BILL CLINTON SAID WHAT AT DAVOS?
Kerry Spot
[jim geraghty reporting] (All relevant links at the end)
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next great blogswarm. It deals with World Economic Forum in Davos, yet again.
I noticed it on RealClearPolitics, which links to an article ArabNews.com, the audio, and a discussion at Little Green Footballs.
The following comes from former President Bill Clinton:
<<<
“Iran is the only country in the world that has now had six elections since the first election of President Khatami (in 1997). (It is) the only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections: Two for president; two for the Parliament, the Majlis; two for the mayoralties. In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.”
>>>
Perhaps even more interesting are Clinton’s earlier comments at the event:
<<<
“Iran is a whole different kettle of fish. It’s a sad story that really began in the 1950s when the United States deposed Mr. [Mohammed] Mossadegh, [Prime Minister of Iran] who was an elected parliamentary democrat and brought the Shah back in … and then he was overturned by the Ayatollah Khomeni, driving us into the arms of one Saddam Hussein. Most of the terrible things Saddam Hussein did in the 1980s he did with the full knowing support of the United States government.
Because he wasn’t Iran, and Iran was what it was, because we got rid of the parliamentary democracy back in the fifties. At least that’s my belief. I know it’s not popular for an American to ever say anything like this but I think it’s true. (The Davos audience applauds at that moment.)
And I apologized when President Khatami was elected, I publicly acknowledged that the United States had actively overthrown Mossadegh and I apologized for it. And I hope that we could have some reapproachment with Iran.”
>>>
Considering how useless the Iranian elections have proven in moderating the regime’s crackdown on the Iranian people, in liberating free expression in that country, ties to terrorism, or its nuclear weapons program, one wonders why President Clinton feels compelled to talk about how inspiring it is that the Iran progressives win 60 to 70 percent of the vote.
Clinton’s earlier remarks also sound suspiciously like blaming U.S. foreign policy for the Iranian revolution (guess our embassy employees had it coming, huh, Mr. President?) and for Saddam’s crimes of the 1980s. Obviously, that played well with the Davos elites. But one wonders if President Clinton would make the same remarks if he were, say, on the campaign trail with Senator Clinton in 2006?
One wonders if Senator Clinton agrees with the former president’s foreign policy analysis, and huzzahs for the Iran elections process.
UPDATE: John at Powerline writes in to say they blogged some about Clinton's remarks this weekend. The key point: "Bill Clinton's infatuation with Khatami and the Iranian "moderates" can only be understood as an instance of American liberals' projection of their own concepts of virtue onto just about any anti-Americans in foreign countries."
UPDATE, AGAIN: TKS reader Paul writes in:
<<<
"I suspect that Paul Wolfowitz would not entirely disagree with Clinton's perceptions of the Mossadegh escapade. One thing I'm always trying to convince my left friends of is that in part, the "neoconservative" approach is in fact doing what the left has always proclaimed we should overseas, in the sense of not cozying up to dictators for various reasons. And I don't think many conservatives would say in retrospect it was a good thing to cooperate with Hussien in the 1980's. They might say it was an understandable thing, given the context, and more complex a moral situation than the left proclaims; but it's not that it can't be criticized."
>>>
Paul raises some valid points, but there's something particularly irritating about Bill Clinton looking back at U.S. foreign policy decisions in 20/20 hindsight and critiquing the decision-making before the applauding America-bashers at Davos. The U.S. did a lot of morally shaky things during the Cold War, often in the name of a vital and greater good: Beating the Soviet Union. Clinton, the first modern president who didn't have to deal with the USSR, put a great deal of energy into apologizing for the mistakes of his predecessors, and perhaps not enough energy into avoiding and/or learning from his own foreign policy mistakes - the Somalia retreat, inaction over Rwanda, insufficient responses to al-Qaeda terrorism, pinprick responses to Saddam Hussein's defiance, a delayed and clumsy reaction to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, treating Yassir Arafat like a trustworthy peacemaker, and trusting the North Koreans to not develop nukes.
Perhaps some folks on the right have been too quick to make moral compromises in the name of fighting a enemy, be it communism or Islamist terrorism. Some folks on the left are less willing to make those moral compromises... but one can't help but wonder if that stems from an opposition to moral compromises, or an opposition to the fight in the first place.
nationalreview.com
realclearpolitics.com
arabnews.com
homepage.mac.com
littlegreenfootballs.com
powerlineblog.com |
