BRITAIN GOES MONICA:

What should the world do about Saddam?: Bill Clinton electrifies a British Labor Party conference with a more sweeping vision for global peace and progress than the current president has been able to muster. ( Bill Clinton, Oct. 3, 2002, Salon)

[O]ne of the challenges we face today is that all the international institutions in which we place such hope are still becoming, they are still forming. We have only really had a chance to make them work for a little over a decade. The European Union is not what most people think -- and at least I hope -- it will be in five, 10 or 20 years; it is becoming. The United Nations is not what I hope it will be in five, 10 or 20 years. There are still people who vote in the United Nations based on the sort of old-fashioned national self-interest views they held in the cold war or even long before, so that not every vote reflects the clear and present interests of the world and the direction we are going. [...]

A few words about Iraq. I support the efforts of the prime minister and President Bush to get tougher with Saddam Hussein. I strongly support the prime minister's determination, if at all possible, to act through the UN. We need a strong new resolution calling for unrestricted inspections. The restrictions imposed in 1998 are not acceptable and will not do the job. There should be a deadline and no lack of clarity about what Iraq must do. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime poses a threat to his people, his neighbors and the world at large because of his biological and chemical weapons and his nuclear program. They admitted to vast stores of biological and chemical stocks in 1995. In 1998, as the prime minister's speech a few days ago made clear, even more were documented. But I think it is also important to remember that Britain and the United States made real progress with our international allies through the U.N. with the inspection program in the 1990s. The inspectors discovered and destroyed far more weapons of mass destruction and constituent parts with the inspection program than were destroyed in the Gulf War -- far more -- including 40,000 chemical weapons, 100,000 gallons of chemicals used to make weapons, 48 missiles, 30 armed warheads and a massive biological weapons facility equipped to produce anthrax and other bio-weapons. In other words, the inspections were working even when he was trying to thwart them.

In December of 1998, after the inspectors were kicked out, along with the support of Prime Minister Blair and the British military we launched Operation Desert Fox for four days. An air assault on those weapons of mass destruction, the air defense and regime protection forces. This campaign had scores of targets and successfully degraded both the conventional and non-conventional arsenal. It diminished Iraq's threat to the region and it demonstrated the price to be paid for violating the Security Council's resolutions. It was the right thing to do, and it is one reason why I still believe we have to stay at this business until we get all those biological and chemical weapons out of there. (Applause).

What has happened in the last four years? No inspectors, a fresh opportunity to rebuild the biological and chemical weapons program and to try and develop some sort of nuclear capacity. Because of the sanctions, Saddam Hussein is much weaker militarily than he was in 1990, while we are stronger -- but that probably has given him even more incentive to try and amass weapons of mass destruction. I agree with many Republicans and Democrats in America and many here in Britain who want to go through the United Nations to bring the weight of world opinion together, to bring us all together, to offer one more chance to the inspections.

What a pro Clinton shows what a loss he is to the US (The Guardian, October 3, 2002

In an intimate, almost conversational tone, speaking only from notes, Bill Clinton delivered the speech of a true political master. Those who have only thought previously of Mr Clinton as a source of entertainment - the way that far too much reporting of him in this country depicted him - will have been stunned and, one hopes, just a little ashamed. For this was the speech of a truly serious political leader, and if it went on five minutes longer than it needed to do, it was still a performance of the highest possible class. If one were reviewing it, five stars would not be enough.

Two big things will endure from what Mr Clinton had to say. The first and more immediate is his radically different and much more responsible approach to Iraq than that of the Bush administration. His calls to keep the priority on al-Qaida, to focus on the United Nations route for dealing with Iraq, to prefer non-military ways of achieving regime change, and to see military action as only a last resort offered a more profound and far preferable route to the current president's. His comments that the west has a lot to answer for in Iraq and that innocent people will die in any attack were wise reminders of what is at stake.

But the wider legacy of Bill in Blackpool is the unfaltering message of optimism that he delivered about the Labour government and about Tony Blair. At times, it was even as if Mr Clinton was calling on Mr Blair to rescue America from Bushism.

CLINTON HAS THE VISION BUSH LACKS (Daily Mirror, 10/03/02)

WHAT a performance. What a politician. What a superstar.

Bill Clinton played the parts of elder statesman, philosopher and world leader at Labour's conference and played them to perfection.

He was more idealistic and visionary than during his presidency, and added the experience of eight years in the White House. [...]

This was the best articulation yet of how the Iraqi tyrant must be dealt with, from a former president who has gone to war, knows it might be necessary again but realises what that means. [...]

He also praised Tony Blair for restraining President Bush. [...]

It was a magnificent speech from a man who is rapidly becoming the greatest figure in world politics, second only, perhaps, to Nelson Mandela.

Whatever our differences, Democrats are after all Americans and so one is reluctant to believe that they would truly cast away our sovereignty as a nation in the pursuit of multinational/multilateral institutions and governance, the transnational progressivism of which John Fonte has warned. But to listen to a Bill Clinton who has been freed of the restraint of the American electorate, as he bemoans the plague of nations that still believe in "old-fashioned national self-interest", is to realize that Mr. Fonte is quite right. There's something downright chilling about the way Mr. Clinton disassociates himself from a failed inspection regime that he helped impose and concedes that after eight years of the Clinton presidency Saddam "poses a threat to his people, his neighbors and the world at large", but then advocates going to the UN and trying yet another iteration of inspections.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 5, 2002 6:20 AM