Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [42]
In times of crisis, people often respond by instinctively doing the things they find most comforting. For many Republicans, then, it is hardly surprising that their way of coping with the horror of 9/11 was to attack Bill Clinton.
Some attacks were more instinctive than others. A clearly rattled Orrin Hatch was all over the news that day, blaming Clinton because he had “de-emphasized” the military. Hatch was also the first to confirm al Qaeda’s involvement by disclosing classified intercepts between associates of Osama bin Laden about the attack. Asked about it on ABC News two days later, a miffed Donald Rumsfeld said Hatch’s leak was the kind that “compromises our sources and methods” and “inhibits our ability to find and deal with the terrorists who commit this kind of act.” Thanks, Orrin.
So if it hadn’t been for Hatch, we probably would’ve gotten bin Laden right away. The disclosure that al Qaeda was responsible did allow Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to identify the “root of the problem” just hours after the attack: “We had Bill Clinton backing off, letting the Taliban go, over and over again.”
The right-wing media followed suit. The Washington Times blamed Clinton. The New York Post blamed Clinton. You know who Rush Limbaugh blamed? Clinton. The National Review’s White House correspondent Byron York wrote that Clinton’s “record is a richly detailed manual of how not to conduct a war on terrorism.” Within two days, Newt Gingrich was blaming Clinton for the attacks because of his “pathetically weak, ineffective ability to focus and stay focused.” You really got to give Gingrich credit for how hard he tried to disrupt Clinton’s focus: His Republican-run House conducted dozens of hostile investigations against the President.
But it had kind of been a waste of Gingrich’s time. Clinton, as I will demonstrate below, focused more on terrorism than any previous president. A month before Clinton left office, his administration was praised by two former Reagan counterterrorism officials. “Overall, I give them very high marks,” Robert Oakley, who served as ambassador for counterterrorism in the Reagan State Department, told the Washington Post. “The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama, which made him stronger.” Oakley’s successor in the Reagan administration, Paul Bremer, disagreed slightly. Bremer, who is currently the civilian administrator in Iraq, told the Post he believed the Clinton administration had “correctly focused on bin Laden.” Notice the word “focused” next to the words “on bin Laden.” I’m talking to you, Newt. And all of you “Blame-Clinton-Firsters.”
Right-wingers like to call us the “Blame-America-First Crowd.” But they’ve blamed Clinton, who’s not just an American, but was the President, virtually nonstop. And Clinton was not just the President. He was the last elected president, who received more votes than any other candidate running against him. In two straight elections! So who’s blaming America? The left, which is blaming the terrorists? Or the right, which is blaming a twice-elected President of the United States?
But, you know what, I don’t want to get into a whole partisan politics thing here. Not in this book, anyway. We’ll leave that for my next book, I Fucking Hate Those Right-Wing Motherfuckers!, due out in October 2004. I’m hoping it will “fire up the troops” for the final weeks of the campaign season.
No, this book, the one you are reading now, is about giving both sides a fair shake and getting to the bottom of the big issues that face us all as America transitions into the twenty-first century. Who was to blame for 9/11, other than the terrorists? It’s an important question, one that serious-minded people want answered. It’s also one that less serious people like Sean Hannity are curious about. And I think it’s time to go to the record with an open mind and, more important, an open heart.
Anyone with an open mind and an open heart must admit that, as