quote:"President Clinton is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."
-Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)
"No goal, no objective, not until we have those things and a compelling case is made, then I say, back out of it, because innocent people are going to die for nothing. That's why I'm against it."
-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/5/99
"American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy."
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."
-Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of presidential candidate George W. Bush
"I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning...I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area."
-Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)
"You think Vietnam was bad? Vietnam is nothing next to Kosovo."
-Tony Snow, Fox News 3/24/99
"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years"
-Joe Scarborough (R-FL)
"I'm on the Senate Intelligence Committee, so you can trust me and believe me when I say we're running out of cruise missles. I can't tell you exactly how many we have left, for security reasons, but we're almost out of cruise missles."
-Senator Inhofe (R-OK )
"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarifiedrules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
"I don't know that Milosevic will ever raise a white flag"
-Senator Don Nickles (R-OK)
"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
-Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)
"This is President Clinton's war, and when he falls flat on his face, that's his problem."
-Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)
"The two powers that have ICBMs that can reach the United States are Russia and China. Here we go in. We're taking on not just Milosevic. We can't just say, 'that little guy, we can whip him.' We have these two other powers that have missiles that can reach us, and we have zero defense thanks to this president."
-Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)
"You can support the troops but not the president"
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
"My job as majority leader is be supportive of our troops, try to have input as decisions are made and to look at those decisions after they're made ... not to march in lock step with everything the president decides to do."
-Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)
For us to call this a victory and to commend the President of the United States as the Commander in Chief showing great leadership in Operation Allied Force is a farce"
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
"Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly."
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
"Once the bombing commenced, I think then Milosevic unleashed his forces, and then that's when the slaughtering and the massive ethnic cleansing really started"
-Senator Don Nickles (R-OK)
"Clinton's bombing campaign has caused all of these problems to explode"
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
"America has no vital interest in whose flag flies over Kosovo's capital, and no right to attack and kill Serb soldiers fighting on their own soil to preserve the territorial integrity of their own country"
-Pat Buchanan (R)
"These international war criminals were led by Gen. Wesley Clark ...who clicked his shiny heels for the commander-in-grief, Bill Clinton."
-Michael Savage
"This has been an unmitigated disaster ... Ask the Chinese embassy. Ask all the people in Belgrade that we've killed. Ask the refugees that we've killed. Ask the people in nursing homes. Ask the people in hospitals."
-Representative Joe Scarborough (R-FL)
"It is a remarkable spectacle to see the Clinton Administration and NATO taking over from the Soviet Union the role of sponsoring "wars of national liberation."
-Representative Helen Chenoweth (R-ID)
"America has no vital interest in whose flag flies over Kosovo's capital, and no right to attack and kill Serb soldiers fighting on their own soil to preserve the territorial integrity of their own country"
-Pat Buchanan (R )
"By the order to launch air strikes against Serbia, NATO and President Clinton have entered uncharted territory in mankind's history. Not even Hitler's grab of the Sudetenland in the 1930s, which eventually led to WW II, ranks as a comparable travesty. For, there are no American interests whatsoever that the NATO bombing will either help, or protect; only needless risks to which it exposes the American soldiers and assets, not to mention the victims on the ground in Serbia."
Crooks and Liars is a highly partisan website, so if you know any of these quotes are fabricated, please let me know.
Assuming these quotes are correct, this list does show us another interesting aspect of partisanship.
To be fair, at least one of the conservatives quoted above is just as critical of Bush's war in Iraq (Buchanan).
One could also argue that these quotes cut both ways. US involvement in Kosovo did not turn into another Vietnam and we're not going to be there for another "10, 15, maybe 20 years." Could it be that our criticism of the Iraq war is just as premature? (However, note that Clinton built a much stronger international coalition than Bush did, and our actions were supported by NATO.)
It would be interesting to see what the Democrats said in response to these criticisms. Maybe they said the exact same things the Republicans are saying right now. Posts: 4116 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
One might also note that in Kosovo, the enemy was an actual nation-state, with a regular army and an infrastructure that could be bombed. To be sure, Iraq had that for a couple of weeks, and right enough, it got smashed on schedule.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Or something like that. We all just line up behind our guy and use the same arguments to defend him as the opposition uses to defend theirs when their guy is doing the same thing. At which point we use the same arguments against their guy as they used against ours. It's all pretty rational and makes perfect sense.
Posts: 232 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
A difference is that Kosovo is of little or no strategic value. Iraq is in the very heart of a key strategic region. While this war is not, as so many people like to crow, about making Haliburton a wealthy company, it is absolutely about strategic oil reserves and ensuring that they are in the freest-flowing and most stable environment possible. More strife in the short term to be sure, but with the goal of long-term stability.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
This kind of thing is one of the reasons I think the government works best when the president is one party and the majority of congress is the other.
It also shows the hypocrisy of republican politicians & pundits, but since that's a subset of (politicians & pundits) it's not too surprising. The W quote is particularly funny, though.
posted
Kosovo has little strategic value, but the Serbian region has significant strategic value, particularly from a political perspective. American picked up considerable EU goodwill (that we've since squandered) with Kosovo, not to mention doing a pretty dang effective job at stopping the killing (say, unlike in Iraq, though granted its a much harder problem in Iraq).
Also, Iraq's strategic value was minimal so long as their armed forces remained small and control of the country remained fractured, which we ensured. I supported taking it on someday, but only if we were willing to make a large long-term commitment to rebuild the country, a commitment we have not made, and in fact have specifically rejected.
As is, we appear to have set it up to have a good chance of going right back to working against the US's ends.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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