I once heard that Bill Clinton used to sleep with a copy of Niccolo Machiavelli’s classic treatise on politics, The Prince, under his pillow. I wonder though, if he missed one of Machiavlli’s chapters.
In chapter three, Machiavelli states, “Thus the Romans, seeing inconveniences from afar, always found remedies for them and never allowed them to continue so as to escape a war, because they knew that war may not be avoided but is deferred to the advantage of others.”
And that is precisely what occurred during the Clinton administration. Bill Clinton became a victim of his own 1960’s indoctrination. That word, the V-Word; Vietnam, would forever paralyze him when it came to the use of military force. Thus, Clinton did not fully understand the State. The welfare of his State–America–was not the primary directive of Bill Clinton, it was his own ego and his longing for legacy.
He refused to act against Al-Qaeda, though America was repeatedly attacked both overseas and on our own soil. There was the first attack upon the World Trade Center. A huge truck bomb was placed under one of the towers in hopes that upon the tower’s collapse, the second tower would also be brought down. We should remember that the only reason many more people did not die on 9/11 is because there was a thirty minute window in which people were evacuated. The terrorists who perpetrated the first attack hoped to kill 250,000 people. As it was, 6 people died, hundreds were injured, and who knows how much property damage was done. Clinton’s administration refused to admit that Al-Qaeda was involved, and all the time, that dancing, giggling court jester known as the mainstream media brought the King his wine and played him merry music…
Next were the attacks on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. The towers served as barracks for US troops. 19 US soldiers were killed by another truck bomb. Clinton quickly promised to bring the bombers to justice. A few low-level conspirators were beheaded by the Saudi government, however the administration placed little pressure on the Saudis to move forward with investigations. It was never mentioned in meetings between Clinton and Saudi officials during future diplomatic meetings. Currently, 14 individuals have had US indictments placed on them, but none of them are in US custody.
By then, terrorists around the world sensed Clinton’s weakness. They proceeded to bomb three embassies in Africa, killing over 200 people. This became known as the “wag the dog” scenario, with Bill launching some Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghan encampments thought to house Osama Bin Laden. By then, no one could deny Al-Qaeda’s and Bin Ladin’s involvment.
Finally, the American war destroyer, Cole, was rammed by a ship carrying jihadists and a huge amount of explosives. The resultant detonation ripped a gaping hole in the ships port side, and took the lives of 17 sailors. Again, Clinton used grandiose words like, “despicable” and “cowardly” but left out more appropriate remarks such as “act of war.”
Here’s a segment of an article written by journalist Byron York for the National Review in 2006. York quotes former Clinton advisor Dick Morris throughout the portion:
In early August 1996, a few weeks after the Khobar Towers bombing, Clinton had a long conversation with Dick Morris about his place in history. Morris divided presidents into four categories: first tier, second tier, third tier, and the rest. Twenty-two presidents who presided over uneventful administrations fell into the last category. Just five — Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt — made Morris’s first tier.
Clinton asked Morris where he stood. “I said that at the moment he was at the top of the unrated category,” Morris recalls. Morris says he told the president that one surprising thing about the ratings was that a president’s standing had little to do with the performance of the economy during his time in office. “Yeah,” Clinton responded, “It has so much to do with whether you get re-elected or not, but history kind of forgets it.”
Clinton then asked, “What do I need to do to be first tier?” “I said, ‘You can’t,’“ Morris remembers. “‘You have to win a war.’“ Clinton then asked what he needed to do to make the second or third tier, and Morris outlined three goals. The first was successful welfare reform. The second was balancing the budget. And the third was an effective battle against terrorism. “I said the only one of the major goals he had not achieved was a war on terrorism,” Morris says. (This is not a recent recollection; Morris also described the conversation in his 1997 book, Behind the Oval Office.)
But Clinton never began, much less finished, a war on terrorism. Even though Morris’s polling showed the poll-sensitive president that the American people supported tough action, Clinton demurred. Why?
“He had almost an allergy to using people in uniform,” Morris explains. “He was terrified of incurring casualties; the lessons of Vietnam were ingrained far too deeply in him. He lacked a faith that it would work, and I think he was constantly fearful of reprisals.” But there was more to it than that. “On another level, I just don’t think it was his thing,” Morris says. “You could talk to him about income redistribution and he would talk to you for hours and hours. Talk to him about terrorism, and all you’d get was a series of grunts.”
Full article here:http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzhjODk1ODg4M2NiODU4Yzc3YWE1OTA1MDNmYWQ5M2Y=
So here we are, with George Bush taking the heat for what Bill Clinton should have done long before. Machiavelli’s lesson went unlearned, with Clinton deferring war to a later date and a later president and costing America a savage blow as the Twin Towers fell.
The Political Realist: post-modern Hobbesian views 
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