The
latest right-wing defense of Bush's Iraq folly is that even Bill Clinton believed he was a threat to world peace. In other words, the Dems are playing politics with their criticisms of the war... standing behind their party leader in 1998 and now flop-flipping on Bush on the same issue. Unfortunately for them, going back to 1998 doesn't paint their party in a very good light. As they say in sports journalism, let's go to the tape.
In December, 1998,
Clinton said:
"Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike
military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by
British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear,
chemical and biological weapons programs and its military
capacity to threaten its neighbors.
Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the
United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the
Middle East and around the world.
Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors
or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological
weapons."
This Argument from Clinton seems odd on its face. After all, for 8 years now all we've heard from the right is that Clinton is a liar (and sometimes we hear he's a murderer and rapist, but that's neither here nor there). For example, here's NRO's Jonah Goldberg, writing in 2000:
"Bill Clinton utters more lies than all the
boys on prom nights have ever uttered combined. He is a liar about all
things relevant, irrelevant, important, trivial, tasteful, distasteful,
big, small, medium, extra large, extra crispy, your way, my way, every
which way he can. He is a liar."
Now, he's the right-wing poster boy for The Iraqi Threat to World Peace and Harmony.
But let's go against every right-wing claim about the veracity of every last syllable out of Clinton's mouth and assume he was telling the truth about Iraq. How did the Republicans respond to this? Thusly:
"I cannot support this military action in the Persian Gulf at this
time. Both the timing and the policy are
subject to question."
"The suspicion some people have about the president's motives in this
attack is itself a powerful argument for impeachment. After months of lies, the president has given millions of
people around the world reason to doubt that he has sent Americans into
battle for the right reasons."
"It's certainly rather suspicious timing. I think the president is shameless in what he would do to
stay in office."
The first quote is from Senator Trent Lott, the second from former Senator Dick Armey, the third is from Tillie Fowler, a former Representative from Florida who passed away earlier this year.
Now, let me lay this out as a simply as possible. If Clinton was telling the truth then, then it naturally follows that Republican critics of Clinton's move to attack Iraq were putting politics ahead of national security and should have been voted out of office a long time ago.
Their likely response is to say that the Republican critics at that time were not disagreeing so much with the policy (even though Trent Lott himself said so quite unambiguously) as with the timing. In other words, yes, Saddam needed to be slapped, but that Clinton was arranging it to take some heat off of his Lewinsky problems. Even if that is true, so what? There were 5 years of economic sanctions and no-fly zones to put a crimp in Saddam's plans. It's quite likely that even if he was a real threat in 1998, he was nothing but a paper tiger in 2003.
Either way, the Republicans come off looking pretty bad.
Cross-posted at my blog: http://cathartidae.blog-city.com