Clinton's coded jibes at Bush give conference what it wants
to hear:Former president's speech delights delegates in
Blackpool
" He reminded the hall that Bush won his election "fair
and square" by five votes to four in the US supreme court."
Jonathan Freedland
Thursday October 3, 2002
The Guardian
This was the speech of a president in exile. Like a deposed
leader seeking refuge in a friendly nation, Bill Clinton came to
Blackpool to deliver a message that can barely be heard in
today's America.
He had to be careful: an unwritten rule of US public life demands
that "politics stops at the water's edge", that partisan hostilities
be shelved when it comes to foreign policy. Convention also
dictates that a former president give respectful support to his
successor, especially when speaking abroad.
But yesterday Clinton - whose dazzling, dizzying career broke
every rule in the US book - broke those rules, too. He did it
artfully, sometimes in code, but the 42nd president of the United
States used the floor of the Labour party conference to unleash
an acid critique of the Bush administration.
He often did it by praising Tony Blair, implicitly for his efforts in
restraining the current president. Still, Clinton's meaning was
clear: he regarded current US policy as badly misguided.
For one thing, Washington had got its priorities wrong. "I still
believe our most pressing security challenge is to finish the job
against al-Qaida," he said, echoing many of those, including his
former vice-president, Al Gore, who fear a war on Iraq will only
divert energy from the immediate battle against Osama bin
Laden. With his call for greater US troop commitment to
Afghanistan and a humanitarian effort to rebuild the country, he
was sending a message to Washington: first things first.
He covered himself with a general disclaimer, supporting "the
efforts of the prime minister and President Bush to get tougher
with Saddam Hussein". But that was bland enough to be
non-committal. On the specifics, he raised almost every one of
the core arguments that have been deployed by the anti-war
camp.
So he stressed that inspections should be given one last
chance before the "last resort" of military action. After all, he
said, inspections had been effective, robbing Saddam of more
arms than were ever destroyed in the Gulf war.
With that Clinton fondness for wonkish detail, he rattled off the
full list of hardware the monitors had taken off Baghdad: "40,000
chemical weapons, 100,000 gallons of chemicals used to make
weapons, 48 missiles, 30 armed warheads and a massive
biological weapons facility equipped to produce anthrax and
other bio-weapons". Inspections worked, he said, even when
Saddam got up to his old tricks, playing cat-and-mouse.
He made the moral argument against war, noting from his own
experience that, no matter how precise or smart your bombs,
"innocent people will die". He endorsed the view that nothing
was more likely to prompt Saddam to use his weapons of mass
destruction than the prospect of "certain defeat" by a US-led
attack. He raised the hypocrisy charge, noting that it was
(Republican-ruled) Washington in the 1980s which had helped
arm Saddam.
He went further, speaking out against the very notion of
pre-emptive strikes against enemy states. Who knows what
"unwelcome consequences" that might have in the future, he
asked, echoing those anti-war voices who fear a war on
Baghdad might set a terrible precedent. As for "regime change",
sometimes declared as an official US war aim, Clinton was
clear. That could be pursued even if the world got its way on new
arms inspections - but by "non-military ways". Political support
for the Iraqi opposition was what he had in mind - not the forced
removal of Saddam.
All that was missing was a call by the former president - who
had introduced himself in traditional delegate style as "Clinton,
Bill; Arkansas CLP" - for conference to "back Composite 4", the
anti-war resolution debated on Monday. By pointing up the value
of inspections and the inevitable loss of life war would entail - in
contrast with a PM who a day earlier had warned that
sometimes "the only chance of peace is a readiness for war" -
Clinton had placed himself on the left of Tony Blair.
Still, the ex-prez was subtle; this was not the direct, campaign
speech delivered by Gore. His target was not always obvious. At
the very least, he was aiming at the hawkish wing of the Bush
administration, at the Donald Rumsfelds and Dick Cheneys.
He said he backed Bush and secretary of state Colin Powell in
their willingness to give inspections another go and to do it
through the UN - as if taking sides in an internal Republican
struggle.
Mainly, though, he lumped Bush in with the hawks, casting Blair
as an essential curb on a go-it-alone US administration that did
not understand the need for allies, partners or the institutions of
the international community - a Washington that wanted to
"dominate", rather than lead the world.
Repeatedly he stressed the centrality of the United Nations, and
praised Blair - and pointedly excluded Bush - for his
determination to work, "if at all possible", through the world
body. He even suggested that only the British PM, rather than
the US president, could get America and the rest of the world to
come together: "I doubt if anyone else could" do it, he said.
Lest there be any doubt that he was breaking ex-presidential
protocol, Clinton let rip on the Republicans' domestic record. "I
disagree with them on nearly everything," he said, ticking off the
policies which he condemned.
The killer jibe seemed to have been ad-libbed, but was the
clearest crossing of the line that usually holds back former
presidents. He reminded the hall that Bush won his election "fair
and square" by five votes to four in the US supreme court.
In Washington it has become bad form to remind people of
Bush's disputed installation in the White House; it sounds too
much like an attack on the very legitimacy of his presidency.
That didn't stop Clinton.
It's a tribute to the man's phenomenal rhetorical gifts that he
could deliver such a thorough critique of his successor and
come across not as a bitter has-been, but as a warm, intimate
speaker full of wisdom and human insight.
Yesterday Blackpool saw how he made America fall for him not
once, but twice. Americans can't elect him as president again -
but if Bill Clinton ever wants to lead the British Labour party,
they would have him in a heartbeat.
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