Hillary, Bush, and Obama

It is almost too easy to write about Hillary Clinton these days but I'm going to take a swing at her, anyway. Her current attack against Obama says, "We've seen the tragic result of having a president who had neither the experience nor the wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security. We can't let that happen again."

Obviously she means President Bush but her statements could as easily refer to her husband. Bill's foreign policy mistakes are many. His abrupt pull-out from Somalia convinced terrorists that America was a hollow tiger, easily bested. He blustered when Saddam expelled the UN weapons inspectors but only backed up his threats with a missile barrage. This left Saddam convinced that Bush would limit himself to a missile attack which Saddam could survive. When Clinton took office, relations between Israel and the Palestinians were getting better. In 1999, Clinton tried to push both sides to sign a final peace treaty containing terms that were unacceptable to elements on both sides. The result of this was a renewed violence that has yet to run its course. The AIDS crisis in Africa waited for funding until the Bush administration. I could go on.

As for national security, under Clinton the different branches of national security were walled off from each other. This was a big factor in 9/11. Clinton reacted to a bombing of the World Trade Center and US embassies in Africa as an annoyance rather than a pattern of escalating attacks.

But this is the model that Hillary would like to return us to.