Giuliani Attacks Bill Clinton
This sounds like an open declaration of war:
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday accused former President Clinton of not responding forcefully enough to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or later terrorist attacks.
The former New York mayor criticized Democrats, accusing them of weakness and naivete in dealing with terrorism. Giuliani made the comments to about 650 business, corporate and political leaders at Regent University, the conservative Christian college founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.
“Islamic terrorists killed more than 500 Americans before Sept. 11. Many people think the first attack on America was on Sept. 11, 2001. It was not. It was in 1993,” said the former New York mayor.
Giuliani argued that Clinton treated the World Trade Center bombing as a criminal act instead of a terrorist attack, calling it “a big mistake” that emboldened other strikes on the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia, in Kenya and Tanzania and later on the USS Cole while docked in Yemen in 2000.
It seems to me that Hillary Clinton cannot let Giuliani get away with this. On the other hand, Hillary should not want to be too closely connected to her husband’s policies either, of course. She has to present herself as an individual with her own views.
Giuliani’s attack comes at a time that he is dropping a bit in the polls, while Fred Thompson is rising (fast). This could – therefore – be a calculated attack. Attacking Clinton will fall on good ground with many (conservative) Republicans and he does not just attack Clinton, he also – at the same time – presents himself as the “tough on terror” candidate.
Giuliani’s attack on Clinton was not the centerpiece, however, of his speech: the important theme (among other) was that the Democrats are soft on terror. He explained that, in his opinion, there is no use in looking back, and casting blame everywhere, there is only use in looking at the situation today and, today, Giuliani says, Democrats are (still) in denial: “now is now, and there is no reason to go back into denial, and that is essentially what the Democratic candidates for president want to do: they want to go back, to put the country in reverse to the 1990s.”
I wonder in how far the Republicans will be successful this time around in trying portray the Democrats as being soft on terror, and not able to defend America as well as they (the Republicans) can. It worked in the past, but this is not 2004, this is 2007 (and 8). There we no major terrorists attacks in America, but the war in Iraq has been greatly mismanaged, extremists are on the offensive in most countries in the Middle East, etc. In other words, many people feel that Bush’s policies have backfired.
He also had something to say about Palestine and Iraq: “What happened in Gaza is a microcosm of what’s going to happen in Baghdad. It will become something that inflames the entire region.”
Meanwhile, Democrats were quick to condemn Giuliani’s criticism:
The DNC: “Rudy’s arrogance has gotten the best of him. How can a man who failed to prepare New York City for a second attack after the first one, who sent firefighters and emergency workers into Ground Zero without respirators and quit the Iraq Study Group to raise money keep America safe?”
Although Giuliani is famous for being “America’s Mayor” after 9/11: he looked resolute and strong, there are quite some who strongly criticize Giuliani’s conduct (right) after 9/11. It is his strength, but also a potential weakness: one could say that, with Giuliani, 9/11 is at the center of his campaign, if his 9/11 image is damaged, his entire image (and thus his chances of winning) his damaged tremendously.
Personally, I think that Giuliani would make a fine president of the world’s most powerful nation, but I would also – as a blogger and citizen of this world – like to hear him talk more about other issues, like the economy and global warming / energy for instance. As far as I understand, he has some great ideas about those topics.
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37 Responses to “Giuliani Attacks Bill Clinton”
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I have to defend Clinton here. His approach to terrorism was that of a police action. Which is what most liberals say should be the approach to terrorism.
Janet Reno made it clear to the CIA that any assassination of Terrorists would be treated as a criminal matter and the offenders would be brought to justice. She was not making policy in this regard but enforcing it. By implication this had far reaching implications within the CIA. What about kidnapping? Other illegal activities. Will our agents be supported or not?
So with these two things set in context why is it safe to conclude that Bill Clinton could have Legally kidnapped a citizen of a foreign country and bring him to justice? It is not and thus the trigger could not have been pulled because their was no 911 to point to as a means to the end.
This is post 911 now. Things have changed. Im sure had Bill Clinton had a crystal ball he would have nabbed Osama Bin Laden personally.
If a nuke goes off in NYC next month Im sure President Bushs approval rating will go to 99 percent and we will all be screaming that the government is not doing enough to keep us safe. Its all relative to what is. Not what might be. A president makes policy and expects his underlings to enforce it. They were just doing their jobs when they could have nabbed Osama Bin Laden and did not. Yet we have to remember at that time 911 had not happened yet.
9/11 was a criminal act, not an act of war. By definition, terrorism has always been viewed as a crime. Terrorists also act far more like organized crime than they do organized armies.
It was the size of 9/11′s death toll that fooled us into believing it was an act of war, and that a state- Iraq, was behind it.
Well, the death toll and the declaration of war by OBL. That represented a paradigm shift, because even though he didn’t represent a sovereign state he had organized a form of army and had attacked us repeatedly (this time it got the attention of the American public since it was on our soil against civilians). And yes, it was foolish if anyone was misled into thinking that Iraq was behind the attack but certainly the Taliban was complicit and was rightly viewed as the aggressor nation which resulted in our declaration of war against Afghanistan.
Rudy is vile, conniving calculating snake with delusions of grandeur. A true “pothole” mayor to the core.
One more thing…isn’t it nice how we can “ret-con”( retroactive continuuity-ise) events and say “They should have done more” from the comfort and safety of today’s aggregated knowledge base.
What did Rudy do after 9-11? Scuttled down to Fla. and Texas getting fat contracts instead of sticking around a while.
what a gavone! what a stugats!
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Ludicrous stuff from Rudy, as per usual. Michael wonders if attacking Dems as weak on terror will have any effect this time round, and fond as I am of the guy, to ‘wonder’ this is to join the ranks of republican die hards who are so out of touch with the American people, they barely speak the same language anymore.
The next leader of the United States, be he republican or democrat needs to exhibit an understanding of the real dangers to America, both from the outside in the shape of Bin Laden (and not Sunnis, shite, Hamas or Hezbollah) and from the inside in the shape of an out of control executive branch that, while failing miserably in the first task, is busy completing the Al Qaeda agenda of destroying everything America has stood for for the last 200 years.
Giuliani is definitely not that man. On the most critical issue of the day (the Iraq war) he has nothing to say, other than ‘Its Clinton’s fault.
Pathetic.
Giuliani is breaking new ground – not even the am talk radio crowd has thought of this one. It should appeal to hard-core Republicans who vote in the primaries, but the general voting public will find it laughable. I wonder how Rudy would explain the fact that the Republican administration that followed Clinton did nothing about terrorism until after 9/11 either.
MvdG- You think Giuliani would make a fine president? We’ve already seen the “benefits” of 7 years of divisive rule where the Democrats were blamed for encouraging the terrorists. Does more of the same have any chance of winning the GWOT?
At least Rudy isn’t pretending that he will be a “uniter”.
Rudy is a one-trick pony for whom every day is 9/12/01. He will flame out sooner or later. Let’s hope that it’s sooner.
C Stanley – I was just saying a few posts ago how much I missed you and the other reasonable right-leaning posters that seemed to have left this site.
Glad to see you are still hanging around.
His authoritarianism is what I find scary. His tenure as mayor in NYC showed that he was willing to sacrifice civil rights for order, which continues a fascist trend to a police state. We are at the very beginning of that trend, but it is vital that we elect someone who will interrupt it to bring us back to where we were before 9/11 as much as is practically possible.
And to this post. I dislike revisionist history. Whether you agree with Clinton or not, at that time that was the accepted way to handle such acts, and the law of the land.
To use 9/11 as justification to claim he should have known better is duplicitous. You might as well go back to Carter funding the Taliban, Ford putting curbs on the CIA, Reagan supporting Saddam, heck, all the way back to our putting the Shah on the throne.
It is too easy to use the flow of history years past an event to go back and say ‘X’ should have been obvious. If ‘X’ is always obvious, why didn’t all of use put our money in Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, eBay, etc., when we had the chance? Wasn’t obvious, as we look back now, how successful they were going to be?
I have to head out the door but here is my quick take on Rudy. I’ve put some of this in posts. I have a bit of a different view:
I LIKED Rudy as New York mayor and know some detested him but I also know some New Yorkers who loved him. Such is politics. He seemed on the political wane before 911. But on 911 it was one of those moments of truth and even if people fault him for a zillion other things, in the face of massive death and his own personal risk, he showed guts (which Rumsfeld
who I blasted a lot on this site also showed when parts of the Pentagon were bombed and he brushed aside his security people on some matters).
That being said. The original Rudy/Hillary matchup didn’t take place due to his prostate cancer treatments. Hillary might have won anyway, but Rudy would have done better than the other GOPer who walked right up to Hillary in a televised debate, making the same error Al Gore did with George Bush.
He’s in a position like McCain. He can’t dream of winning the nomination unless he “proves himself” to the GOP base that he’s tough on the issues that count to them. He already isn’t on some of them. So he’s stressing what he and his advisers (and fans) think are his strong points.
This unfortunately gets into the tired area of Democrats are going to let the terrorists kill you if you elect them. As an independent this totally turns me off. I often vote AGAINST candidates as much as vote for them and it is a real turn off. PERIOD.
On the other hand, I also judge candidates by the people around them. He has some good people working with him. I’ve been a huge fan of John Avlon, who wrote the best book EVER on American centrism and independent political attitudes (I have the icon displayed on tmv on the right hand side and you can get a used copy for very very little). He was was also an excellent columnist for the New York Sun. Rudy has some other people that I read about over the years as well.
And, no, I’m not supporting Rudy or anyone at this point. I will say what I have said in my posts: I have not seen an adminstration like this in my lifetime (including Nixon’s) and I think it’s time for thinking Republicans, Democrats and independents to make sure that the U.S. distances itself from this divide-and-rule polarizing style of ruling for the base, of the base and by the base (except in immigration reform) — and the nearly unfettered expansion of the executive and Cheney branchs’ power.
It may be that Giuliani is, at heart a centrist, who is just pandering to the far right to get the nomination. I’m sure if he got it he would run as a moderate to win the general- which seems to fit his overall record. We tend to view Republicans who successfully ran Democratic states or cities as moderates, who would run the country in a bipartisan way.
I remember in 2000, believing that Bush was a moderate who had demonstrated that he could work well with the opposition. Many of his former Texas constituents now say that they don’t even know him anymore.
So what I go by is this- besides this ludicrous accusation that will no doubt gain ground for Giuli with the Limbaugh dittoheads- my problems with him are that he has not come out against Gitmo or torture, and has not sufficiently differentiated himself from our present disasterous course on end-game strategies for the two wars we are involved in.
Having said that, I do recognize that candidates from both parties are trying to outdo each other by appealing to the extremists who make up a majority of primary voters. The further out they go, the more difficult it will be to trust their stated positions as they try to win over the country-at-large.
CS: ‘That represented a paradigm shift, because even though he didn’t represent a sovereign state he had organized a form of army and had attacked us repeatedly’
It’s odd to see you, CS, a Righty, use such a Lefty term as ‘paradigm shift,’ but, OBL has no ‘army. He has ‘crime families’, called ‘cells’. Again, he is far more like John Gotti than Ike.
Austin: While there is credence to arguing about individual events, and there not having relevance decades later, the CIA Family Jewels prove that the USA has acted in a very terroristic fashion for decades. This is neither Left nor Right, but an MO that we established, and which we have to deal with.
Also, since Giuliani is digging up the past, I wonder when an R or D will finally talk about he and his law firm’s support for Apartheid era S Africa in the 80s. This almost derailed Rudy as DA, much less Prez.
He’s not really a centrist as a Country Clubber with street cred.
My guess is Giuliani would continue the power grab started by (as we now know) Cheney, and as a result America will continue to be a country associated with torture, detention without trial, secret prisons, domestic spying and a failed illigal war.
Joe and Kritter have guessed Pander Plan Part 2, which will be to spin his pre nomination crazy speak as simply bouying up the base and not to be taken seriously. The MSM will in all likelihood join him in this fiction, but, please God, a majority of Americans will continue to see him for what he is:: Bush, The Sequel.
Giuliani is right on – all Clinton ever did was actually catch and imprison the perpetrators of the 1993 attack.
If Giuliani was in charge he would follow the Bush model of handling the situation – invade several countries (incompetently), coddle the countries actively hiding OBL (like Pakistan) and allow the perpetrator of 9/11 to build a stronger and more international movement while remaining at large after almost 6 years.
What an idiot.
No, she shouldn’t let him get away with this. As recently as last September, Guiliani defended Clinton’s counterterrorism efforts. Please read:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/Terrorism/wireStory?id=2500715
As MvdG noted in his post there were plenty of problems with some of Giuliani’s choices surrounding pre and post 9/11 events- including his choice to put the command center for first responders on the 7th floor of the WTC after the first attack, despite warnings to locate it outside the building. He was on his way to that command center on 9/11 when his security determined that it would be too dangerous to enter the building.
He also did nothing to ensure that police and firefighters could communicate with each other resulting in a lot of unnecessary chaos. Other criticism surrounds the fact that first responders were not required to wear respirators at Ground Zero during the cleanup. That may be OSHA’s fault primarily, but as mayor he shares some of the blame.
Hmm, I didn’t realize that there was a copyright restriction on a term, cosmo.
As to the ‘crime families’, if they had state support then we’d need to shift to war footing to fight them as well.
Austin: Thanks, and likewise (I responded to the other thread where you mentioned the balance of my perspective as well, and I have the same reaction when I read your comments).
Nice of Rudy to make a paid speaking appearance of “Holy Milkshake U”, maybe if the ISG paid Rudy he would have helped with that mess.
Or more precisely, to criticize Giuliani, who is just milking the stupid “mayor of New York during 9-11″ nonsense with a cheap shot against Clinton (and by association, the leading Democratic contender for the Presidency next year).
Clinton had the right idea when we pulled out of Somalia, as far as what he would have had our military do “if they [the terrorists] fuck[ed] with us” during the evacuation.
Curious that Giuliani did absolutely nothing after 1993 to prepare HIMSELF and his CITY for another attack, such that on 9/11 his police and fire crews could not even talk to each other. He was also running around the street because he had no emergency command post to go to. FEMA told him to put it underground in Brooklyn and he put it in…. the WTC. Thats the rub on Rudy isnt it? He is like every cop, he can come clean up the bodies and say soothing things but when the chips were down and NY needed cool preparation for the expected next attack, he was missing in action. We dont need another president who was missing in action.
there is nothing ‘lefty’ about paradigm shift. It’s a scientific phrase.
Unless, that is, you believe that science is ‘lefty.’
I can only assume that cosmo meant that the idea of a paradigm shift isn’t consistent with conservative philosophy because conservatives advocate slow change in society. But the difference is, that’s how we view the best way for people within our society to make purposeful changes; sometimes we can’t avoid the fact that change is brought to us by others and that’s the way I view the situation between Islamist extremists and the West today. It’s not for us to decide the pace of change that others create in their actions toward us. Actually to be more correct, the change did occur over time but we weren’t paying attention (as in the intel assessment from 1946 that Marc posted here recently). A rather rapid and dramatic shift in our policy in response to that was needed because we hadn’t made the smaller corrections we should have been making all along (as in my friend’s song lyric I quoted here once before: “There’re no big decisions, just the small ones you chose not to make.”)
I got off on a tangent with a response to a comment though, so I should make it clear that Rudy’s statements about Clinton don’t sit well with me. I don’t really disagree that much but there’s a difference between saying “In hindsight I think more could have been done” and saying it the way he did which is shifting blame onto Clinton. And I agree somewhat with the commenters who’ve noted that Rudy didn’t do enough to prepare NY for the attack; after the first WTC attack it should have been clear that they needed better planning.
Laura’s link shows pre-presidential candidacy Giuliani, in which he states that he doesn’t blame Bill Clinton. He says that any president would lay down their lives to prevent a 9/11 if they could predict it. So, doing a 180 now that he’s luring GOP primary voters is 100% pandering and 0% sincerity.
The fact that Giuliani is leading in the Republican polls is as much of an indictment of the sad state of the GOP as anything else.
He was a despised mayor who turned his fortunes around with some photo-ops. There is little about his present politics that I don’t find detestable.
MVDG- paradigm shift started out in science, but was quickly co-opted by the Left Wing Academic PoMo crowd. To hear a righty like CS use the term is like hearing a tree hugger speak of faith-based initiatives.
It had nothing to do w CS’s definitional use of the term, but its, by now, immanent politicization, and from a different end of the spectrum.
Chris: Yes, w/o 9/11 Rudy wd have never been able to legitimately seek higher office. 9/11 was a boon to his career, as it was for W.
cosmoetica,
You need to think outside of the box!
The most common use of the phrase “paradigm shift” has been in the business community, one of its favorite junk-jargon fad phrases, as well as of those smiley-faced consultants who are brought in to advise business and its employees on how to do or be better.
Lefties in academia and the media have been joined by lefties in government in [ab]use of this phrase (as well as misuse of the slash character in place of the hyphen or a conjunction, as we see everywhere, but especially in academia and on the Web: “What is needed to solve [insert typical leftist social "problem" of note] is a totally fundamental paradigm shift in the policy/procedure mix…” [accompanied by stupid, swirling hand gesturing]
Giuliani — exploits being Mayor of New York during 9/11 by attacking Clinton (not Bush)
Bloomberg — exploits being Mayor of New York with a crime problem by filing junk lawsuits against out-of-state gun dealers, exposing them to more junk lawsuits
New York and the office of mayor is hardly something to be proud of, nor qualification for the Presidency. Mr. “No Experience” Obama just got elevated.
‘Mr. “No Experience†Obama just got elevated.’
Bush was a failed businessman and mediocre governor.
Clinton was a mediocre governor.
Bush 1 never held elected office till he was VP- ergo, he had no experience.
Reagan was a failure as Calif governor.
Carter was a failure as Georgia governor.
Ford was a careerist congressman.
Nixon hardly had a stellar career in Congress and was VP.
LBJ had loads of Congressional experience, and was a House legend.
JFK was a mediocre congressman and Senator. Ike had no experience.
Truman was a mediocre small-time political hack.
FDR was a good governor.
Hoover was a fantastic career bureaucrat but horrid as an executive.
Extrapolations on qualifications to be President go against logic and history, DLS.
Hey, at least I didn’t do the stupid hand motion! LOL
Funny how I set off this whole debate within a debate without even realizing what I was doing.
Bush 1 actually also was a congressman of no distinction.