CLINTON'S FAREWELL: YES TO FOREIGN ENTANGLEMENTS;
CLINTON REPUDIATES THOMAS JEFFERSON
By Cliff Kincaid
As Clinton was leaving office, some commentators noted that he appeared to be hogging the spotlight. Before he arrived in New York at his new home, he gave a speech at Andrews Air Fore base saying, "I'm still here." This may all have been in bad taste, but it was minor compared to the parting shot he took at one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson. This received no mention from our major media. Clinton, giving his last speech from the Oval Office, made a pitch for getting more deeply involved in all the problems and conflicts of the rest of the world.
"In his first inaugural address," said Clinton, "Thomas Jefferson warned of entangling alliances. But in our times, America cannot and must not disentangle itself from the world. If we want the world to embody our shared values, then we must assume a shared responsibility." It was extremely significant that Clinton decided to attack Thomas Jefferson, whose actual words were for "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations" and "entangling alliances with none." The point is that Jefferson was not an isolationist. He was supporting American involvement in the world. Yet Clinton found fault with that formulation, and made a point of saying so in his farewell address
Clinton left office with 60 percent approval because of the general failure to hold him accountable for his statements and policies. Clinton's proposed U.S. entanglement with the rest of the world now includes 211,000 U.S. military personnel deployed in 139 foreign countries, and another 26,000 on ships in foreign waters. The U.S. now maintains 61 different military installations in 24 different foreign countries. But how many times do we see, hear or read about these figures? Instead, when President Bush during the campaign talked about our forces being stretched too thin, and of U.S. troops being withdrawn from Bosnia and Kosovo, the New York Times and Washington Post attacked him as a dangerous neo-isolationist. In his address, Clinton hailed the deployment of U.S. troops to Bosnia, when the fact is that he had promised those troops would be home several years ago. Yet he gets a pass from the media for another lie.
It would have been worthwhile for the media to go back and analyze Jefferson's inaugural address, which also included expressing "the support of the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surrest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies..." This is something Clinton could never have agreed with, since he issued two executive orders trying to deny states' rights and promote federal control over state matters.
Jefferson also spoke of our constitutional rights, including "trial by juries impartially selected." This was ironic because of Clinton's circumstance, which included a deal with the independent counsel on his final full day in office that let Clinton escape a jury trial for his crime of lying under oath. The deal was widely praised in the media, even though it thwarted the demands of justice and the need to hold Clinton accountable. Bill Clinton is no Thomas Jefferson, and his criticism of our third president should remind us of that fact. (30)