One wonders if Bill and Hillary Clinton will ever understand that, just as in the case of the Kennedy’s, the country can get enough of them. His remarks over the past weekend in an event commemorating the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Building by Timothy McVeigh suggesting that the members of the “Tea Party” movement pose a threat to public safety by “demonizing” the government were a long way beyond civil or even accurate. His comparison of the current political climate to that of the early 90s supposedly leading to violence was just wacky in that in neither era were citizens a threat to public safety.
Timothy McVeigh was a lone wolf with his own grudge. Nobody knows what was in his mind but it’s virtually certain that it bore no resemblance to what’s in the collective mind of citizens who are now disgusted with government and expressing their disgust in perfectly orderly fashion at rallies and certainly not blowing-up buildings or otherwise creating havoc. In any case, from 1993-2001 Bill Clinton was president and thus right in line to merit his share of blame for whatever he considered threatening.
In the matter of violence, one remembers that Clinton had been in office less than three months when his attorney general, Janet Reno, presumably with his approval tacit or otherwise, gave the order that resulted in the massacre at the Branch Davidian commune near Waco, Texas. When the fires were out, some 80 people had died, including four federal agents and many women and children. This was almost half the number (168) killed in the Murrah bombing and had nothing to do with protests against Clinton’s government. It had to do with governmental incompetence on a grand scale that led to the killing of innocent people. One wonders if Clinton sees a need to commemorate that fateful event in April 1993.
Or, take the case of violence other than physical. Bill Clinton fired all U.S. attorneys (called the “March Massacre”) just two months after taking office, except maybe one, Michael Chertoff. He didn’t know these people. In that short a time, he couldn’t have known what they either had or had not done. He had no reason to fire them and he gave none that could be believed. He sacked them because he could. Some folks believe he did it to get rid of just one federal prosecutor who was investigating a powerful member of the House, who later was sentenced to the Big House. In any case, the firings represented white-collar violence of intolerable magnitude.
The former president apparently sees a “ Vast Tea Party Conspiracy.” Remember the “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” alluded to by Hillary Clinton as causing hubby Bill’s problems with Monica Lewinski back in the day. No conspiracy was involved. The prexy was as guilty as sin and the charge fell flat. In 2007, she used the term again in charging republicans concerning election irregularities. She lost in 2008 anyway and now runs the State Department, no doubt seeing some sort of conspiracy by the right-wing loonies on a daily basis, transmogrified now into the Tea Party goons.
If Bill Clinton considers the Tea Party folks as terrorists or terrorists in the making he might cool his rhetoric a bit upon remembering elements of terrorism during his own administration such as the WTC in 1993, Khobar Towers, the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the USS Cole, all happening on his watch and involving hundreds of deaths and injuries of innocent people…and exactly what he did and didn’t do to make Americans safer. Indeed, it was his Justice Department that put out the directive disallowing the country’s intelligence agencies to deal with each other, sharing information. But for this insane circumstance, 9/11 might have been avoided, thus foreclosing the worst act of terrorism in the nation’s history, the Civil War excepted.
Whereas his immediate democrat predecessor, Jimmy Carter, routinely railed against this country and the Bush administration, especially when he was overseas, Bill Clinton has chosen to rail against people with whom he disagrees and hint that they’re dangerous folks, doncha know, and likely to don white sheets with eye-holes and go looking for folks with whom they disagree. Watch out, Bill! They might at least spit at you or call you names, just as they were accused of doing in Washington the other day, though no one ever came up with any proof. Assuming they do come up with proof some good day and folks come looking for you, remember that you fomented the action…when you could have kept your mouth free of your foot.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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