January 22, 2006
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Honne and Tatemae
David Sanger in today's NYT:
Similar fears [of the aftermath of a pre-emptive strike], he said, gave President Bill Clinton pause about launching a strike on North Korea in 1994. Later that year he reached an accord for a freeze on the North's nuclear production facilities. But in 2003 everything unfroze, and now the North, by C.I.A. estimates, has enough fuel for at least half a dozen bombs.
"Everything unfroze" in 2003? Because they supposedly stopped their Plutonium program but secretly began enriching Uranium instead? And this in an article entitled "Why Not a Strike on Iran?".
Times logic proceeds from the idea that the world all of a sudden became a dangerous place when the current administration took office-or at least picked up from where it was during Bush I. The Clinton years were apparently some sort of Caribbean vacation.
(if the title is inscrutable, click here)
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at January 22, 2006 11:27 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksEveryone says that any president will go to great lengths to prevent being known as the guy on duty while Iran got the bomb. I'm not so sure that's the case though. Look at Clinton, he was the guy on duty when North Korea and Pakistan got the bomb, when India (and Pakistan) started a nuclear arms race. When A.Q. Khan started an international nuclear technology trading post. Yet does anyone remember Clinton as "that guy"? Nope, everybody remembers him more for his intern shenanigans and such-like. It's like some sort of bizarre reverse wag-the-dog effect, but it seems to have worked, for now anyway.
Posted by: Robin Goodfellow on January 22, 2006 11:52 AMTypical presentation by tNYT. "Journalistic Fraud", by Bob Kohn pretty well covers the technique and mindset.
Posted by: Mikein Appalachia on January 22, 2006 05:50 PMA "reverse wag-the-dog effect"? I'll be pondering the delightfully bizarre sematics of that construction for some time. Thanks, Robin!
Actually, I suspect that Clinton knew exactly what he was doing. Throwing a couple of sexual escapades to the stick-up-their-butts segment of the right wing was the equivalent of a burglar throwing one pork chop to the guard dogs. They got so busy snarling over that they hardly noticed those trivial little pecadillos like selling secrets to the Chinese...
I've often wondered whether, if the cigars and bimbos hadn't proved sufficient distraction, ol' Bill was prepared to get busted smoking pot (but not inhailing of course) in the Oval Office.
Posted by: Swen Swenson on January 22, 2006 07:45 PM"Yet does anyone remember Clinton as "that guy"? Nope, everybody remembers him more for his intern shenanigans and such-like."
Excellent point! I can remember a Chinese dissident at the time commenting that Clinton was lucky that his girlfriends kept distracting everyone from what he was really doing.
Posted by: Ann on January 23, 2006 04:07 PMComments are Closed.