Make your selection: President Bush needlessly took us into an unwinnable
war in Iraq based on false intelligence, which he later hyped as
trustworthy, leading to the deaths (as of Sept. 8) of 2,656 service members
and the maiming of many thousands more; or, President Clinton was so
preoccupied with his groin, politics and legacy that it prevented him from
adequately responding to the growing terrorist challenge on his watch,
leading to the slaughter of nearly 3,000 Americans five years ago.
There is enough red meat in the release of the initial report by the U.S.
Senate Committee on Intelligence to support the conclusion about President
Bush for those who never trusted him and believe he was illegitimately
elected in 2000. And there is enough red meat in the two-part ABC miniseries
to support the second conclusion that President Clinton and his team fiddled
while al-Qaida plotted to burn down America.
Suppose both sides are right: President Bush is a liar and is so sick that
he would jeopardize American lives for an illogical crusade to establish his
view of democracy in a place that has known nothing but dictatorship, murder
and mayhem for as long as history has been recorded; and Bill Clinton cared
nothing about the safety and security of his fellow Americans and
deliberately put both in jeopardy in favor of personal gratification.
You have to be somewhat twisted to believe that any president cares so
little about his responsibilities and the trust and hopes the citizens place
in our land's highest office that he would let us down in such ways.
Neither position is completely credible, yet there are people on both sides
who embrace these beliefs. That is because the object of modern politics is
not to say and do things that benefit the country and promote the general
welfare but to gain or maintain political power. Gaining power, including
the means to getting it, is all that matters.
After Pearl Harbor, some questioned whether President Franklin D. Roosevelt
deliberately ignored warnings about the Japanese threat so he could use an
attack to isolate the isolationists and declare war not only on Japan, but
grant Winston Churchill's wish for the United States to join Britain in the
war against Hitler.