Sunday, September 24, 2006

Bill Clinton Defends His Record on Fighting Terror

This video clip on YouTube taken from Fox News Sunday is Bill Clinton defending his record on fighting bin Laden and terrorism. For all the beating Clinton takes from the right-wing talk shows, it is useful to hear Clinton's side of the story. We've hammered Clinton for not taking certain actions. Clinton asserts that he wanted to take some of those actions but was unable to do them because he didn't have the support he needed to pull it off.

So many times issues are oversimplified to make people look like white hats or black hats. Just because I may think Bill Clinton has done some sleezy things, it doesn't mean he doesn't genuinely care about the safety of the people of this country. Just because I don't like things Clinton has done doesn't mean he wears a black hat.


Byron York has a well reasoned rebuttal to some of Clinton's arguments.

2 comments:

Scott Hinrichs said...

Clinton makes some good points about the unwillingness of the American public to go along with stronger military actions against terrorists. Indeed, the terrorism policies of the Bush II administration prior to 9/11 look quite similar to those of the Clinton administration. But York also makes some good points against some of Clinton's arguments.

James Taranto notes here that the real story is Clinton's bullying of his interviewer. Taranto says, "It's another example of how liberal media don't really help liberals. Years of this sort of sycophantic treatment left Clinton unable to answer the sort of tough question that Republican politicians have to face all the time."

Please note that people that worked in the Clinton White House would disagree, suggesting that the press was anything but friendly to Clinton.

Bradley Ross said...

Alas, it seems that Clinton's factual assertions aren't holding up so well either. As you point out, he tried to bully Wallace by insisting that Wallace never asks tough questions of right-wingers.

Mickey Kaus had a link to a piece by Patterico that lists times Wallace has asked the same tough "why didn't you do more" question to officials from the current administration.