The quiet war that wasn't (Clinton's quiet war on terrorism)

Precisely because interpretations of the past are crucial to the outcome of political struggles in the present, we shouldn't be surprised that efforts to airbrush the Clinton administration's record regarding terrorism are already under way.

On such effort, by Barton Gellman of The Washington Post, even surfaced in the pages of this newspaper last Sunday.

Under the headline "Clinton's quiet war on terrorism," Gellman attempts, in considerable detail, to acquit the former administration of the frequently heard charge that it failed to take the terrorist threat seriously enough.

To the contrary, according to Gellman, Bill Clinton and his advisers conducted a concerted, behind-the-scenes campaign against Osama bin Laden and terrorism in general throughout their final years in office. a campaign characterized by "long shots and near misses" brought on by intelligence constraints and the wily nature of their quarry.

Go behind the headline gloss, though, and you discover that Gellman's reporting actually amounts to yet another case of damning with faint praise, an effort at exculpation that ultimately only further incriminates.

The tip-off comes early in the article, when he writes that "Reluctant to risk lives, failure or the wrath of brittle allies in the Islamic world, Clinton confined planning for lethal force within two significant limits. American troops would use weapons aimed from a distance, and their enemy would be defined as individual terrorists, not the providers of sanctuary for attacks against the United States."

Translated, what this means is that the Clinton team fought its "war" against terrorism with one hand tied behind its back, refusing to expend significant diplomatic or political capital; to run risks that implied the possibility of casualties; or, most inexplicable of all, to hold responsible governments that violated international law by allowing their territory to be used for terrorist attacks against Americans.

That last error is highlighted as Gellman's account traces the growing frustration experienced by Clinton over the Taliban's sheltering of bin Laden.

By the spring of 2000, with other tactics having failed, the administration began warning the leaders of the Taliban that they would be held personally responsible for any attacks against the United States carried out by al-Qa'ida. Alas, when those threats were contemptuously ignored, and bin Laden's deadly activities continued largely unhindered, Clinton simply stood down and contented himself with issuing what one official refers to as verbal scoldings.

Thus was committed that most egregious of diplomatic sins, the issuing of threats which were never intended to be carried out.

Having initially ruled out the taking of action against governments that harbored terrorists, even governments as viscerally anti-American as the Taliban, Clinton was left with no choice but to fight a quiet war against terror that really was no war at all.

More damning still, Gellman quotes the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, to the effect that "Absolutely nothing prevented us from running the kind of operation we're running now, if there had been a commitment to do that."

The Clinton administration officials interviewed by Gellman cite the same basic factor in explaining this failure of resolve--that the political and diplomatic support for a more active policy simply didn't exist before Sept. 11.

Fair enough, and true as far as it goes. But it must also be remembered that it is the unique responsibility of leadership to make an effort to muster popular support for policies that are in the national interest, and to actively defend American security by convincing our enemies that the threats we make should be taken seriously.

The support for a war against terrorism wasn't there, in other words, because the highest officials of the Clinton administration, from the president on down, never tried to build it. Our enemies in Kabul didn't take our threats of force seriously because those threats were never serious in the first place, leaving one to wonder how much of the Taliban's apparently illogical intransigence in the face of pre-war ultimatums from the Bush administration stemmed from the low estimate of Washington's credibility they had acquired from its predecessor.

Thus, as long as Dick Morris said that talking tough and doing nothing would keep the poll numbers high, then that is what happened. And so, too, did the tragedy of Sept. 11.

Good article. Thanks for posting.

Something that interests me and pleases me is that Clinton has become pretty much irrelevant and ignored in a fairly brief period of time. The only peole who seem interested in him are the true believers who love him no matter what, and those like me who dislike him so much and just can't forget or let go.

the political and diplomatic support for a more active policy simply didn't exist before Sept. 11.

This argument really frosts me. When Dick Morris told Clinton that the American public would not support him lying under oath in the Lewinsky scandal, Clinton's well documented response was: "We'll just have to win then." As a result, the Clinton war room crafted and implemented a media blitz of such stunning power and audacity that within a few months the American people were saying "it's only lying about sex," and giving Clinton 60% support in the polls.

So when the support wasn't there for him to use any kind of sleaze to save his own sorry ass, somehow he found the "leadership" to create the support.

But when it came to saving the US from terrorism, the supposed "lack of support" was an insurmountable obstacle for making a case to the public and doing the right thing.

I long ago ran out of words to express the depth of my contempt for Bill Clinton and those who support him.

I read as much of the WP series as I could. A great deal of the excuses were that so and so in treasury or DOJ … opposed it. And most of the so and so's and Departments were in the executive branch!

In other words, and this was not made plain, the excuse was that the president didn't have power over his own administration. He couldn't lead his own subordinates.

The only war Clinton ever engaged in was the war against women and America for the gratification and protection of his own little penis. He is a twit. He is not a man, by any decent definition. I long for the day I can piss on his grave.

Thank God the adults are in charge again. (BTW: Neville Powell has to go!)

This argument really frosts me.

is it the corona, or was the wtc hit earlier, before 9/11/01, say, during the clinton administration? am i wrong? or was it a dream, nightmare? perhaps i am "misremembering."

I long ago ran out of words to express the depth of my contempt for Bill Clinton and those who support him.

As you say. It burns me up to read Dick Morris's latest complaints that Clinton neglected the war on terrorism. Of course he did. And Morris was among those who aided and abetted him. As was Shelton, quoted here. As was virtually every news reporter who considered himself to be in the "mainstream."

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