Clinton DID give orders to shoot back.
Remember the cruise missiles he ordered launched that destroyed the al Qaeda training camps in Afganistan? Do you remember your conservative condemnation of that assault? Remember "wag the dog"?
-Have you ever studied military history? Have you ever BEEN in the military? You can't fire long-range cruise missles at a target and forget about it! You have to put men on the ground and pick through the wreckage, identify the dead, and track down the survivors, anything less is meaningless posturing
"... could not get the CIA, the Pentagon, and FBI to act sufficiently to deal with the (terrorism) threat."
" He put an end to Iraqi and Iranian terrorism against the United States by quickly acting against the intelligence services of each nation. Remember the cruise missile strike against the Iraqi intelligence buiding that killed Muammar al-Qadhafi's adopted daughter? Remember the resulting conservative condemnation because he should have tried harder through diplomatic channels?"
No, I don't remember ANY time since the eighties that anyone said we needed to use more diplomatic pressure on Libya. Most conservatives I know thought that libya was long overdue for a trip behind the woodshed a long time ago, not more "meaningless posturing". And WHO left the CIA and other intelligence arms incapable of action? Under the Clinton administration, agencies were forbidden to deal with known criminals and murderers unless they had specific written authorization from higher up. Have you ever worked around bureaucrats? if you add a layer of paperwork that says "I want to do what has been discouraged" that's taken as a suicidal career move, so the request never gets made, the channel is dropped, and and intelligence resource fades away. The people we need to keep tabs on are not surrounded by choir boys, and often the motivation of the would-be informants are revenge, or the possibility of advantage if the lead-dog is taken out, so often we have to deal with those who are not much, if any better than the targets, but in doing so, we can learn about them should tey move up into that category. But if the whole chain is dropped, we lose tabs on the whole situation, and get blindsided repeatedy (no not 9/11, Khobar Towers, the African Embassy bombings, the USS Cole, need I go on?) You seem to want to buy the self canonization of William Jefferson Clinton. Thanks to his efforts the Chinese Communists can now target our West Coast cities acccurately, and Yasser Arafat has been shown for what he is, but no one will accept it! Clinton pressured the Israelis into negotiating with the PLO without making the PLO acknoledge Israels basic right to exist, and when the Israelis caved in to 95% of their demands, they walked away, because the thing they really want is Israel gone! I'll hand it to him, he got the Israelis to give more than I EVER thought they would, but it STILL wasn't enough!
BUT, my original post was clear enough, we can't change the past, what would you have us do now? Walk away? that would leave the same situation as when the Russians left Afghanistan!
