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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paul_philp who wrote (61666)	12/16/2002 4:43:11 AM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 281500

It is a leaders job to build the political will and support. The bombing of the Cole was an attack on a military target. If the public didn't understand at first, it was Clinton's responsibility to explain it. Letting an attack on the military stand unanswered was a strategic error and a lapse of leadership. To an extent, yes, though any politician’s reaction in such a situation is going to be governed by that politician’s assessment of how difficult it will be to rally public support. Certainly Clinton was by no means the first to let such an attack go unanswered: witness Reagan’s response to the bombing of the Marine barracks. Reagan skated out the easy way, as did Clinton, Clinton got stuck with a subsequent attack on US soil, while Reagan didn’t. Bad judgement, maybe; bad timing, certainly. In any event, it would have been pretty damned hard to rally support for action against Afghanistan. People were too busy calculating their capital gains, and an invasion of Afghanistan is a pretty hard sell without major provocation.