Chris Wallace interviewed Bill Clinton, a taped interview that aired on Fox News Sunday this weekend. The interview started out well enough, until Wallace asked a seemingly innocuous question about President Clinton's counter-terrorism strategy (specifically, why he didn't do more to capture or kill Osama bin Laden) - a question that, according to Wallace, was posited by many viewers who emailed in to Fox News, and in truth, it was a question that many conservatives and neo-cons have been asking, especially since so many liberals have laid so much of the blame for 9/11 squarely on the shoulders of President Bush. Clinton responded with beligerance and anger, calling Wallace's question a "conservative hit job" and saying that he was just doing Fox News' bidding in an attempt to prevent conservative viewers from leaving because of Rupert Murdoch's support for his stance on global warming. He also claimed that he had done all that he could to get bin Laden, but that his hands were tied by the CIA and FBI (two agencies which, by the way, answer to the authority of the President).
Clinton alleged that the demotion and subsequent firing of Richard Clarke was a major failure of the Bush administration's strategy to combat terrorism, and recommended the reading of Richard Clarke's book...but unfortunately for Clinton, Clarke's book has largely been discredited - in some cases by Clarke's own statements (by the way, a great book to read about Clinton's presidency is Dereliction of Duty by Col. Buzz Patterson). Clinton also alleged in the interview that he had left a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy when he left the White House, including plans to invade Afghanistan and remove the Taliban...something that Condi Rice publicly disputed. The interview wherein Rice disputed Clinton's claims was very telling: Rice disputed Clinton's claim that his administration left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy, and placed the blame for 9/11 on the shoulders of the terrorists, rather than on any American administration, saying, "When are we going to stop blaming ourselves for the rise of terrorism?"
The real question about Clinton's interview is, just what did Bill Clinton accomplish? To the hard left, Clinton handed Wallace his own head on a silver platter. To the hard right, Clinton came unhinged. Personally, I believe that Clinton did try to stop bin Laden. He should have done more, but it's inaccurate to say that he didn't do anything. In this interview, though, he came across as defensive and paranoid - Wallace and Clinton were getting along fine as the interview started, and Clinton seemed to get offended just a little too quickly when Wallace asked the question about bin Laden. Through the course of his response, Clinton basically accused Wallace and Fox News of being part of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," along with ABC, who a week or two ago showed their "Path to 9/11" mini-series, the release of which was strongly opposed by Clinton, Madeline Albright, and others, who alleged that it was full of lies. According to Col. Buzz Patterson, who carried the "nuclear football" for Clinton, however, the ABC mini-series was fairly accurate (at least, the parts that he had personally witnessed), and was actually kinder to Clinton than the full truth would have been.
There is a lot of speculation out there over just what happened with Clinton - just what set him off. As a conservative, and decidedly not a fan of Bill Clinton, I want to believe that his paranoia was real. Whether it was or not, I cannot say for sure. But the exchange came across to me as being manufactured - Clinton took too much offense too quickly to be sincere, which leads me to think that he's playing popularity games with the liberal base, possibly to win points for Hilary's run in '08, as well as trying to heal his image after the ABC mini-series...unless he really does believe in a "vast right-wing conspiracy," in which case he was being sincere, and he really is a liberal wack-job. With people as politically ambitions and slippery as the Clintons, it's hard to tell just what they're doing until it's already been done - but regardless, Clinton's anger and spin reflected poorly on him with nearly everyone except the left-wing kook base.
Hilary Clinton has come out stating that her husband's vitriol shows that Democrats are going to stand up to these kinds of attacks (though, ironically, they expect Republicans to stand there and take harsher attacks than that), and that the 9/11 Commission Report documents how President Clinton stopped terrorist attacks. Question for Mrs. Clinton: which attacks were these? Perhaps the USS Cole? The Beirut barracks? Or maybe it was the Khobar Towers? There is only one documented case of a foiled terrorist attack during the Clinton administration that I can think of: the attempted bombing of the World Trade Center. And then, the only action that was taken was the prosecution of the bomber.
When it gets right down to it, the Clinton presidency was a failure when it comes to fighting terrorism. Instead of reacting to the many terrorist attacks by killing the terrorists behind the attacks, the Clinton administration tried to criminally prosecute the perpetrators of those attacks. Then, they have the audacity to blame the Bush administration for failing to prevent 9/11, when Clinton had been in office for eight years, compared to Bush's eight months - eight months that were largely spent repairing the damage done to the White House when Clinton left, and trying to get cabinet appointments past Congressional Democrats' obstructionism. Bill Clinton was in office twelve times as long as George W. Bush, and was more focused on the economy and philandering (and then perjuring himself about his philandering) than he was on battling terrorism. Now, he is trying to re-write history - probably because he knows that the attacks on his presidency are accurate, and that isn't how he wants to be remembered.
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