Decision ‘08

Clinton, Osama, Somalia, and Greenwald

The MinuteMan ties them all up in a nice, neat package in not one, but two, of the kind of posts that made him famous. Go ye therefore and educate yourself…

5 Responses to “Clinton, Osama, Somalia, and Greenwald”

1 Fargus Says:
September 26th, 2006 at 8:29 am
Not to be completely dense, but isn’t there quite a difference between “Osama Binladen, a wealthy Saudi citizen and former Afghan revolutionary” and “The guy who pulled off 9/11″? In other words, is it entirely fair to ask the question the way Wallace did, not just with the benefit of hindsight about whether we could have gotten bin Laden, but about bin Laden’s relative importance as it was known at the time?
2 Mark Says:
September 26th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Bin Laden quite publicly declared Jihad on America on national television in 1998; he bombed two embassies in Africa, killing dozens. True, these events pale next to 9/11, but he was already a well-known threat…
3 Dmac Says:
September 26th, 2006 at 9:35 am
If Wallace had been completely thorough, he would’ve asked Clinton about his non - response to the bombing of the WTC back in ‘93. Perfectly legitimate question, but one that probably would’ve given Clinton a massive coronary.
4 Fargus Says:
September 26th, 2006 at 11:57 am
I was talking about in 1993, with the Somalia incident, Mark. Which your beloved Minuteman cites extensively.
5 Mark Says:
September 26th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
My mistake…look, I don’t pretend that Clinton realized how big a threat Osama was - no one did. We knew he was a threat, but we obviously didn’t anticipate 9/11. Many Republicans are trying to rewrite history, and so is Clinton. I just hate to see an ex-President suffer from insecurity to the point that he has to respond to digs from bloggers and the like with an obviously staged PR offensive to defend his pretty poor record on terrorism.

I have the book the MinuteMan refers to elsewhere, by David Halberstam, whose entire focus is the foreign policy of the Clinton Administration and the early Bush Administration pre-9/11. And his observation is dead on:

…I will take this opportunity to repeat what I think was my only original contribution to this sprawling brawl about Clinton’s priorities - Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam delivered “War in a Time of Peace - Bush, Clinton, and the Generals” in May of 2001. Although he covered Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, there is not a hint of a mention of Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden. That suggests that, in all his digging and interviewing on the topic of Clinton at war, Halberstam never uncovered Clinton’s war on terror, or did not experience Clinton’s people pounding the table and emphasizing its importance.

David Halberstam is a journalist of considerable prestige and access…if he could do a five-hundred page book on the subject and not mention bin Laden, as the MinuteMan notes, it can hardly have been the huge priority Clinton would now like us to believe it was…