The great thing about Clinton's post-Presidency is that he is so willing to share his thinking which makes his shortcomings as a U.S. President transparent. I suppose these remarks will move him up Arthur Schlesinger's list of great Presidents, but only an intellectual could take these positions seriously.
Right after winning UN Security Council support in November for weapons inspections, the White House "sent 150,000 troops to the gulf, which convinced everybody we weren't serious about UN inspections. That's how we got into this political mess."
Would the inspectors even be in the country without the troops? Maybe Bush guessed that since the first 16 resolutions didn't work, the 17th wouldn't do any good either. So if Saddam won't behave with all of those troops breathing down his neck, we're to blame for not respecting their process. Could it be that some dictators won't respond to the diplomatic route?
The U.S. should be strengthening the UN and other "mechanisms of cooperation," Clinton said. "We need to be creating a world that we would like to live in when we're not the biggest power on the block."
You can get a lot of people to agree on anything, but the U.N. has shown that such agreement doesn't proceed to action. The United Nations is a great place to denounce the United States on one hand, and appoint Libya the Chair on the Human rights committee with the other.
Yeah, and let's make-believe that someday we will live in a world where the United States is some small country at the behest of other more important nations. This would be a great way to run foreign policy. Demur to the struggling and failing nations now and hope that they pat us on the head when we fall apart. And don't forget, that world can be ours if we continue to elect the kinds of Presidents that sell our missile technology to communist nations for political donations.
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