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Opinion
The Battalion
Page 7 • Monday, August 12,
Clinton also deserves blame
Time Magazine article blaming Bush for Sept. 11 ignores Clinton y s failures
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RICHARD BRAY
I n the Aug. 12 edition of Time
Magazine, the cover proudly
proclaims it has uncovered “the
secret history” of the Sept. 11 ter
rorist attacks, thanks to exclusive
interviews from members of the
Clinton administration. In the article, former President Bill
iClinton’s National Security Adviser Sandy Berger says a formal
specific plan had been created by the Clinton administration in
the months prior to President George W. Bush’s tenure to elim
inate al-Qaeda cells and Osama bin Laden. Berger said this
plan had been presented to Bush’s new National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice but was ignored
until Sept. 11.
While this article might make it appear the
Clinton administration was tough on terror
ism, only to be thwarted in its efforts by
the incompetence of its successors,
Clinton’s record in fighting terrorism
leaves much to be desired.
The Time article does its best to
make the Bush administration the bad
guy. One unnamed Clinton administration
official said had it not been for the transi
tion in leadership, the aggressive plan to
eliminate bin Laden would have become a
presidential directive by late October or early
November. The author, Michael Elliott, even
goes so far as to say no other world power has
such disorganized transitions of power as the
United States.
However, to blame Sept. 11 solely on the
change of leadership and the priorities of the Bush
administration is to avoid giving Clinton his due.
According to reports which first came out in the British
newspaper The Sunday Times, Clinton declined at least
three offers involving foreign governments to seize bin
Laden after he had been determined a terrorist threat to
the United States. According to reports, in 1996, the
Clinton administration received an offer from Sudan
(where bin Laden was then residing) to turn bin Laden in
to U.S. authorities. The United States declined. One
month later, bin Laden responded by destroying the Khobar
Towers, a U.S. military installation in Saudi Arabia, with a
5,000 pound truck bomb, killing 19 American soldiers. The
Clinton administration received two more similar offers in 2000,
but both were declined.
Clinton’s administration also has a weak record when dealing
with Saddam Hussein and Iraq, a nation the Bush administration
has recently been concerned with due to its suspected stockpil
ing of biological and chemical weapons and its affiliations with
terrorism. For example, according to Fox News, when Iraq
stopped U.N. inspectors from examining Iraqi warehouses, the
Clinton administration was forced to give in. Later, when
Iraq stopped all international inspections, the United
States again acquiesced.
Admittedly, the Bush administration had eight
months to prepare against an enemy which it knew
existed. It also appears the change in White House
leadership delayed progress on a plan which might
have brought down al-Qaeda, though the
White House has denied several points in
the article. However, the Clinton adminis
tration certainly deserves as much, if not
more, blame for the events which occurred in
the eight years previous to Bush’s taking office.
Terrorist attacks against the United States, such
as the bombing of the Khobar Towers and the
U.S.S. Cole in October 2000 in which 17 Americans
were killed, aroused fears the United States might
be vulnerable to terrorist attacks for the first time.
The Clinton administration had plenty of oppor
tunity during its tenure to react powerfully against
bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network before Bush
became the president.
According to The Sunday Times, shortly after Sept. 11,
Clinton was at a private dinner party when he told a friend
the decision not to get bin Laden when he had the chance
was probably the biggest mistake of his presidency. He
was probably right.
RUBEN DELUNA • THE BATTALION
Richard Bray is a senior
journalism major.
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L ast week, the Bush adminis
tration announced its intention
to sign a bilateral agreement
with Israel not to hand over peace
keepers from either country to the
jurisdiction of the newly opened
International Criminal Court (ICC).
This agreement, following closely on the heels of an
identical agreement with Romania, is the latest step
in the government’s efforts to cripple the newly
founded ICC.
The ICC was created in a 1998 multi-national
treaty called the Rome Statute for the purpose of
investigating and trying individuals for international
crimes of genocide, crimes of war, and other human
rights abuses such as apartheid and the selling of
women into sexual slavery. According to the provi
sions of the Rome Statute, the ICC has jurisdiction
over these crimes when committed by individuals
who are members of nations that have ratified the
treaty or commit the crime within the borders of a
nation that has ratified the treaty. Over one hundred
nations have contributed to the negotiations of the
exact terms of make-up, and the Court officially
opened on July 1.
Bush has repeatedly called for a permanent
exemption from ICC jurisdiction for American sol
diers and diplomats, and his efforts to secure immu
nity began with the threat to exercise the United
States’ veto power on the U.N. Security Council
a gainst renewing U.N. peacekeeping efforts in
Bosnia. Only after the Security Council granted a
one-year suspension of ICC jurisdiction over
American personnel did the United States assent to
the continuation of U.N. peace efforts in Bosnia.
After this compromise was brokered, Congress
passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection
Act (ASPA), which includes several provisions that
are little more than veiled threats against the United
States’ allies. The first of these provisions allows the
resident to use any means necessary to liberate
American nationals held by the court, which currently
Asides in The Hague, Netherlands.
. Tfie ICC was modeled after the American judi
cal system during the sculpting of the Rome
tatute. All legal provisions in the U.S. judiciary
are included except a trial by jury, due to the diffi-
Cu lty of defining an acceptable set of peers for the
accused. Instead, the accused will be tried before
e panel of 18 judges. Rights of accused include
Presumption of innocence, right to counsel and the
n gnt to remain silent.
In regards to national sovereignty, the ICC tries to
°rk with local judicial systems, helping only in
ases where national courts are unable or unwilling
o try the cases, due to political or military pressure,
is not designed to replace local courts. Considering
merica’s legal system was the basis for the ICC’s
ructure , and because America has a military court
^^ ern > through which it vigorously watches its own
0 diers for misconduct, the likelihood of the ICC
tind: -
mg such cause to step in is all but non-existent.
However, by threatening to invade the
Netherlands if any American is brought
before the court, America is infringing on
the sovereignty of other nations. If an
American breaks the law in another
nation, that individual is tried in that
nation’s courts. Zacarias Moussaoui, a
French national, is being tried in America for con
spiring in the Sept. 11 attacks. France has not called
for America to turn him over to French courts.
Similarly, if an American were to conspire in a ter
rorist attack in France, America would allow him to
be tried there. Members of the Rome Statute have
the option to turn individuals over to the ICC. If the
United States were to free that individual through
military force, it would amount to an attack on that
nation’s judicial process as well as an attack on the
sovereignty of the Netherlands.
Perhaps the administration’s only complaint is
not that the court can be guided by a single nation,
but that it cannot be guided by a single nation,
namely America. If the prosecutor and half the
judges were American, or America had the same
veto power it has on the U.N. Security Council, the
court would be little more than an international
extension of American law, and, as a result, an
American puppet. If there is ever to be a single
international code of ethics and means of enforcing
those ethics, the existence of the ICC is a very
important and necessary first step. Americans cannot
expect to be exempt from such a system. It they
were, it would violate the entire purpose of the
ICC’s creation. The world's cultures are too diverse
to agree on purely American interests, and
Americans should not demand they do so.
America, as the world’s most powerful nation,
must be careful of the example it sets. By ratifying
the existence of the ICC, America makes a powerful
statement that no one is above the law, and there are
universal rights of human beings no nation, regard
less of its military and economic strength, can
impugn. By ignoring the court and refusing to partic
ipate in it, America does two things. First, it says to
the world it thinks it is above reproach and is not
responsible to other members of the foreign commu
nity with which it must live and do business.
Second, it loses its opportunity to shape the
ICC’s future. As it stands, the court does not yet
have jurisdiction over crimes of aggression because
such crimes have not been defined. If America
joined, it would have the opportunity to help shape
this definition.
If the United States does not take this opportu
nity to assist in the ICC’s formative years, then the
United States’ influence in the future will be mar
ginal at best, or militarily enforced at worst. Such a
state of affairs would be truly pitiable for the
nation that has, in the past, been hailed as the
champion of democracy.
Michael Whitlow is a senior
English major.
Military provides no
training for marriage
(U-WIRE) DEKALB, Ill. - While learning
how to operate a standard-issue clamor mine,
I learned the side that released its explosive
charge was branded with the phrase “this
side toward enemy” in capital letters. Things
with simple and obvious instructions like
these are affectionately referred to as "idiot-
proof.” Everything Uncle Sam issues to mili
tary men has simplistic instructions concern
ing its operation and maintenance.
Everything except wives.
The recent concern about military men
and their wives having problems reminds me
of my own observations of the tragic fact
that some soldiers, airmen, sailors and
Marines never understood the operating pro
cedures of marriage.
As budding Marine recruits, sweating on
a parade deck under the blazing San Diego
sun, drill instructors would spend hours forc
ing upon us the “idiot-proof’ way to teach us
to “present arms” during a rifle drill. But I
do not recall a minute of training invested on
how to ignore the flight departing from the
airport visible from our barrack's windows.
The flight that a fellow recruit weeping in
the rack above me wished he was on so he
could escape boot camp hell and return to
the comfort of his wife and child. Perhaps
training for dealing with being away from
one's family is not necessary. He chose to be
there. And to return home early and without
honor would be far worse. When I met him
again two months after our graduation, he
did not speak as warmly of his wife as he did
when we walked our posts late at night.
“She left me,” he said. “She has taken my
son and gone away.”
I wondered why.
“Wasn't she proud of you?” I asked.
“Didn't she think you looked sexy in your
uniform?”
“Yeah,” he said, forcing a grin, only to
make me think what I said was funny. “But
when I told her I would be leaving again,
she changed.”
In the valleys of southern California, the
corps taught us “idiot-proof’ ways to disas
semble, clean, reassemble and operate the
lethal weapons we used to fight. But they
never explained to a young corporal I
befriended years later how to put down the
bottle of whiskey, close the cap and fight the
urge to pour another glass.
It would have been nice to have that
instruction when he heard the news that his
newlywed wife no longer wished to sleep in
a bed alone while her husband was in
Okinawa. Instead, she would share it with
another. Since that day, he avoids being
sober for any great length of time.
Up the mountains that enveloped those
valleys, we would march with heavy packs
and the blistering sun on our backs. We
learned endurance through the unbearable,
but the lesson did not cross over to the mar
riage of a staff sergeant I would meet during
my final years in the Marine Corps.
A brilliant Marine, he had mastered his
craft. On his dress-blue uniform, he wore
ribbons and medals earned from service
around the world. However, in his eyes you
could see a sense of bitterness worn inside,
where the love for his wife once rested. The
many years and the four children, each arriv
ing nine months after his return from an
overseas tour, helped tarnish his once-shin
ing vision of her. Besides her physical
change, she no longer sat quietly at his side
upon his return to listen to his stories of self-
sacrifice and heroics.
Now, wrapped in her own thick skin
developed to deal with life as a military wife,
she would be the one to lecture him on his
responsibility to his children and her sacri
fices to provide them with a proper upbring
ing.
When he spoke of her to me once, he
expressed how much he had grown to
despise her.
“Why don't you leave her then?” I asked,
falling back on what I considered the obvi
ous answer.
“I can't,” he responded, turning his head
to look past me at the plain,white wall. “I
wouldn’t know what to do without her.”
Before my tour ended, she took the initia
tive (something the Corps tried to instill in
us) and divorced him.
These specific relationships I witnessed
had unfortunate endings. So, does that mean
a military man shouldn’t get married because
wives do not come with “idiot-proof’
instructions? The military has an issued reply
to that question.
During the final phase of our basic train
ing, we spent a day learning how to heal bat
tle wounds. We were confronted with ghastly
images of amputations, bums and bullet
wounds. Finally, a corpsman demonstrated
the “idiot-proof’ techniques to treat each
injury. When he finished, one of my fellow
recruits asked how to deal with someone
when they think they are going to die.
The corpsman's answer seemed simple:
“If he feels like he can’t hang on, tell him to
live for his wife. If he isn’t married, tell him
he needs to live to have one.”
An “idiot-proof’ answer.
PaulMikolajczk is a columnist at
Northern Illinois University.