The Interview

Having seen it now, I marvel that a former President has such thin skin. It's one thing to take exception to a question and answer forcefully. It's another to invade your interviewer's space, to finger-jab his knee and ridicule his network and finally make snide comments about him.

There was a better way to handle all that. Whatever you might think of the question, Bill Clinton's answer made him look defensive, thin-skinned and almost petty. If in fact the factual record backs him up as strongly as he asserts it does, his response looks even more ridiculous.

I'm not the only one who didn't get it. From Ann Althouse: Now, Clinton has an answer to this question, and he could have just given it. But he aggressively inserts challenging complaints about Fox News.

What Wallace asked just doesn't seem to be enough of a "hit job" to justify attacking the interviewer like that. For people who hate Fox News already, it might make sense, but he's on Fox News, being seen by the regular Fox News viewers. How is it a good strategy to rant on the assumption everyone knows Fox News is unfair? He gets irked at Chris Wallace in a personal way: "And you’ve got that little smirk on your face and you think you’re so clever." I hadn't been planning to think about Richard Nixon, but I got a Nixon vibe from this. He lets it show that he thinks about how his enemies are persecuting him.

Clinton leans way forward into Wallace's space. He even jabs him in the knee a few times with his finger.

On Richard Clarke as as final arbiter of all things truthful: First, Clarke's insistent theme is that the national security establishment, particularly the CIA and the FBI but also the State Department and the uniformed military, resisted and stymied Clinton's various directives to go after Bin Laden. This is surely true to some great degree. In this regard, Clinton should (and may) have some sympathy for his successor. It will be interesting to see whether in retirement George W. Bush also takes refuge behind the excuse -- valid as it may be -- of bureaucratic obstruction.

Second, I wonder how much of the bureaucratic opposition to the Clinton's directives regarding bin Laden reflected a concern by operatives and their agents that the very heavily lawyered-up and legalistic Clintonites would turn on them at the first light of publicity. Supposedly, many of these same people worry that they will face prosecution if the Democrats get the White House back in 2008. Perhaps there is a basis for this concern rooted in their experience with the Clinton administration.

Third, there is another bit in Clarke's book that bears mentioning: Clinton and his "Principals" group resisted bombing Afghanistan because Iraq was a higher priority:

On these three occasions and during the presentations of the PolMil Plan, I tried to make the case to the Principals that we should strike at known al Qaeda camps whether or not bin Laden was in them. "I know that you don't want to blow up al Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan trying to get bin Laden only to have the bastard sow up the next day at a press conference saying how feckless we are. So don't say we were trying to get bin Laden; say we were trying to destroy the camps. If we get him, so much the better."

The response I received from all the other members of the Principals usually went along the lines of: "So we spend millions of dollars' worth of cruise missles and bombs blowing up a buck fifty's worth of jungle gyms and mud huts again?" Sometimes I heard, "Look, we are bombing Iraq every week. We may have to bomb Serbia. European, Russian, Islamic press are already calling us the Mad Bomber. You want to bomb a third country?"....

It was ironic that people had once worried whether Bill Clinton would use force and now there was criticism that he was using it too much. In the Islamic world, there was criticism that Clinton was still bombing Iraq.... (AAE, p. 201 - 202, bold emphasis added)

Finally, even a casual reading of Clarke's book reveals that it was one of the more important sources for "The Path To 9/11," the ABC miniseries that so irritated the Clintonites. For that reason and many others, I wouldn't want more people reading Clarke's book if I were Clinton.

And reports that undermine the "Wag the Dog" assertions are found here and here.

Byron York's piece today at NRO closes with this: But the bottom line is that Bill Clinton, the commander-in-chief, could not find the will to order the military into action against al Qaeda, and Bill Clinton, the head of the executive branch, could not find the will to order the CIA and FBI to act. No matter what the former president says on Fox, or anywhere else, that is his legacy in the war on terror.

As I watched that portion of the interview where Clinton complains of the criticisms of being too obsessed with Bin Laden and then wagging the dog, I was left with this thought, much like York's close:

Even if his efforts were met with the kind of resistance he describes from the Congress and from his Executive agencies, he was still the President. What he says goes.

For everything else associated with this topic, it seems to me reasonable to think that Clinton lacked the courage of his convictions when it came to getting Bin Laden.