If The Left Is Correct—The Monica Lewisnky Affair Caused 9-11
It is difficult for a conservative like me to adopt a liberal mentality. I have instinctively fought the premise that Muslim fanaticists are rightly angry at the United States for identifiable reasons (those reasons always involve vague overtures, i.e. U.S. policy, or Western Imperialism). This has never matched my observations of world events, but not long ago I realized just what it would mean if I did adopt their mantra. For the sake of this article, I will concede that our actions spur their actions—our insensitivity invites their retaliation. The thing is, if this is true, then aren’t we forced to ask what U.S. policy or imperialistic behavior invited 9-11?
Not longer after I crafted this piece, Texas Rep.Ron Paul opined that perhaps 9-11 was the result of our bombing in Iraq prior to the latest invasion. He was laughed at openly, and I was stunned that the observations that follow in this article had been nibbled at. I find him to be a bit of a goof, but on this singular point you have to ask: Why was Ron Paul scoffed at? All he did was say a very liberal thing—'our actions caused their response.' The left has been pumping this message at every college in the country. The mainstream press repeats these strains, in however an obtuse fashion as it can (anger at the West, Western insensitivity, right wing Christian dominance).
If what you on the left have been saying about Iraq is true, then I simply want to acquiesce in a graceful, if not artful manner. Your premise from the moment the planes flew into the Twin Towers, The Pentagon, and by unrequited design, The White House, has been that it was our own fault. American Imperialism was at the root of Muslim rage. American decadence was the catalyst for a fundamental Miss Manners slap on the West (now by giving in to this notion, liberals will have to dismiss that wing of their movement that says we blew up the Twin Towers, Building Seven, etc, but it will be worth it just to know it was our fault anyway).
So have it your way, my friends on the left. American hubris and aggression leads to predictable retaliation. As long as I am willing to give you that much, then please allow me to lift the veil off of the 9-11 attacks. If that was ‘our bad,’ let’s examine why they were so damn angry with us. Unfortunately, it is very, very simple: The ‘Monica Lewinsky Affair’ caused 9-11 to happen, and we need to be kneeling to the Middle East in our blame, shame and acknowledgement. If America is to blame when Islamists become violent towards the West, then there is no doubt as to why the September 11 attacks took place.
For those of you who might self-righteously accuse me of being cavalier about the loss of innocent human life, I would only answer that I am not surprised. You grieve differently. Rather than mourning their loss, you transitioned quickly into a relativistic grief. Many of us still cry for the victims and their families. You folks always expressed sympathy for our victims in sentences that have a ‘but,’ or a ‘however;’ before your next thought. That next thought is usually related to our complicity. It is similar to how you manage the death toll of American soldiers in Iraq—like a MacDonalds sign that constantly reminds us of how many burgers were served. As part of a political point, they are celebrated in press releases with solemn spices. However Churchillian (Ward, not Winston) these linkages, now your chickens have come home to roost. People like me are giving up just like you did long ago. We are surrendering different ground, however, and my retreat involves the left’s sacred ground zero--the bull’s eye on America as a provocateur. Again--you win—whatever America did prior to 9-11 caused 9-11. What could that be? You have always been a bit vague about that…American policy…Western decadence…mentioning their hatred of Israel, but hiding your own, etc. Let’s give you your due—there was something we did to cause 9-11. I have a few specifics, and they are ones that our press, however adventurous within their preferred field of dreams, have never explored.
The static created by a relentless media drumbeat has charged the atmosphere in America (Bush lied—people died. Where’s the WMD? That sort of thing). As one of my terms of surrender, I must remind folks that the 9-11 plan was conceived while Bill Clinton was our president. Mohammed Atta was in flight school when Bill Clinton was our president. The World Trade Center was bombed while Bill Clinton was our president. The U.S.S. Cole was blown up while Bill Clinton was president. In the 1988 U.S. Embassy bombings in which hundreds died courtesy of al Qaeda, our country’s president was Bill Clinton. The same is true regaring the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996. I mention these facts for exposition, and until now, I never blamed Bill Clinton or Miss Lewinsky for the 9-11 attack. Here’s the rub: Muslim Fundamentalists had never before assaulted American soil. What did we do to cause this action? What policy or action did we undertake that so inflamed or challenged the Muslim world that such an ambitious and vitriolic act would serve as their response? If they are just reacting to our injustices, what injustice did we foist upon them?
In candor, the whole ‘wag the dog’ discussion we had as a nation seemed fairly straightforward to me. President Clinton had stared down America with his best sales job and assured us that, no, he had not lied under oath in a sexual harassment lawsuit. He emphatically stated that he had not been engaged in a sexual relationship with Miss Lewinsky. Once the party dress created ‘party duress,’ he again faced the cameras and told America he was so sorry for lying (to us, not to a jury). For three days and nights America, particularly via cable news outlets, seemed to be reading the pulse of America and even its Democratic Party leaders as a drumbeat towards impeachment. Count me as one of those who at the time felt that this was inevitable. On the third day the press rested. In August of 1998, President Clinton launched missiles into Afghanistan and The Sudan, and our mass media played fetch. The president who sought and received accolades for handling terrorist acts within a law enforcement framework had suddenly gone military. The strikes were without the cover of coalition. There was no U.N. authority sought or granted. America struck at the heart of Muslim territory, if only for a moment, and then went militarily moribund again. From Osama Bin Laden to the Taliban, from Northern Africa to Palestine, there was no doubt but that the missile strikes provoked at least a promise to respond in kind. President Clinton himself warned us that acts of terrorism would likely follow.
While the missile strikes into The Sudan and Afghanistan took Monica off of our collective television sets as our sole preoccupation, the story was again competing for air time within a week. The eventual march towards a special prosecutor, hearings and the ultimate impeachment endured. In December of 1998, while the impeachment trial was actually underway, President Clinton once again stepped away from his law enforcement model. For four days and nights America pounded Iraq from air and sea. The stated reason for these attacks were fundamentally two-fold; 1) Iraq’s failure to provide weapons inspections in an unfettered manner and, 2) the threat posed by his nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction. This time, the ‘wag the dog’ theorists were emboldened by what could only be classified as ultimate irony. Hollywood had just released a film called Wag The Dog, and the premise involved a president under fire for philandering while in office. In the film, the president’s men conspire to concoct an international incident to redirect public attention and scrutiny.
There was another irony to the attacks in Afghanistan and The Sudan. The Clinton Administration simultaneously obtained an indictment against Osama Bin Laden for his alleged involvement in the string of embassy bombings in Africa. He was actually placed on the F.B.I.’s most wanted list. By doing so, President Clinton had again tipped his hand as to how he preferred to deal with Bin Laden. How could he bomb Osama from above if he had a criminal warrant for his arrest? Even Osama Bin Laden was left for federal police apprehension, making the attacks in the wake of his grand jury falsehoods becoming public and the later impeachment vote all the more atypical.
While America watched both dramas unfold, one on the silver screen, and the other on CSPAN, the Muslim world was again seething. The bombing didn’t remove Saddam Hussein from power, and in the end it was viewed as ineffective, if not diversionary. Even Secretary Of State Madelaine Allbright conceded the bombing was meant only to degrade Saddam’s ability to pose a WMB threat, as they could not get it all (this seems to contradict her railings regarding President Bush and his assertions about WMD, as she paints him as a liar. It is unclear whether she thinks he is a liar because Saddam never had them, even when she was part of an administration that attacked Iraq because of them, or because she alternately believes that the WMD were all destroyed by her efforts). Regardless of Allbright’s dubious grasp of events, America’s bombing in the Middle East was not received well by the home team.
While we have debated ‘wag the dog,’ why have we never approached the subject of who the dog bit, and what their reaction was? If President Clinton bombed Afghanistan, The Sudan, and Iraq, all at key points in his Monica-related saga, and if the 9-11 attacks were our fault, then why shouldn’t we ask the obvious question? What was the 9-11 attack in response to? What had we done prior to this conspiracy to anger al Qaeda, to incite the Taliban, or to foment Muslim vengeance? If those dubiously timed Clinton attacks in the Middle East provoked the 9-11 madness, and if the president did this to divert attention and energy related to his personally embarrassing story, then the Monica Lewinsky Affair was the causation for 9-11. American liberals have recited their mantra to the point of rote: ‘They hate us because of our policies.’ One wonders what they thought about a policy of bombing them to get an illicit affair off of the public square…in this case a television set. One wonders how they felt about Western bombs taking their lives in order to deflect accountability for adultery? I believe they attacked us because President Clinton littered their landscape with bombs as if they were a blue dress, only to hide his own ‘Western decadence.’
This sounds so preposterous that one can only get to the heart of it by seeking guidance from within their own heart. If you do believe, and I do, that Bill Clinton’s two bombing campaigns were uncharacteristic, timed according to political need, and injurious to the Muslim world, then this theory becomes more than a theory. If you believe, as I now do, that our policy shapes the Fundamentalist Muslim agenda, then those preemptive strikes by Bill Clinton created the ultimate in preemption by al Qaeda. If George Bush’s leap from Afghanistan to Iraq in order to combat terror seems a non sequitur to some, then what can be made of President Clinton’s leap within four months? I give all credit to my liberal friends for leading me to my assertion that the Lewinsky affair produced mass terror on a scale never seen before. Just for emphasis, I have included some liberal thoughts on terror, American culture, and how we should always blame America first:
· Christian fundamentalism is akin to Islamic fundamentalism (When they clapped for Rosie on the view, it was either because she said this, or because she stopped talking). From this I learned that The Bible, in vast circulation as a tool to preach forgiveness and non-violence (by 1/10th of its limited surplus of Commandments, not to kill), must have really angered the Middle East.
· The Twin Towers were full of ‘Little Eichmans’ who deserved what they got. (This, according to Ward Churchill who, like displaced Nazi’s, found himself to be a displaced Native American from the tribe his lawyers called ‘Sue Nation.’
· The U.S. shouldn’t have turned Saddam over to Iraq. Jesse Jackson was particularly passionate about this one. (We shouldn’t have taken him to Guantanomo because only Democratic Party Leadership going to Cuba. We shouldn’t have taken him to Abu Gahreb because three soldiers took some stupid photos of some terrorists once, and the press enraged folks by pretending they scooped the story. In reality it was uncovered when a family member of a soldier being prosecuted for those stupid actions went public.).
· The French hate us now—we are too brutish and arrogant for their taste (This from the country that was in World War One before we were, in World War Two before we were, and in both cases we liberated their inept behinds. Oh, and they precipitated the Viet Nam War by colonizing that country and then surrendering via a plebiscite…not to mention Algeria which still reeks of Islamic terror in the wake of their imperialism there).
· While the Democratic Leadership has pushed legislation to end the war, they never say for whom the war will end. They want us to end the war, but not one of them is so stupid as to believe that this means the war is over for Jihadists. If we are surrendering, we aren’t surrendering in a vaccum--there is a winner--and they are okay with that. Obviously the winners will fight on, even as we celebrate ‘peace.’
· As we work through the issue of our time, San Francisco has banned plastic grocery bags (This serves the dual purpose of also allowing their mayor to help his mistresses look more appealing).
What can I say? I love America, and I recognize her blemishes. I have come to see that what we do can, and does impact how other countries deal with us. If George Bush can incite hatred by virtue of a perceived smirk, then what did Bill Clinton set in motion with smirk bombs? It is clear that the sages of his time backed away quickly from their claims of a Sudanese weapons facility. If we had any CIA on the ground at the time, at least they had enough aspirin to go around in that we apparently bombed an aspirin factory (If I was wholly leftist it wouldn’t matter if they were making nuclear bombs there—as they said in Portland after the 9-11 attack, ending the cycle of violence (by not retaliating) needs to begin with us). No, we bombed the very country that Osama Bin Laden was training in and receiving cover from (Afghanistan), and then we went south because Bin Laden had ‘interests in’ this factory. We bombed Iraq because they ignored U.N. inspectors. That had gone on so long, and so embarrassingly that any follower of Bill Clinton knows he would normally have drawn a line in the sand as opposed to going out of the sand box. To this day we still hear he and his crowd sniping, “ You should have given the inspectors more time,” as it relates to George Bush. Hillary recently contorted her norm (“ If I knew then what I know now”) into a claim that she thought she was voting for U.N. inspection. Good Lord.
**Note: It is by this liberal logic that I would also forward the notion that Muslim fanatics hate America because John Kerry voted for the war before he voted against it. They cannot forgive that first vote, and for this we will all continue to pay.
If my central premise isn’t hard enough for liberals to take, my companion theory is even more grotesque. If you take a moment and think back to that moment in television history when Bill Clinton was going to be held accountable as part of an ABC miniseries, the entire left wing was going apoplectic over the notion that piece was going to mention Monica Lewinsky and the potential distractions that came with this scandal. The blogs were seething venom because ABC had a show that pointed out the obvious—Monica Lewinsky sidetracked the President of the United States, and made his actions in matters of terrorism subject to cynicism. One of the three former Clinton Administration heads who sent a letter to Disney was Sandy Berger. He complained about the ‘lies’ and errors. Unbelievably (if it would have been a Bush hit), the miniseries was edited after these complaints. (another of the three was Madelaine Allbright, who at the time was on record supporting the Clinton strikes as ridding Saddam of his WMD’s was important then. Let’s go back, however, to Sandy Berger.
As one who can be counted among the skeptics that a former N.S.A. Director would enter the National Archives and steal classified documents just for fun, I do have some ideas as to why he would do such a thing. What if there existed any papers, notes, cables or raw data that actually named Monica Lewinsky? What if Saddam, a Taliban leader, or just some Sudanese farmer made a statement regarding their want for revenge in the wake of the wag the dog bombing? How awful would it have been if the
9-11 Commission had seen any classified threats that included this dynamic? Sound crazy? Again, if you can’t go to your own heart on this, then go to Google. The Muslim world was on fire each time President Clinton struck the Middle East. They made the link to Monica just like many at home did. It was in their newspapers, on the television, and even some Taliban chiding about Monica found its way into our mainstream press. In actuality, it seems impossible that such things were not part of angry communiqués that we intercepted.
As a retired police captain, I wouldn’t have ever thought about stealing a report on a bicycle theft, much less something critically important. Sandy Berger, as our National Security Advisor, knew the laws related to classified documents better than anyone else on the planet (and plan ‘et he did, by repeated trips to the archives, diversionary behavior in getting observers out of his area, and by stuffing documents into his socks!). What could induce a man to risk it all? The debate on whether Bill Clinton did enough, or let Osama Bin Laden get away when offered up had already been in the public domain. The worst had been vetted, or so we thought. From my perspective, most folks sense he did this incredibly criminal and treacherous thing because he was hiding something for some one. Since no one knows (or can know as some documents were destroyed) there has been created this sense of ‘oh well’ about the thefts. I believe that any mention of Monica Lewinsnky in a 9-11 hearing would have been very damning and embarrassing to he and his former boss.
I hate to say this, but most people I have talked to haven’t heard the name Sandy Berger. They haven’t heard about his thefts, nor his destroying of classified data. These folks haven’t heard that he was convicted of these crimes. Please ask yourself this simple question: If Condaleeza Rice were caught sneaking classified documents out of the National Archives in her bra, only to destroy them prior to a congressional oversight activity, would you have heard about that? It would be the story of the year. It would be the subject of endless polling data, talk radio, and nightly news. The Berger case found only the ears of those who tune into cable news for about 4 days, and half of that was spent with his former boss telling us (aw shucks) that Sandy Berger was always so forgetful and disorganized…Hardball became softball. Blitzer became Cupid. 60 Minutes became 60 seconds. This historically staggering betrayal in the aftermath of an attack that had real blood on the hands and laps of the Clinton Administration became a non-story. It remains a testament to the ABC, CBS, NBC selectivity.
In the end, the bold arrogance of President Clinton created the impetus for an attack on our shores. Thankfully, my tutelage from the left has taught me many things. A president with hubris will bring resentment and put our country at risk. Mr. Clinton’s certainly did. If a president who placed a cigar in an Intern’s vagina bombed another country and in the process pointed at their oppression of women, the term ‘hubris’ would likely have come up. If having a sufficient coalition insulates a president against complaints of unilateralism, then going it alone into Afghanistan and The Sudan may have pitted them against us. If lacking a U.N. mandate sets up a country for charges of imperialism, then both forays by President Clinton emboldened the world community against us as it propped up our targets as victims in need of vengeance. In the wake of our bombing of Iraq, China, Russia and France all called for termination of the Iraq Oil Embargo. They also demanded the disassembly of the organization formerly used to attempt weapons inspections (U.N.S.C.O.M). Weapons of mass destruction are a tricky deal altogether. If you are slick, you can bomb a country because of them and then later discredit another president who acts on the same intelligence you did. If we had been serious about getting the weapons Saddam did use in several conflicts, we would not have let several years of ejecting inspectors pass unaddressed, done aerial bombing for four days out of the blue, and then left. Ask yourself: Has George Bush been held accountable for the WMD element as one of his reasons to go to war with Iraq?
I contend that Bill Clinton wasn’t scrutinized for his assertions because most people had
acknowledged the ‘wag the dog’ reality in the pits of their stomachs. Nonetheless, how could we have made an accusation, been so inept in out effort to target WMD, and then have no media assessment of it? During our intial march on Bagdhad, the major media obsessed over damage to a museum in for weeks, and we hear about greenhouse gases every day. Had we been successful in blowing a pile of nuclear, biological or chemical waste into the atmosphere, that alone would be a major, major story (If President Bush had done it). I read no stories about the potential for eco-contamination from aerial bombing under President Clinton. I read no scrutiny of the intelligence, the effectiveness (or lack of), or the fact that there were no apparent WMD’s located, much less destroyed. Where were the strains of ‘Clinton lied, people died!’(?)
In summary, a president who authorized an arrest warrant for Osama Bin Laden (therefore defining himself as one who was going to deal with this terrorist within a courtroom setting), insulted fundamentalist Muslims by killing folks and bombing cities in order to get his personal story off of the front pages. This same president told us to expect a terroristic response. Key Muslim Jihadists promised the same at that time. Both were correct, and 9-11 occurred as a direct response for this love-hate triangle. Prior to the 9-11 Commission hearings whose purpose it was to identify such a catalyst, this same president’s N.S.A. Director stole, then destroyed highly classified documents related to the attacks.
While liberals despise Bush openly, they gleefully tether him to his preemptive actions as insulation for future political battles. Surely his hubris will be the reason any future attacks occur, they offer, all the while ignoring how this war was actually generated. While we all know that contemporary radical Islamists have been attacking ‘infidels’ for decades, Bill Clinton rented their blood. He diverted, but for two brief missile strikes, from his eight-year practice in dealing with terrorism through the justice system. His attacks accomplished nothing, and were followed up with nothing. They were attacks that lacked any purpose other than to distract the American public. Can you imagine how much hatred was generated when American missiles took lives in trade for political rehabilitation? If I were only to absorb the plentiful AP and UP reports that have instructed we Americans how incredibly devout Muslim are, then it would be predictable that 9-11 could have happened in response to President Clinton’s treatment of women alone. When one adds disingenuous shock and ‘aw shucks,’ al Qaeda’s actions were equally despicable and predictable.
My compliments to the liberal left for opening my eyes. I now agree that what we do in the Middle East may cause future hostilities. If we are capricious, we may get slapped as a result. This brought me to the realization that Bill Clinton, who was slapping in a capricious manner with an Intern, decided to turn down the televised fixation on his mistakes by creating other ones—Afghanistan, The Sudan, and Iraq. After doing so, many remarked that the tail was wagging the dog. I offer that the tail wagged more than the dog. His hubris upped the ante, and al Qaeda decided to strike back at this disingenuous combat by being authentically terroristic. Perhaps they knew, more than even we, that Americans are always willing to sleep at the wheel as long as it is their wheel. Yes, I have learned much from the left, and the biggest lesson of all is how much we are willing to forget, even while it is happening.
