An almost-forgotten moment of country over party: Bill Clinton's 1993 strikes on Iraq
SATURDAY, JUL 1, 2017 09:30 AM EDT
An almost-forgotten moment of country over party: Bill Clinton’s 1993 strikes on Iraq
When Bill Clinton ordered air strikes in Iraq — because Saddam Hussein tried to assassinate George H.W. Bush
MATTHEW ROZSA
Earlier this week, Americans passed an important anniversary in the history of our foreign policy. On June 26, 1993, President Bill Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes against the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in Baghdad. Why? Clinton was responding to intelligence reports that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein had tried to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush — the man Clinton had defeated less than eight months earlier.
Although Clinton and Bush became quite close in the years after both left the White House, they were bitter partisan enemies in 1993. Indeed, Bush’s intensely negative campaign against Clinton the previous year — and Clinton’s attempt to contrast that with a deliberately optimistic approach — became hallmarks of the political zeitgeist in the early ’90s. Clinton decisively bested Bush in both the electoral and popular vote in the ’92 election, even though Bush had had sky-high approval ratings only a few months earlier.
According to David Gergen, the veteran political operative and commentator who served as counselor to Clinton at that time, the high quality of leadership displayed by Clinton on that occasion is sorely needed in Washington today.
“I came into the Clinton White House in May-June of that year, and shortly after I got there the intelligence arrived that made it very clear that Saddam Hussein had ordered the strike against President Bush,” Gergen recalled in an interview, noting that Clinton had earlier vowed to retaliate against the individuals responsible for the attempt on Bush’s life. As a result, after collecting his top advisers (including Gergen), Clinton faced a critical dilemma.
“He had never issued an order for a military strike that would inevitably bring death on the other side of the strike,” Gergen recalled. Clinton had learned that the attempt against Bush had come from Iraq’s intelligence headquarters, so the president “wanted to think about it carefully, because he felt that while the United States had to show that it would follow through, that it would use force, that it had a club in the closet, he [also] wanted to minimize the loss of life, especially innocent Iraqi lives.”
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http://www.salon.com/2017/07/01/an-almost-forgotten-moment-of-country-over-party-bill-clintons-1993-strikes-on-iraq/
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