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HISTORY WILL SHOW CLINTON IGNORED TERRORIST THREAT One month after Bill Clinton took office, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center for the first time. Fearing he would be blamed for the event, Bill Clinton did not even visit the site of the attack. Terrorists would strike five more times during his tenure--two bombings in Saudi Arabia, two more at U.S. embassies in East Africa and a U.S. navy warship in Yemen. The Clinton Administration’s response paled in comparison. A bombed out empty terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and a factory in Sudan were all we had to show for the loss of life. Bill Clinton had little or no interest in foreign policy when he took office. In fact, it was widely known that Clinton’s own Director of the CIA never once even had a face-to-face meeting with the President. But given the obvious warning signs and outright attacks, why didn’t Bill Clinton do more as he grew into his presidency? For his part, Bill Clinton has already provided an ample supply of excuses--an unwilling public, the economy, bad intelligence, uncooperative Arab nations. None of them, however, will hold water in the final analysis. The core reason behind Bill Clinton’s failure to prevent the September 11 attacks can be pinned on his one overriding motivation—self-protection. Bill Clinton spent the greater part of his second term desperately trying to salvage his presidency in the face of impeachment. He had not the concentration, nor the interest, nor the will to pursue terrorism in any serious manner. Add to this Clinton’s laser-like focus on getting his wife elected to the Senate, Gore elected President and his obsession with the legacy-building mission for peace in the Middle East, and the picture becomes clearer still. A war on terrorism would have compromised all of these self-serving objectives. |
