Double Standards: Bill Clinton and the Anybody But Bush Movement
by Joe Licentia
Infoshop News | http://www.infoshop.org/inews
If the democrats take power this November they will probably continue
the same policies as Bush. We know this because Clinton did basically
the same thing when he was in office. To think otherwise is to ignore
history and the democrat's records. The "Anybody but Bush" (ABB)
movement is founded on a basically irrational hatred of Bush that completely
ignores the record of the democrats the last time they were in power.
The ABB movement practices a double standard: when republicans do
something its wrong but when democrats do the same thing its okay (or
didnt happen at all). In party politics it is always the other partys
fault, never the systems fault. If a democrat were in office and
implemented the same policies Bush has most of the ABBers would support him.
We know this because Clinton implemented many of the same policies
ABBers criticize Bush for yet they didnt develop the same kind of hatred
towards Clinton they have towards Bush. Most outright supported Clinton
and the minority who didnt support him did not develop the kind of
irrational hatred towards Clinton they have towards Bush.
There are major continuities between Clintons policies and Bushs
policies, even if their rhetoric is different. These continuities also
illustrate the flaw in thinking that putting a democrat back in office
will be a big change for the better. The last time a democrat was in
office he did pretty much the same thing the current occupant is doing, so
given that the current nominee doesn't disavow Clinton theres no
reason to think the next democrat in the White House will be much different.
Bushs environmental record isnt very good, but neither was Clintons.
During the 1992 election campaign Clinton and Gore promised to shut
down the East Liverpool incinerator, which spews toxic chemicals into the
air a quarter of a mile away from an elementary school, but once
elected they refused to do so. The Clinton administrations enforcement of
the endangered species act was lax and he weakened it through several
means, including the no surprises and safe harbors policies. Funding
of mass transit continued to decline under his administration.
Clinton ended the ban on production and importation of PCBs, stopped
the phase out of Methyl Bromide (a toxic pesticide and ozone layer
depleter), supported the weakening of the safe drinking water act (by
allowing increased levels of arsenic and lead in drinking water), signed the
Salvage Rider law (which cut down thousands of acres of healthy
forests), signed the Panama declaration (which weakened protection for marine
mammals including dolphins and whales), supported international
distribution of Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone, supported mountain top
removal strip mining, continued subsidizing the sugar industry in Florida
(which poisons the Everglades & diverts water away from wildlife that
needs it), and lowered grazing fees on public land. Clinton also
supported the World Trade Organization (WTO), which weakened or removed
environmental protections, including the weakening of the clean air act and
the removal of part of the Endangered Species act's protection of sea
turtles. In 1996 former Sierra Club President David Brower wrote,
"President Clinton has done more to harm the environment and to weaken
environmental regulations in three years than presidents Bush and Reagan did
in 12 years."
Many in the ABB movement attack Bush for reducing civil liberties
through things like the PATRIOT act. Yet, almost all democrats in congress
vote for the patriot act and Bill Clinton supported many measures that
reduced civil liberties and expanded the police state. He signed the
Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the forerunner
to the PATRIOT act. It allowed the INS to deport immigrants based on
secret evidence, made it a crime to support the lawful activities of any
group the state department labeled a terrorist organization, and
eliminated federal constitutional review of state death penalty cases
(making the execution of innocent people more likely). Much of the PATRIOT
act consists of things that Clinton was unable to pass during his term.
Clinton encouraged the militarization of the police, including a
program to put 100,000 more cops on the street. This lead to political
repression, seen at Seattle, and more recent actions as well as a general
increase in police brutality, such as the police torture of Abner Louima
and the 1999 murder of Amadou Diallo (who was shot 41 times by police
claiming they thought his wallet was a gun). Clinton supported Internet
censorship, signing the Communications Decency Act - which the Supreme
Court fortunately struck down on first amendment grounds. When he ran
for election in 1992 Clinton pledged to free political prisoner Leonard
Peltier, but he was still in prison when Clinton left office. The rate
of capital punishment increased under Clinton, as did the rate of
incarceration. Clintons expansion of the prison system, due mainly to the
war on drugs, caused the United States to imprison more people than
any other country in the world, both in absolute terms and as a
percentage of population. All of this was done at a time when crime rates were
decreasing.
Democrats attack Bush over the poor state of the economy, but the
economy actually started going downhill at the very end of Clinton's
administration, in late 2000. The stock bubble of the 1990s caused the
recession and it occurred while Clinton was in office. Clinton's boom was
founded on corporate fraud from the likes of Enron and WorldCom. The
corporate crime wave occurred mainly while Clinton was in office, whose
administration was just as complicit as Bush. It was just exposed while
Bush was in office. The reason most Democratic leaders haven't
attacked Bush over this is because they're just as much in bed with these
criminals as the Republicans. Most of the benefits from Clinton's boom
went to the wealthier sections of society. Economic inequality increased
under Clinton, just as it has under Bush. None of this excuses the
Bush's handling of the economy, his administration's response to the
recession it inherited from Clinton has been awful, but there are strong
continuities with the Clinton administration.
Liberals often criticize Bush over his tax cuts for the rich and
generally waging a class war in favor of the rich, but Clinton did the same
thing. Clinton reduced the capital gains tax rate in 1997. This
disproportionately benefits the rich, since a large percentage of their
income comes from capital gains but most Americans make little or nothing
from capital gains. Corporate welfare (subsidies and tax loopholes for
the rich & big business) greatly increased under Clinton's
administration, in his second term alone corporate welfare rose by over 30%.
Clinton also attacked the poor by, among other things, abolishing the Aid to
Families with Dependant Children program ("welfare reform"). The
increase in poverty under Bush is, in part, due to this class war against
the poor by Clinton, which undermined the social safety net. After
winning election in 1992 Clinton made Lawrence Summers an official in his
administration and later appointed Summers his last Treasury Secretary in
1999. Before Clinton was elected, in 1991, Summers, then chief
economist for the World Bank, issued a memo reading:
"Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE
migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed
Countries]? ... I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste
in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.
... I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are
vastly UNDER-polluted ... The problem with the arguments against all of
these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain
goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.)
could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every
Bank proposal for liberalization."
Some democrats attack Bush over outsourcing, but Clinton supported
NAFTA, GATT, the WTO and "free trade" generally, which caused outsourcing
to go from a trickle to the current flood. Under Clinton the budget for
the federally funded Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)
increased by over 30%. OPIC gives loans and guarantees to companies
intended to encourage investment in "developing" countries, which tends to
encourage outsourcing. For example, Kimberly Clark transferred 600 jobs
to other countries as a result of this funding and Levi Strauss
transferred 100 jobs overseas for the same reason. In other words, the
government gives loans to companies, through OPIC, to ship American jobs
overseas and Clinton increased OPIC's budget from under $100 million to $3
billion. Under Clinton 14% of OPIC's loans went to Citibank. Robert
Ruben, one of Clinton's Treasury Secretaries, became director of
Citibank after leaving office. Under Bush OPIC's budget decreased to $800
million. The problem with outsourcing is not that it "steals American
jobs," as nationalists argue, but that it replaces relatively high paying
jobs with lower paying jobs, causing the rich to get richer and the
poor to get poorer. Clinton's policies were even more pro-outsourcing
than Bush's.
Bush's policies on the media tend to favor the concentration of the
media into a few large corporations. So did Clinton's policies. He
signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act, which encouraged media monopolization at least as much as Bush.
Bush has a poor record on gay rights, but Clinton's record (if not his
rhetoric) wasn't much better, as shown by his signing of the Defense of
Marriage Act and his "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
On abortion, Clinton signed an order banning any American funds to pay
for abortions overseas. Bush only expanded this to include cutting off
funds to any group that offers abortion as an alternative. Under
Clinton the number of abortion providers dropped to the lowest in 30 years.
A large number of counties dont have abortion providers. This
effectively denies many women the choice to have an abortion since if there is
no abortion provider around then you obviously cant choose to have an
abortion.
Clintons foreign policy could best be described as cruise missile
imperialism. ABBers attack Bush for his alleged unilateral go it alone
foreign policy and for invading Iraq on false pretenses. Both were
largely a continuation of Clintons policies.
Clinton increased funding for the military. He also bombed more
countries than any other peacetime president, including Yugoslavia, Sudan,
Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan. In 1998 he bombed alleged terrorist
training camps in Afghanistan (which were built by the CIA for Islamic
terrorists in the 1980s) supposedly being used by Osama Bin Laden and a
factory in Sudan Clinton alleged was producing chemical weapons for Bin
Laden. No proof that this factory was producing chemical weapons was ever
provided and it was later proven that the plant was actually a medicine
factory. This probably resulted in thousands of deaths (there was no
investigation so we cant know the exact number) because the source of
medicine for many Sudanese was cut off.
When Bush invaded Iraq, he went to the UN and attempt to get
international support and UN approval to invade Iraq. He failed to get that
support and invaded anyway but he at least tried to get UN approval. When
Clinton attacked Yugoslavia in 1999 he didnt even try to get UN
approval, he just bypassed it completely in favor of a unilateral assault.
Nineteen nations, all of NATO, technically signed up to the war but the
US (with UK assistance) took the lead role and did most of the
fighting, just like Bushs coalition in Iraq. Most of the world was against
the war, there were even small riots in front of US embassies. Unlike
the Iraq war, the US did have the support of West European governments,
but the rest of the world was against it (some were extremely upset).
One of the administrations slogans was multilateral when we can,
unilateral when we must, which is virtually the same as Bushs policy.
In Yugoslavia the government was fighting a war with the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA), which advocated independence for the Kosovo province of
Yugoslavia. The official pretext for Clintons bombing of Yugoslavia
was that it refused to sign up to the Rambouillet peace accords and was
committing ethnic cleansing (genocide) in Kosovo as part of the war.
These pretexts were disproved, just as the pretexts for the Iraq war
were disproved. Clinton intentionally sabotaged the peace negotiations
between the KLA and Yugoslavia, which the US mediated, by inserting the
infamous Appendix B into the Rambouillet accords, requiring
Yugoslavia to allow NATO peacekeeper troops to occupy the entire country (not
just Kosovo). Obviously, Yugoslavia is not going to agree to just let
the US take the whole country over.
During the war all sorts of allegations were thrown around about
hundreds of thousands of Kosovars being massacred, rape camps being set up,
mass graves littering the province and so on. NATOs own
investigations, after the war was over, failed to find any proof of these
accusations. There were atrocities, as in almost every war, but nothing even
remotely approaching genocide. NATOs bombings killed more people than
the so-called ethnic cleansing which allegedly motivated it. Just as
there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, there was no ethnic
cleansing in Kosovo. Furthermore, the CIA later admitted that it began
supporting the KLA even before the bombing started. In other words,
Clinton intentionally instigated the whole conflict, using the KLA as a
proxy army to attack Yugoslavia and create a situation where he would
have an excuse to bomb the country.
Clintons policy towards Iraq set the stage for the invasion of Iraq.
In 1998 Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime
change in Iraq official US policy. Clinton waged a terrorist car bombing
campaign against Iraq, whose targets included school buses, and attempted
to overthrow the Iraqi government via coup. Madeline Albright, who
later became Clintons secretary of state, said in a May 1996 interview on
60 Minutes that she thought the death of 500,000 Iraqi children due
to sanctions on Iraq was worth the price.
Clinton repeatedly bombed Iraq throughout his term. In 1998 Iraq
stopped cooperating with weapons inspectors, claiming they were being used
by the US as spies. Clinton had the inspectors withdrawn and launched
Operation Desert Fox, a major bombing campaign against Iraq much larger
than his previous bombings of Iraq. Afterwards the US continued
bombing Iraq on an almost daily basis until the invasion. A later UN
investigation found that Iraqs allegations were true; the US was using the
inspectors to spy on Iraq. Bush merely escalated Clintons aggression
against Iraq from a low intensity war to a full-fledged invasion, an
escalation that probably would not have been possible had Clinton not been
laying siege to Iraq for his entire term. Clintons bombings of Iraq
were completely unilateral, without UN approval and carried out solely
by the US and UK.
Clintons pretexts for all this were the same pretexts used by Bush to
invade Iraq, but with more emphasis on weapons of mass destruction and
less emphasis on Al-Qaeda. On February 4th, 1998 Clinton said, "One
way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop
weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is
our bottom line." On February 17th, 1998 he said, "If Saddam rejects
peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to
seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
program." In his defense of Operation Desert Fox on December 16th, 1998
Clinton argued that, Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his
neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological
weapons and that, The best way to end that threat once and for all is with
a new Iraqi government. On February 18th, 1998 Secretary of State
Madeline Albright said, Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens
there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a
rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us
or our allies is the greatest security threat we face. Clintons
National Security Adviser Sandy Berger warned, he [Saddam Hussein] will use
those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since
1983.
The state department kept Iraq on its list of states that it claims
sponsor terrorism every year Clinton was in office. Part of a 1998
indictment of Osama Bin Laden by Clintons justice department read, "Al
Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda
would not work against that government and that on particular projects,
specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work
cooperatively with the Government of Iraq." The use of the fact that Iraq
under Saddam Hussein was a dictatorship in order to demonize Iraq and
justify aggression towards it has been a staple part of US war propaganda
since the Gulf War and continued to be so under Clinton. All the lies
used by Bush to justify conquering Iraq were inherited from Clinton.
Senator Hillary Clinton voted for the invasion of Iraq and her husband
agrees with her stance. Bill Clinton supports the war; he only differs
with Bush in that he thinks it would have been better to wait a little
longer before invading. In a June 2004 interview he told Time
magazine, I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq
I don't believe he went in there for oil. We didn't go in there for
imperialist or financial reasons and that You couldn't responsibly
ignore [the possibility that] a tyrant had these [weapons of mass
destruction] stocks. I never really thought he'd [use them]. What I was far more
worried about was that he'd sell this stuff or give it away.
So
that's why I thought Bush did the right thing to go back. When you're the
President, and your country has just been through what we had, you want
everything to be accounted for. He also claimed after the weapons
inspectors left Iraq in 1998:
there were substantial quantities of botulinum and aflatoxin, as I
recall, some bioagents, I believe there were those, and VX and ricin,
chemical agents, unaccounted for. Keep in mind, that's all we ever had to
work on. We also thought there were a few missiles, some warheads, and
maybe a very limited amount of nuclear laboratory capacity.
After 9/11, let's be fair here, if you had been President, you'd think,
well, this fellow bin Laden just turned these three airplanes full of
fuel into weapons of mass destruction, right? Arguably they were
super-powerful chemical weapons. Think about it that way. So, you're sitting
there as President, you're reeling in the aftermath of this, so, yeah,
you want to go get bin Laden and do Afghanistan and all that. But you
also have to say, well, my first responsibility now is to try everything
possible to make sure that this terrorist network and other terrorist
networks cannot reach chemical and biological weapons or small amounts
of fissile material. I've got to do that.
That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff
unaccounted for.
During the 2000 election Bush, unlike Gore, was against nation
building (taking other countries over, like in Iraq and Afghanistan) but that
was obviously thrown out the window. Gore called for increasing
military spending by $10 billion over the next ten years, while Bush only
wanted to raise it by $5 billion over the next ten years. According to
Clinton foreign policy adviser Strobe Talbott, "the Bush administration
was right to identify Iraq as a major problem. A President Gore
would
have ratcheted up the pressure, and sooner or later resorted to force."
Subjected to the same political pressures as Bush and surrounded by
advisers like Talbott, Gore would have probably reacted to events in a
manner similar to Bush. Those who argue that Gore would have been less
aggressive than Bush and would not have invaded Iraq are arguing that the
more aggressive & militaristic candidate would actually have been less
aggressive & militaristic, which is fairly absurd.
The invasion of Iraq was the outcome of geopolitics and a changed
domestic situation, not which man occupied the White House. After the gulf
war the US laid siege to Iraq with sanctions and bombings. As this
siege progressively degraded Iraqs military an invasion became more
likely, because defeating Iraqs military in a war became easier & cheaper
the more the siege degraded it. At the same time, attempts to overthrow
the government and install a pro-US one through terrorism, coups, etc.
continually failed. The failure of these covert attempts to topple the
government and the decreasing costs & risks of an invasion created
pressure to invade Iraq, which, given enough time, would eventually lead to
an invasion. This process was accelerated by 9-11 because it decreased
domestic opposition to wars in general and enabled the government to
decrease opposition to the invasion by scaring the public with fantasies
about how Iraq was working with Al-Qaeda to launch terrorist attacks on
the US. The same pretext of fighting terrorism could be used to keep
US bases in the region for as long as the government wanted. 9-11
accelerated many of these trends, but they were still basically a
continuation of Clintons policies.
The Bush-haters position is not founded on the policies Bush has
implemented, which they complain about. If it were they would be Clinton
haters, too. Most ABBers position is based primarily on a blind
irrational hatred of the other party and, partly, also a reaction to the
different media images of Clinton & Bush. When Clinton ran for office he
claimed to advocate a mildly liberal reformist platform, once in office he
abandoned it and went with a conservative program. Today, most leaders
of the Democratic Party dont even pretend to support that mildly
populist reformism Clinton espoused in 1992. To think that the next
democratic administration will be any different is asinine. Clintons
administration gives us an example of what we can expect if the democrats take
power this November: more of the same.
