Clinton has repeatedly found failure on foreign front

  Justin Levi Warning: the following
column contains hard facts. Levi, who can be reached at [email protected],
encourages all unwilling participants to bypass this column to
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In the absence of sufficient information needed to criticize the
future leader of our country (i.e. we don’t have one
officially yet), we must resort to denouncing the administration of
the current, and thankfully outgoing, one. As President Clinton
gives us a laundry list of failures, I must focus on the Clinton
diplomacy, otherwise known as “photo-op” foreign
policy.

As with many other areas of policy, Bill Clinton is widely
praised for his work on the world scene. And as usual, the facts
simply don’t support this opinion. So let’s get
going.

The first clear foreign policy failure of the current
administration came in 1995, when Clinton’s team of inept
fools decided it was high time to rid Haiti of its military junta,
headed by Gen. Raul Cedras. On the surface, the attempt to restore
the rightfully elected Jean Bertrand-Aristide to power seemed like
a noble goal.

So, under the guise of nation-building, hundreds of American
commandos para-dropped into Port au-Prince to finally bring
democracy back to this tiny nation.

There was one problem, however. Someone forgot to tell Mr.
Clinton that Aristide and his successor, Rene Preval, are dictators
as well. I guess he didn’t get the memo.

  Illustration by MICHAEL SHAW/Daily Bruin Since his
restoration to power, Aristide proceeded to cancel the next
election, and has crushed opposition in brutal fashion, including
the murder of dissidents and the closing of key media outlets. In
the final analysis, democracy in Haiti is all but nonexistent. In
1998, it seemed as though all major and minor news agencies in the
United States were focused on one thing ““ the sexual
promiscuities of the Prez. So, in true Wag the Dog fashion, Slick
Willy decided to refocus media attention to world affairs.

Perhaps the most notable event of 1998 was the simultaneous
bombing of a terrorist training ground in Afghanistan and a
pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. (Yes, Clinton fans, it was indeed
just a drug store, just like the U.N. said it was.). Unfortunately,
Americans seemed to have been so wrapped up in the recent attacks
on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that they missed the
fact that these bombings also came on the heels of the House
Judiciary Committee’s passage of the Articles of Impeachment.
So, all for personal gain, Bill Clinton decided to destroy any
meaningful diplomatic dialogue with these two countries, not to
mention leave thousands of innocent civilians without needed
medicine.

And by the way, Osama bin Laden, the Saudi Arabian terrorist who
was the stated target of the bombings, is still at large, and is no
closer to being caught than before. Nice job, Bubba.

Of course, one cannot discuss 1998 without talking about Iraq.
By the end of the year, not surprisingly within a week of his
impeachment, Clinton brought to a head the utterly absurd foreign
policy practiced toward Saddam and his goons.

For years, the Clinton team has supported economic sanctions
that, aside from starving an innocent population, only serve to
strengthen Hussein’s grip on power. It is quite interesting
that a president who seems to understand the benefits of trade
liberalization supports such an outdated philosophy. This part of
International Relations 101 didn’t sink in, apparently.

On the other hand, what else is Clinton supposed to do when he
lets Saddam toss him around like a rag doll?

“Saddam, let the U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq within 30
days or we blow your country to kingdom-come.”

“Take your best shot, Mister President.”

“OK, fine, 60 more days.”

Needless to say, Saddam is as powerful as ever and more
forcefully indicating his possession of weapons of mass
destruction. Although Clinton touted the 1998 bombing campaign as a
rousing success, every remotely relevant military official in our
government stated unequivocally that nothing of any importance had
been hit. But I thought CNN … never mind.

Without question, the most famous foreign policy entanglement,
pardon me, engagement, was the disaster of Kosovo. In a further
attempt to secure his legacy, Clinton committed one of his worst
acts as president ““ he created an enemy. In other words, he
took two equally blameworthy sides of a conflict, Slobodan
Milosevic on one end and the Kosovo Liberation Army on the other,
and claimed Slobo as the meanie.

The brutal atrocities committed by the KLA toward innocent Serb
civilians over the years never made the headlines. Given the lack
of consideration for the truth about the situation, would it not
have at least been prudent to conduct the actual campaign with
integrity? As history now demonstrates, don’t mess with an
impeached man.

During the Kosovo mission, Clinton refused to authorize the use
of ground troops and certain high level military technology, and
refused to fly his bombers within an altitude low enough to be hit.
While this sounds nice, it required flying the planes so high that
they often missed their targets, accidentally striking civilian
areas instead. In other words, he didn’t try hard enough to
win the war. Can we say Vietnam, anyone?

Yet, the media, on which Clinton has demonstrated a death grip,
implied that the campaign was a rousing success. I wonder if the
Serbs get CNN.

And by the way, our soldiers are now stuck in the Balkans for
perhaps 25 years, as many military experts have stated. Do not be
fooled into thinking that the recent ouster of Milosevic had
anything to do with the Clinton adventure. All the United States
managed to do during the bombing of Belgrade was to
“accidentally” send a missile plowing through the
Chinese embassy, the nation that just so happens to be positioning
itself to challenge the hegemony of the United States in the next
50 years. Sure.

Throughout the last eight years, only one foreign policy
question has persisted throughout ““ the Middle East crisis.
Admittedly, the Clinton administration was left largely removed
from the negotiations of the Oslo Accords, the
“breakthrough” agreement of 1993. They have been,
however, directly involved ever since.

The fundamental flaw in the Clintonian approach toward this
situation has been the relentless pursuit of a written agreement
outlining terms of land, security, etc. Such a process is
ultimately doomed to failure, as it removes the people from the
process entirely, leaving the key decisions to leaders who can
potentially be politically manipulated, or who may not be truly
willing to negotiate in the first place. Had the Israeli and
Palestinian people been more involved in the process, we may not
have seen the recent wave of violence that is plaguing the
region.

Furthermore, the administration has continually neglected to
scold the Israeli government when such a scolding is necessary and
proper, and has utterly failed in its responsibility to denounce
the Palestinian leadership for its inability or outright
unwillingness to fulfill its part of the several bargains that have
been struck throughout this inevitably doomed process. Peace is not
likely in the near future, and Bill Clinton can certainly be
counted as one of the culprits.

As we come to a close of one of the worst presidential
administrations in history, we must ask ourselves, will we once
again allow this country to follow a foreign policy of
interventionism, nation-building and media flash bulbs, sacrificing
the stability of the world situation in the process? Such a policy
is both dishonest and dangerous. But, hey, it makes great
television.