Back To The Future?

Here's what American anti-terrorism policy will look like after Hillary Clinton captures the White House in 2008 - and it looks awfully familiar:

Antendees at the Clinton Global Initiative were told on Friday that terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas should be "engaged" by the world's peace loving nations - even if their members persist in trying to destroy Israel and America.

Newsday reports that during a session on religious-political relations, Alastair Crooke, director of the British-based Conflicts Forum, said:

"Governments should engage groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, who, despite their use of violence, were willing to participate in the political process and had strong credibility with many people in the Middle East."

By ignoring such groups, Crooke warned, governments risk inadvertently creating and promoting far more radical organizations.

Got that? We're supposed to "engage" groups that already use violence because if we don't patronize groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, we'll get something even worse. Such as al-Qaeda, perhaps? Which the Clintonoids ignored and allowed to grow into a first-level national security threat.

This is straight, undiluted appeasement, and the very prescrpition that precipitated the GWOT in the first place. But Mr. Bill himself has yet another hum-dinger of an idea:

For his part, ex-President Clinton suggested that the best way to prevent terrorists from discouraging economic growth in the Middle East was to offer businesses looking to invest there terrorism insurance.

"I think we ought to consider maybe setting up some sort of an insurance program against terror because I think there’s maybe too much fear of it," he told the group.

In other words, instead of fighting terrorism, we should subsidize Big Business into taking foolish risks at the terrorists' hands instead. Which, between the laughably enormous premiums based on said risk and the more likely scenario of artificially low premiums and federal bailout of the program once it was quickly bankrupted, would be a guaranteed waste of another gusher of taxpayer money.

But then Sick Willie was full of all kinds of dumbassery and bile this weekend. For instance, he revived the Bushophobic Katrina race-baiting that had blessedly faded last week:

Ex-president Clinton, whom President Bush has rewarded with a prominent role in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, returned the favor on Sunday - by blasting Bush's economic policies as racially divisive and saying that New Orleans' black population was right not to trust him.

Asked why African Americans believed race was a factor in relief efforts so far, Clinton told ABC's This Week: "This is a matter of public policy. And whether it's race-based or not, if you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right, poverty goes up and it disproportionately affects black and brown people."...

"That's what they did in the 80's and that's what they did in this decade," he continued. "In the middle, we had a different policy. We concentrated tax cuts on low and middle income working people." [emphasis added]

Which, of course, did nothing for low- and middle-income working people because only tax cuts that include upper-income working people can possibly have any macroeconomic effect. Such as the 1997 capital gains tax cut that the GOP Congress passed and Clinton signed, which was responsible for finally turning the economy loose and balancing the federal budget with the resulting tsunami of additional tax revenue.

Tell me why GDub lavished another prominent public policy role upon Mr. Bill again? This isn't the first time he's socked his successor in the balls in "gratitude."

As is his want, Willie was "touching all the bases" yesterday morning:

Contradicting his previous statements on the Iraq war, ex-President Bill Clinton said Sunday that there was no basis to attack the rogue nation when President Bush began the Iraq war two years ago.

"The Administration . . . decided to launch this invasion virtually alone and before the U.N. inspections were completed - with no real urgency, no evidence that there was any weapons of mass destruction there," he complained to ABC's This Week.

"I did not favor what was done," Clinton said.

Uh-huh. Even though Bush was simply implementing Clinton's own Iraq policy:

"We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century," he warned in a February 1998 speech.

"And they will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them....There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region and the security of all the rest of us."

He even managed to contradict himself on the international support angle:

"I thought that diverted our attention from [Afghanistan] and al Qaida and undermined the support that we might have had," he said. "But what's done is done."

Setting aside the fact that OIF did, in fact, enjoy considerable international support, and that the UN inspectors themselves believed Saddam to be in possession of WMD, what UN support (which is what libs mean by "international support") did Clinton ever have for his interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, or Kosovo? Or for his abortive bombing campaign against Saddam in early 1998, aka Operation Desert Fox? Heck, never mind blowing off international backing, he didn't even seek prior congressional approval for any of them.

And, aside from pointing out that (1) it's possible to fight into two theaters at once (and is supposed to be our minimum military capability to boot), and (2) both Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom are part of the GWOT, let's reiterate once again that Captain Pecker Tracks never once put his attention on al-Qaeda to begin with despite the first World Trade Center attack, which had both al-Qaeda and Iraqi connections, taking place barely a month into his first term. And Khobar Towers, the African Embassy bombings, and the USS Cole never got his attention either, other than in September 1998 when he needed a "Wag the Dog" diversion in the throes of Monicagate.

Powerline has lots more.

I think it's important to ask a question after all of the above: where is Mrs. Clinton? Is anybody going to ask her whether she agrees with her husband's caustic, ignorant, extremist comments? It's almost like a role reversal, isn't it? The first time around it was Hillary who was the lightning rod ideologue while Bill was the aw-shucks likeable "centrist" faceman. Now Bill is the one going out and tossing the chum to the Sorosian/Moore-onic/Sheehanistic sharks while Hillary prepares to seize control of the boat.

It's something to pay close attention to in the months ahead. And by the time it's all said and done, we'll not only be sick of watching it, but of trying vainly to warn the electorate of what's coming as we did throughout the first incarnation of "in the middle."

Hopefully lighting really can't strike the same place twice.

But that won't be the way to bet.

UPDATE 9/20: And despite it all, George H.W. Bush still likes the porcine bastard.

I'd say that provides redundant proof of why he was a one-termer, but how does that explain the same impenetrable cluelessness of his son?