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Politics : Clinton's Scandals: Is this corruption the worst ever? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (12082)	4/1/1999 9:29:00 PM
From: Catfish	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13994

The Flower Child Goes To War jewishworldreview.com March 31, 1999 Mona Charen For Fair Use Only. Mona Charen The Flower Child goes to war (JWR) ---- (http://www.jewishworldreview.com) So Bill Clinton has found a cause he thinks is worth fighting for -- preserving the autonomy of the Serbian province of Kosovo. The question as to whether America ought to use its military might to prevent genocide and other disasters is a worthy one. But without reaching that question (which I do not think yields easy answers), we must ask: How does Bill Clinton, an exemplar of American liberalism, square his belief in this war with his passionate "loathing" of the war in Vietnam? A glance back at his famous 1969 letter to Col. Eugene Holmes is most interesting in light of the president's newfound bellicosity. Some of the formulations are classic Clinton: He tells the colonel (a survivor of the Bataan Death March) that he has been so disturbed by questions of war and morality that he has resorted to "eating compulsively and reading until exhaustion brought sleep." He also boasts about how hard he has worked and how seriously he has studied the matter: " ... there was a time when not many people had more information about Vietnam at hand than I did." And he engages in arrogant self-praise, hoping that his three-page rant will help the colonel "understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves still loving their country but loathing the military ... " During the 1992 campaign, this letter was engrossing for the light it shed on Bill Clinton's character and honesty. He claimed, for example, that conscience had moved him to come clean about his misleading use of an ROTC deferment, when, as The Washington Post and others stated, changes in the draft law had given Clinton notice two days before the letter to Holmes that he was out of danger. The president today advances three arguments in behalf of a military commitment in the former Yugoslavia. The first is historically ridiculous. In his national address on the matter, the president said we must act to "defuse a powder keg at the heart of Europe that has exploded twice before in this century with catastrophic results," implying that the Balkans were the flash points for both world wars. In fact, of course, an assassination in Bosnia did touch off World War I (though it didn't cause it), and the Balkans were irrelevant to the start of World War II. The president further contends that American prosperity depends upon what language they speak in Pristina. Such arguments needn't detain us. The president's third case is moral. We cannot allow "defenseless people" to be slaughtered. Slobodan Milosevic will interpret our failure to act as a "license to kill." This may be true, but in the liberal worldview, how is this so vastly different from the choices we faced in Vietnam circa 1963? The people of South Vietnam wished to be free from the communist tyranny the North Vietnamese were determined to impose. There were serious violations of human rights and even massacres taking place. We know, in retrospect, that communist victories in Cambodia and Vietnam resulted in massive genocide. And yet that war was regarded by Bill Clinton and most other liberals not just as ill-advised or not worth it but as morally wrong. As Bill Clinton put it in 1969 (and in 1992, saying, "Twenty-three years later, I am still proud of what I said then"), he had toiled in the United States Senate for the chance "of working every day against a war I opposed and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely for racism in America before Vietnam." Note the moral preening. What, the Holocaust didn't inspire more outrage? The Moscow show trials? Today, President Clinton is asking his youngers and betters to risk their lives for Kosovo. Doesn't he owe it to them to explain why this crusade, which clearly involves no risk to "the life of the people collectively" as he wrote to Col. Holmes, is different from the attempt to save South Vietnam? It would be instructive for all of us to learn how the '60s generation, which lectured us ceaselessly about how immoral it was to intervene in a civil war, and which branded us as criminals for choosing up sides, has now beat its plowshares into swords. freerepublic.com

To: jlallen who wrote (12082)	4/1/1999 11:00:00 PM
From: Catfish	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 13994

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Neal Boortz No, I'm not talking about the NATO mission against Yugoslavia and Slobodan Milosevic. First of all, how can you say "mission accomplished" when it's not clear just what that mission is? If the mission was to get Milosevic to stop his genocidal "ethnic cleansing" efforts against the Kosovars, then the mission certainly isn't accomplished --- and at this point it looks like it literally cannot be accomplished. But – what about the mission of Slobodan Milosevic? Experts are saying that within a very few days – perhaps four or five – Milosevic will have succeeded in forcing the bulk of the ethnic Albanians in out of Kosovo. His ethnic cleansing is almost complete. So, for Milosevic, it's may well be "mission accomplshed." One talking head on the news last night --- sorry, didn't get his name --- said that the US/NATO operation against Milosevic will prove to be "One of the most significant strategic blunders of the post cold war era." MILSOVECK'S PRISONERS OF WAR Now Slobby has three American soldiers and he's holding them as prisoners of war. Do you see that word ... "war?" Would someone please tell the media, these men are not "prisoners of crisis." They are not "prisoners of action." They are prisoners of WAR. Get a clue, folks. We're at WAR with Slobby Milosevic and his army. Word will probably be sent to the NATO forces that these three American soldiers have been housed slap in the center of a strategic target --- thus removing that site from NATO target lists. BADGE OF SHAME Bill Clinton tells Dan Rather that he doesn't regard the impeachment vote as a "badge of shame." First of all, we have to figure out which vote he is talking about. The House vote to impeach him or the Senate vote to acquit him? If Clinton isn't ashamed about the House impeachment vote, what would it take? To me, it's just another indication that the man is ill – a sociopath. He is only the second president in the history of this country to be impeached .... and he has no sense of shame over it. I wonder if he is ashamed of the succession of women he has used for his sexual pleasure, then cast aside. I wonder if he has a sense of shame over the distressed he has caused his daughter. Is he ashamed of the fact that he is known the world over as a consistent liar? Does he have any sense of shame over those career White House Travel Office employees who were dumped by the side of the road with their belongings after his wife had them fired? Does he feel shame over the 12 American soldiers butchered in Somalia due to his bungling as Commander in Chief? No -- the answer to all of them is no. Megalomaniacs know no shame. Bill Clinton is without conscience. boortz.com