Last week, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who is not coincidentally the brother of the man who was president after 9-11, got himself into a bit of a situation. Now, to try to put a timeline on it is to imply that Gov. Bush's answer -- what he meant as well as what he said -- changed to respond to the grave crisis his answer was supposed to represent. However ...
As you're aware, the governor was asked something like "Knowing what you know now, would you have invaded Iraq back in 2001-02?" Not to put too fine a line on this, but I think he first answered before he really contemplated the question. He likely heard something like an inquiry as to what a President Jeb Bush would have done in 2001, and would it be the same as his brother actually had.
Clearly, in review, the questioner had asked the "knowing what we know now" line of inquiry, meaning that "If you in 2001 knew there were no weapons of mass destruction (or at least they were adequately hidden), would you have invaded Iraq? Bush didn't wait to process that implication; he answered the question he thought he was going to get.
In several subsequent statements during the week, Bush clarified to say that, had he had the intelligence in 2001 that we believe we have now, i.e., no knowledge of WMD, he would not have invaded. OK, fine. For me, I'm not even very convinced that there were not WMD in Iraq. We know there had been at one point, because Saddam Hussein was known to have used poison gas on his own people -- conveniently forgotten today. We also forget that Saddam was strongly resistant to WMD inspections, and spoke as if he had the weapons, while stonewalling the inspectors. When we invaded Iraq, I remember thinking that it really didn't matter if they were there or not; Saddam wanted us to think they were. That was good enough.
So .... in all fairness, the press should be heading straight over to the presumptive Democratic nominee, one Hillary Rodham Clinton, and asking her the appropriate version of the same question. Like this one: "Mrs. Clinton, you were the wife of the president of the United States when he received consistent intelligence that Osama bin Laden was planning more attacks on the United States like the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. We know that the USA was close to getting him during your husband's administration. Knowing what we know now, would you have tried harder to capture or kill bin Laden?"
Now, that question will likely never be asked. First off, the press is so overwhelmingly left-leaning and committed to Mrs. Clinton's election that it's hard to imagine who, outside of someone from Fox, would risk alienating her by asking it. Really, George Stephanopoulos is going to ask Hillary Clinton a provocative question? Yeah, right. She might turn around and tell the Clinton Foundation not to fund that AIDS research that George inexplicably waves around to defend his donations.
Second, well, when could it be asked? Mrs. Clinton refuses to take questions -- at this writing she has answered exactly thirteen, up from eight with the five pabulum answers she deigned to give this week. Heck, Jeb Bush has answered more variations of the Iraq question than Hillary Clinton has answered about all topics combined. If someone doesn't ever show up to take questions, you can bet the baby-shoe money you won't get any answers from them.
Finally, here is perhaps the biggest reason. Mrs. Clinton would have to take one of two tacks in her reply, and neither one is really good for her. She can waffle and say "I was an integral part of the decision-making on that, and we did everything we could to take down bin Laden when my husband was president, and anyone who says otherwise is part of that vast right-wing conspiracy" -- you know, the one we're all still waiting for some names from. She can say that, but the record is pretty good that there were times the White House knew where he was back then, which would point to incompetence in military decisions and actions.
[Digression ... my second question would be "If that right-wing conspiracy is so vast, please name ten names of members of it, off the top of your head."]
Worse, she could take the line that the inability to get bin Laden was on her husband's watch, not hers, and she did not have a role in national security, was not read in on all that and can't speak to it. That would be interesting -- not only would that be tantamount to throwing her husband and his team under the bus, but it wipes out eight years of her claimed rèsumè. She would have to run completely on her undistinguished years in the Senate and her failed, email-free and accomplishment-free tenure as Secretary of State. And that, friends, is not a recipe for success.
So no, while even the leftist New York Times is frustrated with Mrs. Clinton's failure to meet the press and answer, well, anything, there is no sign her silence is going to end anytime soon. But eventually it will have to. And I pray, I really pray, that in at least one of the debates there will be a sufficiently free-form structure to the questioning, such that someone can sneak in that question. Or sooner than that, yeah ... I'd like someone to ask her that one sooner.
It ain't gonna happen. But as the song goes, I can dream, can't I?
Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here? There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."
No comments:
Post a Comment