Dear Mr. President:Big "GOTCHA" on Dean here over his views on Iraq, right?
After long and careful thought, and after several years of watching the gross atrocities committed by the Bosnian Serbs, I have reluctantly concluded that the efforts of the United Nations and NATO in Bosnia are a complete failure.
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Since it is clearly no longer possible to take action in conjunction with NATO and the United Nations, I have reluctantly concluded that we must take unilateral action.
Well - and I know this will come as a huge surprise (/sarcasm) - not really. On many levels. If you keep reading the letter, you'll see:
While I completely agree with you that no ground troops should be committed for other than humanitarian purposes in Bosnia, I would ask that you take the following steps in Bosnia. First, lift the arms embargo as it applies to the Bosnian government. Second, enforce a full embargo of the sort that is now in effect in Iraq on the Bosnian Serbs and upon Yugoslavia. Third, break off diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia. Fourth, commit American air power to support the Bosnian government until the situation is stabilized and the civilian murders and atrocities by the Bosnian Serbs have been stopped.There's no mention here of the overthrow and occupation of Bosnia. No ground troops. No saber-rattling. No name-calling of uncommitted allies. And while CNN emphasized the line "we must take unilateral action," I'd like to underscore his use of the word "reluctantly" - twice.
And don't ever forget how few American casualties resulted in the Clinton-led Bosnia situation. Flashback July 3rd, 1996:
A fear of American casualties has driven Washington's policy about military involvement in Bosnia, but Army statistics show that the troops stationed here are safer, healthier, and less likely to be killed than soldiers in the Army as a whole.It took a while in the CNN broadcast for them to admit that Dean gave this speech in L.A. last December 15th:
Among the 18,500 soldiers assigned to the Army task force in Bosnia, there have been only three deaths through late June, one-third the rate last year among soldiers throughout the Army. In Bosnia, one soldier was killed by a mine, one by a kitchen fire, and one when his truck ran off a narrow bridge.
During the past dozen years, I have supported U.S. military action to roll back Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, to halt ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, to stop Milosevic's campaign of terror in Kosovo, to oust the Taliban and al Qaeda from control in Afghanistan. As President, I will never hesitate to deploy our armed forces to defend our country and its allies, and to protect our national interests.Most of you who read my tantrums here know that there's no such thing as black and white - that all aspects of all things in life are in shades of gray. No human being can live by a carved-in-stone set of rules. We adapt. We're flexible. And we have the ability to adopt different standards as different circumstances warrant. It seems Dean is being villified for having these basic traits and it's making me crazy.
You also know my rail against today's "journalists." They try too hard to create stories where there are none - all from the comfort of their cubicle armed with a search engine. I've just outlined a stellar example of newspeople taking a situation from nine years ago and trying to pound it into today's context. And in most cases - including this one - it simply does not wash.
They feebly attempt to make something out of nothing, when they should be making something out of something (hint: an outed CIA agent, a president who says "What's the difference?" when he's confronted with a lie, cronies getting lucrative rebuilding jobs, former high-ranking officials with stories to tell...HELLO!?!).
Nixon resigned over less atrocity, but today's "journalists" will simply Google their way to the next non-story instead of earning their keep.
