Revisiting GOP attacks on President Clinton ("Wag the Dog" theories)

[geek tragedy]

http://www.salon.com/2006/09/25/clinton_2_2/

Leading GOP senators, representatives, editorial boards, organizations and pundits repeatedly called into question Clinton’s motives in taking military action, and thus attacked the commander in chief at exactly the time when troops were still in harm’s way. The notion that such accusations were made only by a handful of isolated figures — which Goldberg has the audacity to suggest were actually liberal — and that the GOP largely supported Clinton’s military deployments and refrained from criticizing his motives is just false. That is a fact that Goldberg would have discovered had he undertaken the most minimal amount of research before making those claims.

It is true that some Republican political figures supported some of Clinton’s military decisions in Yugoslavia and the Middle East, but efforts to undermine those actions (as well as earlier ones) came from virtually every significant Republican precinct of influence throughout Clinton’s presidency. That includes, most prominently, actions Clinton took against Iraq and Osama bin Laden, which were routinely attacked by Republicans as unnecessary.

The claim that Clinton paid insufficient attention to terrorism was one that virtually no Republicans made during the Clinton presidency. To the contrary, terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism were barely on their radar screen, and when they were, it was most prominently to use those issues as a weapon to attack Clinton politically and to suggest that he was deploying the military not for any legitimate reason (such as the terrorist threat) but only to distract the country’s attention from the far more pressing sex scandal engulfing our government.

Maybe people should wait before making Wag the Dog accusations against the current Democratic President?

[ProSense]

1. Interesting, thanks.