A Presidential March of Folly

By GIL TROY

The Forward, THE IVORY TOWER, SEPTEMBER 28, 2001

This will be a long, ongoing struggle between freedom and fanaticism, between the rule of law and terrorism," the president proclaimed. "We must be prepared to do all that we can for as long as we must. America is and will remain a target of terrorists precisely because we are leaders... and because, as we have shown yet again, we take an uncompromising stand against terrorism."

President Clinton made this "uncompromising" rhetorical stand back in August 1998, after Osama bin Laden's henchmen bombed two American embassies in Africa, killing more than 200. Mr. Clinton's empty words serve as a warning to President Bush: The terrorist attacks on America require a sustained and disciplined response — for a change.

When historians analyze the start of America's war on terrorism, they will have to acknowledge the march of presidential folly that preceded this month's catastrophes. Clearly, blame for these outrages resides with those who perpetrated them, the hijackers, their comrades and their apologists. Still, Western weakness emboldened these criminals. America's leaders have functioned as "enablers." By failing to stop milder forms of this ugly behavior, they fed its escalation.

This tale of bipartisan presidential impotence begins in November 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini's "students" mobbed the American embassy in Iran. For 444 days the radicals held American diplomats — and the American government — hostage. President Carter played into the kidnapper's hands, hunkering down in his Rose Garden bunker and negotiating rather than responding aggressively. His paralysis, highlighted by the media's count of how many days "America" had been held hostage, normalized the unacceptable by proving how vulnerable a superpower could be to super-pests.

President Reagan ambled into the Oval Office proclaiming that there was a new sheriff in town. Yet when a suicide bomber killed 241 Marines in Beirut in 1983, the cowboy-president retreated quickly. "The United States will not be intimidated by terrorists," Mr. Reagan declared. Four months later the Americans left Lebanon.

America's hasty abandonment of Lebanon undermined her credibility internationally. "The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of their noble predecessors, the Lebanese suicide bombers, who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson in [Lebanon]...," the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al Hayat Al Jadida proclaimed on September 11. "These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history."

Mr. Reagan compounded his error with the Iran-Contra idiocy. Bad enough that he approved of negotiating with terrorists who kidnapped Americans in Lebanon. But when the terrorists reneged on their deal, they suffered no consequences. Who did suffer? The hostages, the Reagan administration and, yet again, American credibility. Reflecting his confusion, Mr. Reagan in March 1987 issued a mea culpa. "A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages," he said. "My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."

Mr. Reagan's successor, the first President Bush, stood up to Saddam Hussein after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. But in failing to topple the Iraqi dictator, the United States once again appeared weak and irresolute. This perception has only been strengthened by Secretary of State Colin Powell's career as soldier and statesman, which has been devoted to perpetuating the post-Vietnam American delusion that wars can always be clean, neat and cost-free. Mr. Powell's doctrine, articulated during the Gulf War, that America should engage in a military conflict only when there is broad public support, the mission is clear and losses can be minimized, telegraphs a message to terrorists of American decadence.

Mr. Clinton, for his part, approached the terrorist threat as he approached most of the challenges in his presidency: He administered Band-Aids instead of finding solutions. He lobbed rhetorical bombs at bin Laden, launched some cruise missiles at Afghanistan and a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory, but failed to bring bin Laden and his followers to justice even after they bombed American embassies and murdered American servicemen aboard the USS Cole.

Always insightful, Mr. Clinton warned in 1998 that "the risks from inaction to America and the world would be far greater than action. For that would embolden our enemies, leaving their ability and their willingness to strike us intact." He was right. As he dithered, the terrorist network festered. The New York Times reports that bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan trained 11,000 terrorists in the past five years.

Unfortunately, what then-Secretary of State George Shultz said in 1983 remains true: "We haven't figured out how to cope with terrorism."

It is a cliche of American history that democracies are slow to anger, but once engaged they fight resolutely to victory. Islamic fundamentalists declared war on the United States years ago. Americans have already paid an unfathomable price for our own disengagement and our leaders' passivity. All good citizens of the world need to tell the current President Bush what Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told the first President Bush after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait: "This is no time to go wobbly." So far, like his predecessors, Mr. Bush sounds focused and strong. If history is any guide, however, we will need to hold his feet to the fire. We need sustained and far-reaching action, not what his predecessors actually delivered.