I miss Bill

[elfs]

Glenn Greenwald has a fascinating point: The first attack on the World Trade Center was the February 26, 1993 bombing, organized by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, which happened seven weeks after Bill Clinton became president.

No other attacks happened on American soil during Bill Clinton's presidency. Therefore, using Republican Reasoning™, The policies of the Clinton Administration were completely effective at keeping the US homeland safe, and it was not until George Bush took the White House that Islamic terrorists felt confident they could successfully strike on American soil.

There was no Guantanamo. There was no waterboarding. There was no Bahgram. There was the rule of law, and the trying of Sheik Rahman and his co-conspirators in civilian courts, and his imprisonment is an ordinary US prison, and yet, somehow, Bill Clinton was just as effective as George W. Bush at protecting the homeland, and there were fewer civilian deaths on his watch, and we ended his administration with a surplus!

Imagine that.

I mention this because this week we've seen the march of astonishingly an alarming amount of disasturbatory material from the Freepers, all along the lines of "God, please have more Americans die so they can learn the error of depriving God's Own Party of the power it is divinely allocated." But even worse, Mark Theissen, Bush's speechwriter, has been everywhere saying that Obama, by going back to Clinton's plan, is inviting tragedy. First, in the Washington Post:

the policies and institutions that George W. Bush put in place to stop this are succeeding. During the campaign, Obama pledged to dismantle many of these policies. He follows through on those pledges at America's peril -- and his own. If Obama weakens any of the defenses Bush put in place and terrorists strike our country again, Americans will hold Obama responsible. President Obama has inherited a set of tools that successfully protected the country for 2,688 days -- and he cannot dismantle those tools without risking catastrophic consequences.

And then, at National Review:

The CIA program he is effectively shutting down is the reason why America has not been attacked again after 9/11. He has removed the tool that is singularly responsible for stopping al-Qaeda from flying planes into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, Heathrow Airport, and London's Canary Warf, and blowing up apartment buildings in Chicago, among other plots. It's not even the end of inauguration week, and Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office.

And then On NPR, discussing whether or not Bush administration officials commited war crimes:

The thought that we're sitting here discussing whether these people should be prosecuted or investigated is just outrageous. These people are American heroes who saved lives and stopped the next Sept. 11.

There's not a shred of evidence to support Theissen's claims that the Bush administration's illegal activities were necessary to prevent any of these.

Theissen's fearmonger is grotesque, but there's more. Greenwald lists a lot of others who want you to be scared, because that's all they have: your fear.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Yep. That's all the tyrants have on both sides now. Fear. Al-Qaeda is throwing the N-word, and the wingnuts on our side of the pond are praying for death and destruction just so they can be proven right.

What a bunch of sick bastards.

They ain't got my fear. I don't even think they have my contempt. Pity, *maybe*... enough for a coup de grace, anyway. Put'em out of our misery.

[areitu.livejournal.com]

Did the argument come up, where they claim Clinton was actually responsible for not preventing 9-11, because his administration didn't take care of it, etc.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I got a question: What the cornbread heck is the media doing listening to a professional propagandist like Theissen? What the heck does he know about anything but his own kool-ade? *sigh*

[tagryn]

No other attacks happened on American soil during Bill Clinton's presidency.

I sadly note how Oklahoma City has been forgotten by many.

We're in the process as a nation of tweaking the overbalance towards security over liberty which happened after 9-11. The concern that we could easily go too far in the other direction and not realize it until it was too late is justifiable. I don't regard that as fearmongering, though neither do I think the new administration has overreached too far in that direction yet, either.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent point.

I suppose I should have been clear and said no other attacks by foreign powers happened during Clinton's presidency. If we're going to give fantasist Timothy McVeigh his due, though, we can erase Bush's record of "keeping America safe from terrorism" as well. During his administration the Earth Liberation Front fire-bombed car dealerships and torched whole subdivisions still under development; animal-rights groups successfully terrorized some segments of the medical research community into shutting down; and anti-abortion forces are not only proud to have terrorized practitioners of a legal medical procedure, they openly brag that their terrorist tactics have made life frightening and difficult for physicians and their staff (http://www.westchesterinstitute.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=416).

[tagryn]

True, but that was also going on during Clinton's tenure as well, with the '96 Olympic Centennial bombing by Rudolph being one example. I suppose we could also include the Unabomber as an example of politically-motivated terrorism as well, though he was bombing for decades before he was turned in.

I'd put Oklahoma City on a different level, simply because the magnitude was so much greater, just as 9-11 was on a higher level than the '93 WTC attack.

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

Okay, I've heard it several ways and I'm not sure which is right.

The whole Bill Clinton budget surplus thingy. The way it was explained to me is that it was an illusion? He simply used the money for social security and paid off the interest owed on the deficit and didn't pay the premium, and therefore generated a "surplus" in the national debt.

Or is someone feeding me more "shaky math"?

[gromm.livejournal.com]

the tool that is singularly responsible for stopping al-Qaeda from flying planes into the Library Tower in Los Angeles [etc]

And here, I thought that the policy "The next hijacker automatically gets a fighter escort and/or shot down" was preventing that. With the crap that Al-Quaeda pulled last time, I doubt there'd be a government in the world that would hesitate in that action for a second.

I'm not entirely certain, but I'm pretty sure that there haven't been any other hijackings since 2001. Bombings and attemtped bombings yes, but no hijacking.

Also, I'm noticing a pattern here. For maximum reaction in a democracy, you need a crisis in the first year after an election. Bill Clinton had his, and then there was George Bush. There was a bombing in Spain immediately before the election, which is slightly off of this prediction.

Canada does things a bit differently, and allowing Parlaiment to call an election anytime they like (usually giving the public all of about 3 weeks to decide who to vote for) kind of throws a monkey wrench into plans like that.

[tagryn]

I'm not entirely certain, but I'm pretty sure that there haven't been any other hijackings since 2001. Bombings and attemtped bombings yes, but no hijacking.

There was a break after 9-11, but hijackings have been creeping back up again. The pros obviously aren't back in the business yet, though.

The problem with the deterrence argument is that it assumes the potential hijacker believes you really would shoot down a plane full of your own civilians. AQ's ideology of the West as weak infidels would tend towards them not buying this. More likely, air hijackings have already yielded maximum benefit as a technique, and they've been trying to shift to softer targets. The continual disruption of their network has made this difficult to date, with the only the occasional success such as Bali, London, and Madrid.

I think AQ senses that Obama poses an threat to them, as it breaks the white-Western-male stereotype which much of the world associated with the USA. They're also facing theological challenges from inside Islam which may be even more dangerous to them. If the recruit gravy train dries up, AQ dies.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder how many of those 2006 and 2007 hijackings were of aircraft that don't have armored doors, though, which are mandated on all aircraft flying in US airspace. The list shows aircraft headquartered in Sudan, Turkey, and Russia, countries not famed for their quality of aircraft maintenance.

[(Anonymous)]

On the other hand it is entirely possible for one reason or another that AQ felt they could get more mileage out of attacks under Bush junior, possibly due to his family history? Just conjecture I know, but it seems they have got all the help they could wish for in recruitment.

On the other hand maybe it was just their good fortune that they decided to welcome the new president like that, and everything just spiralled more massively than anyone could anticipate from there.

I have to admit I never felt calling terrorists "soldiers of darkness" was a good move. It could both be interpreted as villifying muslims by those so inclined to interpret it as such, and simeltaneously gave them an air of legitimacy ("soldiers"?).