BROADSIDES

September 09, 2002

USEFUL IDIOTS: It's not often that in one week, America's two greatest mistakes -- Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton -- inadvertently remind us how fortunate we are that neither of these presidential runts is in office.

The Year of Negotiating Laboriously
America's Neville Chamberlain, Jimmy Carter, has written an op-ed column for The Washington Post in which he has the unmitigated gall to slam President Bush's foreign policy initiatives. Yes, it's the same Jimmy Carter who gutted the U.S. military; countered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by boycotting the 1980 Olympics; allowed Iran -- a longtime U.S. ally -- to fall into the hands of Shi'ite-head clerics openly committed to destroying America; did little more than freeze Iranian assets when an Iranian mob, with their government's blessing, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehren and took 52 Americans hostage; failed to secure over the course of more than a year the release of those hostages; and, thus, presided over the most disastrous foreign policy in presidential history.

In his column, Carter insists that there "is no current danger to the United States from Baghdad." The key word there is "current." Apparently, the Putz from Plains would rather wait until Saddam's nukes are operational and en route to the United States before supporting efforts to halt their use. The most laughable of Carter's criticisms of President Bush is for "disavowing U.S. commitments to laboriously negotiated international accords." Laboriously negotiated international accords? Such as Carter's year-long, doomed-from-the-start hostage negotiations with the psychopathic Iranian regime?

Carter's fetish for negotiations served no purpose other than to prolong the hostages' captivity, which finally ended at the moment Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president on January 20, 1981. In the time it takes to recite the presidential oath, the Iranians' perception of Reagan as an unpredictable, trigger-happy, shoot-first-ask-questions-later cowboy motivated the mad mullahs in a way that a year of "laboriously negotiated" hot air never did.

Actually securing the hostages' freedom mattered less to President Carter than negotiating it. In other words, negotiating for the sake of negotiating is a policy goal desired by Carter and his ilk -- even when American lives are demonstrably in imminent danger. And that's why, to the Axis of Evil, Jimmy Carter is a useful idiot.

"No one cares about foreign policy"
In late 1992, Lee Hamilton, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wanted a moment with President-elect Bill Clinton to briefly discuss a few pressing foreign policy matters. Clinton would have none of it. He curtly told an astonished Hamilton "I've been traveling around our country for a year and no one cares about foreign policy other than about six journalists." Since opinion polls didn't reflect a substantial concern about foreign affairs, President Bill Clinton had no intention of exhibiting leadership on any foreign policy issue.

And the enemies of the United States made the most of it.

During Clinton's eight-year-long kegger, terrorist nations openly waged war on the United States. Beginning with Iraq's attempted assassination of former President George H.W. Bush, America was subjected to a barrage of deadly attacks: the World Trade Center bombing, the attacks on American troops in Somalia, the bombing of American troops at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the Oklahoma City bombing, the embassy bombing in Kenya, the embassy bombing in Tanzania and the bombing of the USS Cole. Not one of these deadly acts of war elicited anything more than a symbolic retaliation by the Clinton Administration. Even more egregious is that President Clinton thrice declined offers to turn over to the United States one of the principals behind many of the attacks, Osama bin Laden.

Last week, the same man who repeatedly refused to take custody of Osama bin Laden had the temerity to criticize the Bush Administration for pursuing the liberation of Iraq before capturing bin Laden. At a Democratic fundraiser, Clinton whined, "Saddam Hussein didn't kill 3,100 people on Sept. 11, Osama bin Laden did, and as far as we know he's still alive . . . I also believe we might do more good for American security in the short run at far less cost by beefing up our efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere to flush out the entire network."

For eight years, Bill Clinton narcissistically pursued image-over-substance in foreign policy, and, as a result, thousands of Americans are dead. Now Clinton seeks to undermine the incumbent commander-in-chief's prosecution of the war that he was too cowardly to fight. And that's why, to the Axis of Evil, Bill Clinton is a useful idiot.

B. Sides @ 3:05 PM