11-02-2008, 03:35 AM
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Terrorist acts common for new presidents
Terrorist acts common for new presidents
By JEN DIMASCIO
Quote:
The next president’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks has become an issue on the campaign trail. But if there’s an attack as a new administration settles in, it won’t be the first time.
Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown all faced acts of terrorism within their first year in office.
The issue was driven home this month by Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, who flatly predicted his running mate, Barack Obama, would be tested by crisis very early in his term – should they win the White House. And, immediately, Republican rivals John McCain and Sarah Palin made it a central talking point on the stump.
Indeed, experts say that most presidents since the 1960s have had to manage some sort of domestic security incident, ranging from bombings to hostage takings.
The common thread between Clinton and Bush is that neither president was expecting an attack.
On Feb. 27, 1993, when Clinton was knee-deep in building a new administration, New York’s World Trade Center was bombed, killing six people.
The next day, Clinton urged the nation not to overreact.
“If it was a terrorist act and you stop doing what you are doing, they have won half the battle,” The Associated Press quoted Clinton as saying.
Arrests were made quickly, and by 1998, Ramzi Yousef was serving a life sentence for the crime.
Should Clinton have done more?
Historians say the tendency today is to label Clinton as weak on terrorism, or preoccupied with a domestic agenda, and that his lack of focus put the nation on a path leading to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. Others, though, disagree.
“Within the context of the time, it doesn’t hold up,” said Brian Jenkins, who has tracked terrorism at the RAND think tank for 36 years. “The facts don’t support that kind of tidy thinking.”
At the time, Al Qaeda didn’t have the same meaning that it does now, Jenkins said.
Another important distinction is that the terrorists involved in the World Trade Center attack were not tied to Al Qaeda until later, said Daniel L. Byman, the director of Georgetown’s Center for Peace and Security Studies.
Through the 1990s, terrorist incidents accelerated, leading to the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. At the time, the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared an option to invade Afghanistan in response. But the Clinton White House concluded there was no political will for an aggressive military response, Jenkins said.
Byman takes a similar view, saying that in hindsight, Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan became "part of this nest of danger." But by the late 1990s, Clinton was already using the military abroad in many places with mixed public support.
In fact, Bush, during the 2000 presidential campaign, criticized the extent of U.S. military involvement abroad, vowing to pull back.
The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, however, shifted his new administration’s isolationist tendencies.
Continued below...
Terrorist acts common for new presidents - Jen DiMascio - Politico.com
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Hindsight is always 20/20....new administrations are tested and their response is always open to criticism. Some say not enough was done while others may say we overacted.
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"Destiny must be shaped and not left to mere chance."..Spencer Collins .. 
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