Bill Clinton, tonight: “The Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be Commander in Chief.”
Five days after Clinton took office, a Pakistani national shot two CIA employees in their cars outside headquarters.
Thirty-eight days after Clinton took office, al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center. He never even visited the site.
When a small plane crashed into the White House on September 11, 1994, people joked that it was his CIA Director, James Woolsey, who had great difficulties getting a face-to-face meeting with him.
On March 8, 1994, two unidentified gunmen killed two U.S. diplomats and wounded a third in Karachi, Pakistan. On November 13, 1995, a bomb was set off in a van parked in front of an American-run military training center in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, killing five Americans and two Indians.
On February 23, 1997, Ali Abu Kamal, a Palestinian gunman opened fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from the United States, Argentina, Switzerland, and France before turning the gun on himself. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claimed this was a punishment attack against the “enemies of Palestine.”
On November 12, 1997, two unidentified gunmen shot to death four U.S. auditors from Union Texas Petroleum Corporation and their Pakistani driver after they drove away from the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi. The Islami Inqilabi Council, or Islamic Revolutionary Council, claimed responsibility in a call to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi. In a letter to Pakistani newspapers, the Aimal Khufia Action Committee also claimed responsibility.
On December 28, 1998, Yemeni militants kidnapped a group of western tourists, including 12 Britons, 2 Americans, and 2 Australians on the main road to Aden. Four victims were killed during a rescue attempt the next day.
This isn’t even getting into bombings of Khobar Towers, two American embassies, or the attack on the U.S.S. Cole.
Clinton bombed a pharmaceutical plant and empty tents. CIA officials said they felt “bound by the dovish attitude of Clinton and his advisors.”
His State Department staffers assessed the Taliban and concluded, “You get to know them and you find they really have a great sense of humor,” as one told journalist Richard Mackenzie a few months before the Taliban entered Kabul.
He deployed 25,000 troops to Somalia without a clear mission, then denied them the armor they needed, leading to the Black Hawk Down debacle.
He sent U.S. troops to occupy Haiti, another far-off land of no significance to U.S. national security and no major geopolitical interest to the American people.
Bill Clinton was too young and inexperienced to be commander-in-chief. And the proof is in the results.
(Portions of the above were in the fourth chapter of my book, now available at fine remainder bins everywhere.)