Clinton's Legacy
Rich Lowry has a new book out called Legacy, on the Clinton administration. I haven't seen it, but he apparently spends (relatively) little time on the famous sex scandals, and a great deal of time on the decisions for which Clinton hopes to be remembered, both in domestic and foreign policy. Lowry's perspective is that of a complete loyalist to the present President Bush, judging how Clinton should have solved problems that instead were left for his successor. Anything Clinton did right, "any Republican" would have done as well (with perhaps one exception). On the other hand, according to Lowry, Clinton failed in many important areas because he had neither principles nor character.
Here is a friendly interview on NRO (where Lowry is an editor). Based on this interview, it seems that Lowry certainly raises some important questions about Clinton's record. I think Lowry is not giving Clinton enough credit on some matters, but that debate obviously must continue.
On foreign policy: Lowry says Clinton was wrong to pull U.S. troops out of Mogadishu (after "Black Hawk Down" in October 1993), too slow to attack in Bosnia, and terribly wrong to do nothing about the genocide in Rwanda.
My question: didn't many Republicans, including especially Bush Jr., regard all these foreign adventures as a waste of time? There is a thread on the "Winds of Change" site that includes this exchange (prompted by Tom Daschle criticizing President Bush): "My thoughts drift back to the Serbian War, and I remember the unfathomably dovish, wobbly, and appeasing comments made so relentlessly by the Republican leadership (especially Lott and DeLay) against our military involvement, and against the authority of the Chief Executive. In that situation they violated nearly every principle of conduct you now bash Daschle for violating, only they sniped ten times louder, and with a hell of a lot more partisan rancor." Another reader replies: "The comments made by Trent Lott and Tom DeLay regarding the Kosovo air campaign were made during the period between the end of the Cold War and 9/11, when voters weren't paying attention to foreign policy. Remember, Clinton was as wobbly on Gulf War I as Kerry was on Gulf War II, but Clinton had the luxury of running for president in an era where foreign policy credentials were not essential for victory."
Here is an interview from 1998 in which Sen. Richard Lugar (R Indiana) says of both Mogadishu and Bosnia, in effect: Clinton should either have gone in big, or not gone in at all. The thought seems to be left hanging: the same could have been said of Bush Sr.
So maybe both sides can say: we both behaved badly at the time.
Lowry says in passing that he himself is "not a fan of humanitarian interventions generally," but even he, so to speak, is convinced that something should have been done for Rwanda.
What did Bush do about a similar African hell-hole in the recent past? True, he has intervened on a small scale in Liberia. But in Zimbabwe, Mugabe's government is using brutal methods to keep itself in power. Its land redistribution scheme, which involved certain designated lands owned by whites, has not gone as planned. It has often led to mob violence, and much of the land has simply gone out of agricultural production. Much of the economy has collapsed. The election campaign in the spring has been described as a "campaign of terror" on the part of the government.
When Bush went to Africa, he apparently intended to speak out, at least, about the terrible suffering in Zimbabwe. He was persuaded to do nothing at all, however, by the President of South Africa. (He has continued to speak out to some extent). Let's see: an ally, with whom the U.S. has many ties, urges no action at all against a blood-soaked tyranny, and Bush agrees to do nothing....
Lowry's main point, of course, is about international terrorism. Clinton knew about Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, but did nothing. The retreat from Mogadishu, in particular, we have been told, inspired Bin Laden by convincing him the U.S. would not fight for its principles. Update: There's even a wrinkle here I had not come across before: "By most accounts, al Qaeda trained the Somali fighters to down our Black Hawk helicopters. Then, after losing 18 dead, we retreated, signaling that spilling American blood would inevitably lead to American retreat. Osama bin Laden learned the lesson well."
The American public didn't know as much as Clinton; Clinton should have led, instead of following.
More tomorrow.
Update: One of Lowry's better lines: "Should Bush have done more during the eight months he was in office? Absolutely. But much of his work would have been--and has been--undoing the mistakes of the Clinton administration."
Quite possibly Clinton was too passive in the face of the growth of what we are now taught to think of as "international terrorism." Possibly Clinton and his people were guilty of believing that most people in the world are basically rational, or their behaviour can be changed by rational arguments. As Lowry says, it is probably quite important for any rich country to remember that many people hate you, and then to wonder whether they fear or respect you.
I actually think this last criticism--an overall belief that rationality in itself will win--what Aristotle calls the biggest mistake of the sophists--is better applied to Carter than to Clinton; but again, there may be some justice to it. I would just want to say in Clinton's defence that he was aware there was very little public support in the U.S. for foreign adventures. The public may not have been quite as wedded to contemptible and defeatist isolationism as many Republicans--many of Lowry's friends--certainly were, but the isolationism was a political reality, and the Republicans were willing to exploit it.
Fred Kaplan has written a series of articles in Slate on North Korea's nuclear program. In one piece he says:
"Bush officials have harshly criticized the '94 accord, mainly because it was negotiated by the Clinton administration, which in their eyes means it must be bad, if not traitorous. It was a limited agreement, recognized as such at the time, but it did halt North Korea's nuclear weapons program for eight years. And it's a debatable issue which side is responsible for the accord's breakdown--Pyongyang, for resuming the weapons program, or Washington, for failing to provide the economic assistance that it pledged as its side of the bargain."
I can't find it right now, but somewhere there is a piece--possibly by Kaplan--showing that Republicans in Congress consistently refused to vote for the money that would have allowed the U.S. to keep its end of the deal with Korea.
Update: here is a piece by Jonathan Power that makes this point: "If a Republican Congress had not undermined the administration's solemn promises made to the North on the speedy development of alternative power supplies and an end to the economic embargo, it is highly unlikely that the present crisis would have ever blown up."
Even so, Kaplan argues, the deal almost certainly limited the escalation of Korea's nuclear program, and Bush's response to all this in the first year or two of his administration was clueless.
Lowry takes for granted that Palestinians who attack Israelis are really part of the same "movement" as Al Qaeda and other "international terrorists." He brings one criticism of the Clinton people to a point this way: "They never got that Middle Eastern radicals were attached to the continuing state of war in the region as part of their very being." If this statement is unpacked, it means that some critical mass of the Palestinian suicide bombers and their sponsors don't simply want some different policy out of Israel, or an agreement with Israel--they want to destroy Israel, or to cause so much mayhem that stability and decency are impossible. Same with Al Qaeda, except in their case they are trying to weaken the entire West, of which Israel is a lonely, shining beacon in the Mid East.
Again I would say maybe. But Palestinians have some legitimate grievances; I'm not sure Bin Laden, the rich kid who raised money for the mujahadeen war in Afghanistan, but may have sat out the fighting in Pakistan, really has any at all.
Obviously the Israel-Palestinians issue is changing constantly. One suggestion that quite appeals to me is as follows: Israel is not going to give up more than small areas of the West Bank and Gaza. These areas will become de facto part of Israel. If they become so de jure as well, there will obviously be widespread demands for representation by population in the new enlarged Israel--which will be a more or less Arab country. There has even been a poll which says more Palestinians want to be citizens of Israel than want the "return" of a lot of the land in Israel to previous Palestinian owners.
Update: Oops. I was thinking of this story, but it says only that many Palestinians would rather live in a separate Palestinian state than "return" to land in what is now Israel.
"The poll, conducted among 4,500 refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip,
Lebanon and Jordan, was the first to ask where they would want to live if
Israel recognised a right of return.
Only 10 per cent of the refugees chose Israel, even if they were allowed
to live there with Palestinian citizenship; 54 per cent opted for the
Palestinian state; 17 per cent for Jordan or Lebanon, and 2 per cent for
other countries. Another 13 per cent rejected all these options,
preferring to sit it out and wait for Israel to disappear, while 2 per
cent didn't know."
More details on the survy in question here. If anything like that proves true, I think it will indicate that the straight Bush view is missing a lot.
On domestic policy: is it really true that "any" Republican would have done welfare reform? This strikes me as being analogous to "Nixon goes to China"--it would have been difficult for a Republican to do it without being seen as stereotypically heartless, etc. Also: Lowry seems to agree that neither Bush Sr. nor Bob Dole were exactly policy wonks--how would they think of such a thing? Yet it is excellent public policy, which Lowry says Clinton did "for the wrong reasons." Oh.
Another example: Lowry mentions one policy initiative of Clinton's that probably no Republican would have pushed: "A more distinctive success was his relentless push to expand the earned-income tax credit." Helping the poor get off welfare by lowering taxes on the first dollars earned? Sounds good. Mickey Kaus absolutely loves both welfare reform and the EITC.
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