Today all the news relates to a video of someone purported to be Osama bin Laden. The videos were taken from a Predator drone flying over his compound in Afghanistan in late 2000. Now all the Monday morning quarterbacks are complaining that Clinton should have launched an attack to kill or capture him.
I agree that should have been done. But it is of no value now to discuss it unless people are willing to commit to doing such things in the future, and the discussion becomes one of how best do we accomplish such operations. That is something that needs to be discussed in secret.
Before you criticize Clinton on this single incident, you must consider the circumstances. There were no forces immediately prepared to act. The Clinton policy was to capture bin Laden and bring him to trial. You may disagree with the policy, but at the time and with that Administration, nothing else could have been done.
It is now easy to say what should have been done. But before anyone says we’ve learned from those mistakes, you must remember that we have an election this year. And a large group of people want us to return to precisely that policy. Would Bush have handled it any differently at that time? I don’t know. But I do expect he’d handle it differently now. Would Kerry have handled it differently then? I doubt it. But, more important, I don’t know whether he’d do things differently now.
Remember, the attacks on this country changed things drastically. I believe if Clinton had been given this opportunity to get bin Laden after such attacks he might very well have taken it. I know Bush would. And that, my friends, is a huge difference.