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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (7665)	10/7/1998 3:51:00 PM
From: j_b	Respond to of 67261

<<I guess my question is: just who was out there from the beginning, criticizing the fundamental rationale for the air strikes?>> Let's start here - at the time of the strikes, the rationale was that the U.S. was changing it's general policy regarding terrorism from a "legal" aspect (pursue the people through the court system) to a war against the terrorists. In that light, very few people objected in principle to the strikes. I include myself as someone who favored the concept if it was actually part of a war against the terrorists. Because the press has focused on other issues <g> we haven't heard if there actually IS a war going on. Apparently there is some action in other countries, aided by U.S. and Israeli intelligence, that has led to some reportedly serious arrests of some of bin Laden's people. We'll see. If it was a "wag the dog" scenario, I think it would be fair to say that no one would support the strikes, especially in light of the possible targeting flaw. <<You faulted (rather mildly, granted) some typically pro-Clinton groups for "their complete silence regarding the President's apparent bombing of civilians in the Sudanese factory, and his lack of action to prevent the slaughter in Kosovo.">> To be fair, I should have noted that the silence from the Republican supporters on this issue is deafening. IMHO, this should be a major topic of discussion, since it involves people's lives, large sums of money, people's lives, policy-making rationale, people's lives, the credibility of the President (and the U.S.) and, of course, people's lives. <<With one exception, the groups you cited are typically single-issue domestic policy advocacy groups, and one would not expect them to concern themselves with foreign policy at all.>> Here we would disagree slightly - for example, the women's groups trouble themselves with our foreign policy as it relates to birth control and foreign aid, and with the treatment of women and children in foreign countries. The environmentalists absolutely are involved in foreign affairs, as can be seen by the recent accords regarding global warming. Civil rights groups (including the NAACP and similar groups) would most likely have an interest in our foreign policy as it relates to human rights in other countries (they pushed for sanctions against S. Africa, for example). Special interest groups, for the most part, do not limit themselves to domestic issues. That relates to groups on both sides of the aisle, of course.