Wag this

[avram]

Richard Clarke is fighting back against the Bushies’ smear campaign:

"If Condi Rice had been doing her job and holding those daily meetings the way Sandy Berger did, if she had a hands-on attitude to being national security adviser when she had information that there was a threat against the United States ... [the information] would have been shaken out in the summer of 2001," he told King.

And this is something I’ve been wanting to hear for a while:

"The Clinton administration failed to bomb the [al Qaeda] camps that were in Afghanistan, that we knew were there," Clarke said. "Clinton bombed them once. The public reaction was negative to that. ... Everyone said Clinton's just bombing Afghanistan to divert attention from the Monica [Lewinsky] business, and so he didn't bomb them again.

"That was during a time when they were turning out thousands of trained terrorists. It was an assembly line."

I want that printed out and stapled to the forehead of everyone who ever claimed Clinton was “wagging the dog” when he had that attack launched against bin Laden.

Comments

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Sorry, Avram, I still think the timing was to wag the dog. Yes, maybe he should have bombed more. Maybe he should have bombed sooner. It's even possible, despite what Clarke says, that those weren't places worth bombing at all. But Clinton chose to bomb once and only once, and I don't think the timing was a coincidence.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Here's an Against All Enemies quote, provided by Slate:

Responded to the African embassy bombings with strikes on terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a chemical plant in Sudan, even though he anticipated criticism for the timing. (The strikes took place on Aug. 20, 1998, at the height of the Lewinsky scandal.) According to Clarke, Clinton said: "Do you all recommend that we strike on the 20th? Fine. Do not give me political advice about the timing. That's my problem. Let me worry about that."

Doesn't prove anything, of course, but it's suggestive.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

It would be a stronger suggestion to me if it hadn't worked for Clinton to change the conversation. "Sure, the timing is my 'problem', heh, heh".

I wasn't 100% convinced it was wag the dog before, and I'm less sure now, but I'd still bet it was a factor.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I never quite understood the "wag the dog" claims anyway. Clinton could count votes just as easily as I can; he was never going to be *successfully* impeached anyhow, so what functional good was this particular distraction supposed to produce? Mr. Clinton was many things, but stupid doesn't number among them.

[acrobatty.livejournal.com]

But close votes are embarrassing. Nah, ok, probably not.

I admit, to my shame, I thought "wag the dog" at the time on those bombings, mostly because Al whatta? Osame bin whodat? The PR on this sucked. Admittedly the Bushies had the world's most horrific special effect to start their anti-AQ campaign, but I can't help thinking that the Clinton team could have gotten the word out better beforehand. That it didn't was, I suppose, part of Clinton's usual wish to keep all options as open as possible until the last moment -- if he had publicized the threat, he would have HAD to do something about it, whereas if he let it stay wonkbait, he could do or not do as the situation warranted in his opinion moment to moment.

Now that I think of it, I wonder how much of the public's general lack of awareness of Clinton's policy efforts was the result of this sort of effect? Clinton supposedly invented the "permanent campaign" strategy, but Bush does it much better.