This is our leader...Al Gore's mentor..
No wonder there is no honor.
foxnews.com
Clinton on LBJ: 'He Did What He Thought Was Right'
Tuesday, November 14, 2000 By Terence Hunt
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei — Soon to be the first American president to visit Hanoi, capital of communist Vietnam, President Clinton said Tuesday he is more sympathetic about Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the war there. "He did what he thought was right," said Clinton, a college war protester who avoided military service.
In an interview with The Associated Press aboard Air Force One on a trip that will make him the first American president to visit since the war ended in 1975, Clinton said, "I now see how hard it was" for Johnson.
When Johnson took office in 1963, the United States had 16,000 military personnel in South Vietnam. U.S. troop strength grew to 536,100 by time Johnson left office in 1969 and more than 30,000 Americans were killed in action while Johnson was president.
"I believe he did what he thought was right under the circumstances," Clinton said. "These decisions are hard. And one of the things I have learned, too, is when you decide to employ force, there will always be unintended consequences."
The president avoided saying whether he holds second thoughts about his 1969 description of the war as one he despised. Instead, he said he is glad "the American people have been able to look to the future" in relations with Vietnam.
As a student at Oxford University in England, Clinton was a chief organizer of two anti-war rallies in London in 1969 and, back home, helped organize a huge march on Washington.
Clinton spoke en route to an economic summit in Brunei with leaders of Pacific Rim nations. Relaxing in a leather seat, wearing jeans and a jacket embroidered with his name and the presidential seal, he was in high spirits even though it was nearly 1 a.m.
He said the United States does not owe Vietnam an apology for its involvement in the war, and that no one should say the 58,000 Americans and the 3 million Vietnamese who were killed lost their lives in vain. "I don't think any person is fit to make that judgment," he said.
"People fight honorably for what they believe in and they lose their lives," the president said. "No one has a right to say that those lives were wasted. I think that would be a travesty."
Turning to the Florida election dispute, Clinton said he hoped the deadlock between Al Gore and George W. Bush would not lead to a president crippled by controversy.
"I think it's too soon to say that bitterness and partisanship will paralyze the next president," Clinton said. "We don't know that."
Clinton said he had mixed feelings about proposals to abolish the Electoral College in favor of electing the president by popular vote, as advocated by his wife, Sen.-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton, and others.
He acknowledged the argument that the electoral system, in which each state casts as many ballots as it has members of Congress, gives small states a role they might lose were presidents chosen by national popular vote.
But, he said, "I'm not necessarily sure that's so." In a popular-vote system, Clinton said, a candidate resigned to losing a state might campaign there anyhow because every vote would count.
As for the mood engendered by the Florida standoff, Clinton said, "I think a lot of people's feelings will be determined by the sense they have about the fairness and adequacy of this process over the next — however long it takes to resolve," the president said.
"There's lots of time, you know," Clinton said. "The Electoral College is not supposed to meet until Dec. 18th" and the inauguration is Jan. 20, he said. "It's a very stable country and they're working through it and we'll see what happens."
Despite the disputed election and the sharp split in Congress, Clinton said the new president may find a receptive mood on Capitol Hill.
"I think now the country may be quite sobered by this and the Congress may be somewhat sobered by it," the president said. "You might well find that there is a real willingness to work together."
While it was a hard-fought campaign, he said, "there wasn't a lot of personal criticism" of the candidates and the race was run largely on different approaches to issues. "So I don't think we are necessarily doomed to four years of stalemate and partisanship, and I hope that won't be the case."
Clinton said whether the atmosphere is poisoned "depends on what happens in the next few days."
"I just think we ought to let the thing play out," he said.
He said it was probably inevitable that the courts would have to decide in some instances which votes count. "I think in some of these cases there may not be any alternative," he said, "because the right to vote is protected and defined in both state and federal law. There's probably no alternative here."
Before leaving Washington, Clinton met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in search of a way to end the violence between Israelis and Palestinians. He said that neither Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat nor Barak may be able to control events completely. "But this thing can be reduced dramatically if they want to get back to the negotiating table," Clinton said.
"I think the Israelis will respond in kind if the Palestinian shootings will diminish now," he said. |
