What the hell article did you read?
The one I read was talking about the partisan-ship, and double standards exhibited when politicians of one party criticize members of the other party who voice dissent....
Some of the same Repubs. who are not howling loudly and criticizing the Dems who criticize the President's foreign policy or military actions... were themselves loudly dissenting from the previous President's foreign policy and military actions!
It's all mostly partisan crap:
But a different standard seemed to apply after President Clinton launched his 1999 air campaign in Kosovo to protect ethnic Albanians from another dictator.
"I don't think we should be bombing in the Balkans," said Rep. Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican. "I don't think NATO should be destroyed because we changed its mission to a humanitarian one." His colleague Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.) accused Clinton of pursuing "the most inept foreign policy in the history of the United States."
For what it's worth, at the time, I criticized both parties for overly personalizing the Kosovo debate around Clinton. But the fact is that DeLay, Cunningham and the other critics were, like Daschle, simply exercising their right -- as Americans and as members of Congress -- to differ with the commander in chief.
Defenders of Daschle have focused on the Kosovo debate, but almost all of Clinton's military decisions came under withering Republican criticism. That's especially true of those he took in the middle of his sex scandal. Note, for example, this Republican reaction to Clinton's missile strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
"I just hope and pray that the decision that was made was made on the basis of sound judgment and made for the right reasons, and not made because it was necessary to save the president's job," said Dan Coats, then a senator from Indiana and now President Bush's ambassador to Germany. "Why now? Bin Laden has been known to be a terrorist for a long time. Why did this happen?"
Was anyone back then calling Dan Coats a 'traitor' for criticizing the President's attack on bin Laden? |
