Tel Aviv, singing John Lennon's "Imagine" with a group of Arab and Israeli schoolchildren. (Imagine there's no countries/ It isn't hard to do....) Now he had something personal to say. He had been in Srebrenica the day before, he said. There he had met a woman who was burying her husband and six children. He told us to be mindful that ours was not the only country visited by horror. He told us that Peres was a man who knew that vengeance belonged to God, not man.

He said all this in a hoarse and mournful and significant tone of voice. I wanted to puke.

I BELONG to that camp of Americans known as "Clinton-haters." At The Wall Street Journal, I wrote Clinton-unfriendly editorials. On the day of his impeachment, I radiated joy. Once, over dinner at the Metropolitan Club, Jean Kennedy Smith told me I was mentally ill. Others have told me that Clinton-hatred is a sexual thing, mixing frustration, envy and dysfunction.

Maybe this is true, although the Lewinsky business never bothered me; there's something endearing about Bill's taste for zaftig women. But perjury is no less a crime than burglary, and there's no question Clinton perjured himself in his deposition to Paula Jones's lawyers. If you think Nixon deserved to go down, then so too did Clinton.

But that's hardly why Clinton-haters hate Clinton. The Clinton-lovers are right: l'affaire Lewinsky was just something we could nail him with. With a different president, a different man, we might have been tempted to join the camp of apologists in saying: It's just sex, and everyone lies about sex.

But Clinton was not a different man. To his supporters, he was the shaper of the new American center, the brightest Democratic light since John F. Kennedy, the toast of European elites. To people like me, he was a hollow and posturing and feckless man who embodied that side of America that was also hollow and posturing and feckless. And he was the bane of people for whom American fecklessness was a matter of life and death people like that woman in Srebrenica who buried her family.

Let me try to explain this in a way the Clinton-lovers might understand. In 1992, I voted for Clinton. I even persuaded my more conservative parents to do so as well. My arguments were, first, that Clinton was good for Israel; second, that he represented a sane version of the Democratic Party; third, that Bush didn't deserve to be re-elected; and fourth, that Clinton was the man who talked about "the high cost of remaining silent and paralyzed in the face of genocide."

This last item was especially important to me. Like so many young people at the time, Bosnia was one of those things I cared about at least in the way one "cares" about political things as a young man. It shamed me somewhat that the first Bush administration treated Balkan concentration camps as if they were none of America's concern. I wanted a president like Truman, a man who acted on humane instinct when his heartstrings were pulled.

That's not how it turned out. Clinton policy on the Balkans was indistinguishable from his predecessor's. "It's tragic, it's terrible," he said, "but their enmities go back 500 years, some would say almost a thousand years." Meaning, There's nothing you can do with these savages but let them go on slaughtering each other.

It was worse than that. In 1993, Clinton sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher to consult with the European allies as to what was to be done. Nothing was to be done, came the reply. So nothing was done. The UN had imposed an arms embargo on the former Yugoslavia. The Bosnian Serbs were amply supplied via Belgrade. The Bosnian Muslims were left to their own devices.

It was only in the summer of 1995 that Clinton began to take notice. UN peacekeepers were being held hostage by the Serbs, and it seemed Clinton would have to make good on a casual pledge he'd made to get them out. Meanwhile, so called "safe havens" like Srebrenica and Zepa were under siege from Serb militias. Jacques Chirac proposed to Clinton that French troops could be used to relieve the towns, but he needed American air lift. Clinton never acted on the suggestion. Seven thousand Muslims were murdered in a scene recalling the Katyn Forest. It was then that the US Congress under the leadership of those great ogres, Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich voted by veto-proof majorities to end the arms embargo. By autumn, the rearmed Bosnians and Croats had turned the military tide, and by year's end the Serbs had to sue for peace. The Dayton accords, which the Clinton administration cites as one of its finer achievements, served mainly to save the Serbs from complete military failure. So much for Bosnia. There was Rwanda, where the Clinton administration went to great pains to distinguish between "genocide" which they denied was taking place in Rwanda and "acts of genocide" which they acknowledged were taking place. This was in order to avoid having to intervene. There was Sierra Leone, where the Clinton administration's idea of diplomacy was to send Jesse Jackson to limb-chopper Foday Sankoh's political rescue. There was Kosovo, where Clinton did get round to doing the right thing, though he wouldn't hazard a single American life to do it.

None of these, I should stress, were necessarily bad policy. There are perfectly sound strategic reasons for the US not to wade into faraway ethnic conflicts. Nor is the fact that Clinton over-promised reason to hate him. Every politician does as much. President Clinton might even be praised for mastering the foreign policy prudence that Candidate Clinton lacked.

BUT CLINTON was a New Kind Of Democrat. Unlike Bush, he would not pay the "high cost of remaining silent and paralyzed in the face of genocide." Not only did he promise the most ethical White House in history, he was also going to pursue the most ethical foreign policy. These were pledges that, in 1992, won over political centrists like me.

But that's not what happened. And it didn't happen because there never was a "President Clinton." There were, instead, two incarnations of Candidate Clinton: first the challenger, then the incumbent. In both cases, no such thing as "policy" could be said to exist; Clinton moved where political convenience dictated. Among other consequences (not all of which were bad), one is the mass graveyard of Srebrenica, which Clinton with truly mind-boggling shamelessness now employs for rhetorical effects.

The late Jim McDougal, a partner of the Clinton's in the Whitewater real-estate deal, once observed that Bill and Hillary were "like tornadoes moving through people's lives." Maybe in Arkansas that was no big deal. In Bosnia it was.

Now, shall I explain again why I'm a "Clinton-hater."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: balkans
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-49 next last
To: veronica
Clinton is the ultimate career politician, a great reason for term limitations. Everything he did and said was to further his own political career. Nothing else mattered to him.
21 posted on 09/26/2003 6:30:21 AM PDT by tkathy (The islamofascists and the democrats are trying to destroy this country)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Joe Bonforte
I know the press is biased, but wouldn't you think they would throw it in every now and then to try and maintain some figleaf of pretended objectivity?

Not today's liberal American press.

Someday - probably after most of us are long gone - Revolutionary War II will likely start up against a socialist or even communist USA, fighting with arms that were cached before the gun-control freaks managed to grab them all. And I would fully expect the American Underground to direct covert operations against the liberal media apparatchik, among many others, as enemies of freedom.

Sort of reminds me of the old Patrick Swayzee movie Red Dawn.

22 posted on 09/26/2003 6:30:28 AM PDT by Marauder (If God lived on earth, liberals would sue Him.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Alberta's Child
Where are you seeing so much anti-Israel bias among conservatives? It seems to me so high ranking Liberals lately have been pulling out the anti Israel card?
23 posted on 09/26/2003 6:31:55 AM PDT by mdmathis6
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7
Is that the one where at the end, someone leaves the microphone on and everyone hears him bad-mouthing them?
24 posted on 09/26/2003 6:32:09 AM PDT by Marauder (If God lived on earth, liberals would sue Him.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7
You are spot on with that movie...I keep praying for the strategic open microphone. But that Ron Brown funeral video is consoling.
25 posted on 09/26/2003 6:34:12 AM PDT by lainde
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: Marauder
Is that the one where at the end, someone leaves the microphone on and everyone hears him bad-mouthing them?

Yes.

26 posted on 09/26/2003 6:35:05 AM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]

To: veronica
>>>>Bill and Hillary were "like tornadoes moving through people's lives." Maybe in Arkansas that was no big deal. In Bosnia it was. <<<<

It was in U.S. too. Clinton's support to islamists in Bosnia made 9-11 possible


27 posted on 09/26/2003 6:35:33 AM PDT by DTA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: veronica
In my best high school voice......well duh....like it took you a long time to notice.

Most of us knew Clinton was a bag of $hit from the get go, but we are glad to have one more media person on board. My only question is, why did it take Stephens so long to see through the veneer?

28 posted on 09/26/2003 6:35:47 AM PDT by irish guard
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: lainde
But that Ron Brown funeral video is consoling.

I know. Thank God for Rush.

29 posted on 09/26/2003 6:37:19 AM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: Maceman
The Lewinsky affair was a colossal risk to national security, and it is high time that people recognized it. "Just about sex?" I don't think so.

Thank you maceman. To compromise the highest office in the land, and arguably the highest office in the world for cheap sex and cigar tricks should IMHO cast this person into the deepest ranks of shame imaginable. Shame on those also who would foist this wretch to any position of respect.

30 posted on 09/26/2003 6:38:30 AM PDT by BigLittle
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Always Right
Why haven't I seen the term "Bush-hater" used by the media?

Because they'd have to look at themselves in the mirror.

31 posted on 09/26/2003 6:41:13 AM PDT by mhking (Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Kenny Bunk
... I find his piece most insincere.

Anybody who voted for the bastard from Arkansas in 1992 was and still is a shmuck. Bad enough if you voted for Perot but voting for Clinton in '92 deserves special allocades. Let Stephens look for sympathy somewhere else... he won't get a drop of it from me.

32 posted on 09/26/2003 6:41:55 AM PDT by johnny7 (“He was the first black president you know.”)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: veronica
A problem here on FR is that one can be vocally PRO-Israel, yet if they are not in favor of foreign aid there (or anywhere else) they get painted as a Pali sympathizer.
33 posted on 09/26/2003 6:45:30 AM PDT by Sloth ("I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" -- Jacobim Mugatu, 'Zoolander')
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: veronica; *balkans; vooch; Destro; Seselj; PiP PiP Cherrio; smokegenerator; boston_liberty; ...
I was always disturbed by the Wall Street Journal's editorial stance supporting Clinton's misadventures in the Balkans. This, at least, sheds some light on the subject.
34 posted on 09/26/2003 6:54:10 AM PDT by Incorrigible
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: veronica
Anyway, Clinton was there. Already he had brought the crowd to its feet at the Mann auditorium in Tel Aviv, singing John Lennon's "Imagine" with a group of Arab and Israeli schoolchildren.

Keith Olberman played a clip of this the other day. I thought clinton looked foolish. He clearly didn't know the words and was a beat behind the lead child singer as he sang "along". If it were our guy the clip would be shown over and over to show what a fake he is (which would be true), but since it's clinton...

Needless to say, Olberman didn't see it as fake, but charming.

35 posted on 09/26/2003 6:58:20 AM PDT by cyncooper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: veronica
With a different president, a different man, we might have been tempted to join the camp of apologists in saying: It's just sex, and everyone lies about sex.

Nope. I don't believe that for one second.

Doesn't this guy remember the several days of bunker mode? The mainstream media was clearly shocked, but since they liked him they were reluctant to move in for the kill, so they accomodated the clintons until their strategy finally was planned.

I say without hesitation that for a Republican the revelation would have resulted in the president resigning within days---at the behest of his own party, no less, and rightly so.

It's not that the sex was the only thing, but yet another layer of depravity in that administration.

36 posted on 09/26/2003 7:02:25 AM PDT by cyncooper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Maceman
Add in Monica being assigned to work at the Pentagon, for God's sake, and being given security clearance.

And she was just one of his paramours given a job in exchange for "just" sex.
37 posted on 09/26/2003 7:08:58 AM PDT by cyncooper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Sloth
"A problem here on FR is that one can be vocally PRO-Israel, yet if they are not in favor of foreign aid there (or anywhere else) they get painted as a Pali sympathizer."

That's an improvement from three-years ago when you'd get branded as an anti-Semite for saying the same thing.
38 posted on 09/26/2003 7:09:14 AM PDT by Rebelbase
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: veronica
Nice article but I think Edmund Burke said it better.
39 posted on 09/26/2003 7:09:22 AM PDT by KC Burke
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Alberta's Child
>>>>>>My arguments were, first, that Clinton was good for Israel . .<<<<<<<<

Yeah, right. And many Jewish Americans still believe in it. Along the drivel outlined in this article.

The hoax of 'poor innocent Bosnian muslims" was recycled with intifada.

"Clinton Says that Sharon provoked intifada
May 17, 2001 -- Ex-president Bill Clinton charged Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday with having provoked the intifada by visiting the Temple Mount last October. The Austrian news agency reported that Clinton made the remarks to reporters after speaking at a private conference in Vienna.

Jewish Americans also support Hitlery Clinton

Another good reason for it

40 posted on 09/26/2003 7:09:47 AM PDT by DTA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-49 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson