Monday, September 25, 2006

Clinton & Wag The Dog   [Jonah Goldberg]

Glenn Greenwald comes back with a list of conservatives and Republicans who floated the wag the dog scenario over at Salon. As annoying as I think Greenwald is, I have to say it's a good list. And, as I suggested this morning , I think I overstated the case yesterday. But Greenwald overstates his (very one-sided) case. Some of Greenwald's quotes simply point to the fact that the perception Clinton was wagging the dog were in the air and were the unavoidable consequence of his own behavior. Indeed, the quote he starts with from our own Byron York simply states as much.

"Instead of striking a strong blow against terrorism, the action [launching cruise missiles at Osama bin Laden] set off a howling debate about Clinton's motives. The president ordered the action three days after appearing before the grand jury investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair, and Clinton's critics accused him of using military action to change the subject from the sex-and-perjury scandal — the so-called 'wag the dog' strategy."

Greenwald would have us believe that "Clinton's critics" were all Republicans and conservatives, when that was hardly the case. Mainstream media outlets were raising the issue as were leftists like Christopher Hitchens, Maureen Dowd, and those famous rightwingers at the Daily Show. The New Republic's editors suggested that Clinton — finally! — took the threat from Iraq seriously because of the impeachment threat:

Fine, then. Wag the dog. And keep wagging it, until the real peril has passed. If it was the prospect of impeachment that emboldened President Clinton finally to make war against Saddam Hussein's ability to make war, then the prospect of impeachment will have been morally and strategically serendipitous.

Katha Pollitt wrote in the Nation that "wag the dog" jokes were a staple of every Christmas party. I don't think she went to a lot of Christmas parties at Human Events and the NRA. The New York Times' Bob Herbert said such thereories were "rampant." Frank Rich's defense of Clinton against the charge was hardly encouraging: "Are we really certain that Mr. Clinton did not bomb Afghanistan, Sudan and Iraq to deflect his political woes? (We must be; if he did wag the dog, it's not only a high crime but a potentially apocalyptic flaw in our system.)" At least National Review flatly called such accusations too "cynical." The Nation's editors wrote in response to the Sudan and Afghanistan bombing:

The military action ordered by President Clinton must be unequivocally condemned. Such "demonstration strikes," aimed at satisfying the public's and the pundits' demand for revenge and action, have negligible military value. The Soviets spent years trying to wipe out the same camps targeted by our one missile strike.

These sorts of actions not only invite retaliation, they elevate the intended targets to the status of mythical heroes of resistance, isolating moderates and undermining their careful attempts in Iran and elsewhere to move their nations a step back from militant theocracy. American pundits might downplay any Wag the Dog implications of these attacks, but what other conclusion can millions of ordinary Muslims reach than that Clinton was trying to divert attention from his domestic woes?

Most important, the unilateral missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan are illegal and immoral—violations of international law and the UN charter. They reinforce the notion that Washington considers itself Cop of the World, a rogue superpower appropriating the right to bomb anyone at will. This ties in with US maneuvers this summer to sabotage the founding of an effective international criminal court, despite the wishes of the majority of the UN General Assembly.

This raises a more basic point about the 1990s. The divide over foreign policy did not cut into neatly Republican versus Democrat, conservative versus liberal categories. Recall that Bill Clinton got NAFTA passed thanks to the heavy lifting from Republicans. And Bob Dole was a hero for his chiding of the Clinton Administration to do more to intervene in Yugoslavia. The Weekly Standard, National Review and The New Republic supported Clinton foreign policy interventions, for the most part (Haiti notwithstanding). The criticism from these quarters were basically grounded in the idea that Clinton wasn't enough of a hawk. Figures as dissimilar as Charles Krauthammer and Pat Buchanan dissented from this school. Meanwhile, on the Left the folks at the Nation opposed Clinton's too meager interventions on the grounds that they were too imperialistic.

Clinton's highly partisan version of history — and Greenwald's typically scorched-earth partisan version — holds that "Wag the Dog" denunciations and similar barbs came solely from partisan Republicans and conservatives. This is a self-serving and cartoonish re-telling of the 1990s.

My intent was not to defend GOP behavior on foreign policy in the 1990s, but to dispel the shabby and flawed parallelism between what Democrats have done in response to the war on terror with what Republicans did to Clinton. Indeed, even if you think Republicans were purely partisan in their criticisms of Clinton's foreign policies, why that should empower Democrats to act likewise remains a mystery to me.

Look: as far as I'm concerned nobody colored themselves in too much glory prior to 9/11. But al Qaeda rose to power in the 1990s largely in response to the Clinton administration's failure to take numerous provocations seriously enough. I honestly don't see how that can be denied. Republicans should have pushed Clinton to do the right thing, and didn't. I don't see how that can be denied. And when Bush came to office, he didn't do enough in those eight months prior to the attacks. That's undebiable too. Everyone deserves blame. The question is how should it be divided up.

09/25 02:47 PMShare