Friends of Osama

If Bill Clinton did tell the girlfriend of one of the Beatles that he could do a much better job against the Taliban were he president rather than George W. Bush, it only confirms what some of us have known all along: there is no bald-faced phony, no lunchbucket pilferer more petty than America's 42nd president. Mind you, if he said it, and I'm sure he did, knowing Clinton, he will just as surely deny it. Denial, after all, is what Clinton's legacy is all about, a lesson he learned early in life, one that has served him well throughout his career.

The other lesson that's served him well is the token gesture. It was Clinton who went on the air and announced that the perpetrators of terror against Uncle Sam would be quickly rounded up and brought to justice. It was Clinton who ordered a few cruise missiles to hit Sudan after he got caught with his pants down. It was Clinton who ordered investigations after the bombing of the USS Cole last year and then went back to business as usual. It was Clinton who cut and ran from Somalia after some of our boys were killed in battle and their bodies run through the streets of Mogadishu.

Now put yourself in Osama bin Laden's shoes. After such halfhearted responses from the numero-uno power on Earth, he would have been very stupid not to escalate.

The rot, of course, began with Jimmy Carter. When the hostages were taken in Tehran, Carter pulled a Clinton. From the mullahs' point of view, the peanut farmer looked as intimidating as Shirley Temple, and half her size. At the time, I was asked by an editor of a political weekly (he was considering me as a columnist) what I would do were I president. Easy, I told him. I'd carpet-bomb Kum or Isfahan, and land the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions at Tehran to rescue the American hostages. "What about losses?" asked the incredulous editor. "No matter how many hostages were killed, and how many of our soldiers, it would be worth it for the future," was my answer.

Let's face it. Soldiers are trained to fight, but also to die. Carter took the soft option, and ever since America has been the patsy. Any attack on America is risk-free as far as militant Islam is concerned, so the attacks have escalated ever since.

But back to the venal and power-crazy Clinton. It was he who through demagoguery fooled the people yet again while decimating America's military. It was he who undertook to destroy America's intelligence agencies by posting people like John Deutch and Nora Slatkin as heads of the CIA, who in turn implemented a "human rights scrub" policy. Deutch and Slatkin were no accidental appointments. They were Clinton's way of implementing his anti-intelligence, 60s antiwar theories. It was Clinton, with the grotesque Hillary whispering in his ear, getting back at the institutions whose men?and few women?he never managed to fool: the military and the intelligence agencies.

The media, needless to say, were the ones who helped him get away with it. No other man has ever gotten away with what Clinton did, and we are now paying the price while he eats soul food and is daily cheered in Harlem. In a way, George W. Bush deserves the barbs aimed at him by the Bonnie and Clyde of politics. Out of respect for the office he once held, Bush dispatched an airplane to Australia to bring back the Draft Dodger after Sept. 11. Clinton was out there exercising his right to print money. What is not right is to be flown back courtesy of a decent man, and then?along with his ghastly wife?proceed to try to embarrass the President, to the point of Hillary rolling her fish-eyes upward and pretending to be bored while George W. is addressing Congress and the nation.

Such, of course, are the joys of those who prefer the low blow to the bon mot, as in the case of the Clintons. And of Joe Biden, a man who was certainly conceived by someone with a dose of the clap. Biden is almost as shameless an opportunist as Bill Clinton. He wants Uncle Sam to be sensitive in times of war in order for us not to look like bullies. What a pathetic excuse for a United States senator.

This has to be a very long and relentless campaign if we are to ever sleep soundly again. Currently there is a resurgence of flag-waving and patriotism, but how long will it last? The Susan Sontags of this world, those who have always embraced far-left politics and have supported any government that had the "good sense" to make war, cold or otherwise, against Uncle Sam, are making noises against our self-defense. As Jeffrey Hart writes in his book Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe, the villain always turns out to be variously white, male, Western, racist, imperialist, sexist or homophobic... Or with luck, all of them together. Sontag spoke for many American intellectuals when she wrote that "the white race is the cancer of human history," and that what America deserved is to have its wealth taken away by the Third World.

What better friends than Sontag and Clinton can Osama bin Laden dream of having?