Why We Will Have This Little War
by Eric Blair (2/21/98)

(Columnist's note: Concerning the piece below, I still stand by the predictions.  If Ken Starr had not been all Clinton needed to survive last week, we would have bombed Iraq.  And, it will, within weeks or months, still happen.  2/28/98, Eric Blair)

     It won’t be a long war, but within weeks, perhaps days, we will bomb Iraq.  Count on it.  The reason you can be sure it will happen can be most quickly, if inaccurately, understood by going to a movie called Wag The Dog.
    You can believe the premise that Bill Clinton would create a war to cover his troubles, if you wish, and you might be right.  What is far more likely, however, is the following scenario, which is based on a skill long exhibited by Clinton and his cronies: tactical brilliance.
    Strategists plan wars.  Tacticians fight them.
    Eisenhower was a strategist.  Patton was a tactician.
    Look at the situation:  Clinton, up to his ass in female alligators, has got to find a way to drain the swamp.  A conflict with Iran is the perfect solution, as the film suggests.  What the film misses is how it actually could happen.  How, with Clinton anyway, real scenarios actually develop.
    Have you ever heard a boxer described as a "counter puncher?"
    The best kind of counter puncher is instinctive.  He does not decide in advance how to beat his opponent, he climbs into the ring and adapts his approach to the style of his opponent.  If the fellow is slower, he avoids the punches (it’s called "slipping the punches") by ducking, backing just out of reach or sidestepping.  Then he strikes.  If the fellow is faster, he will concentrate on covering up and staying just out of his opponent’s reach.  Muhammed Ali, facing George Foreman in Africa, saved his strength by covering up and leaning against the ropes until Foreman tired.  Then, and only then, did Ali attack.
    Clinton is given too much credit for strategic thinking.  If he was a great strategic thinker, he wouldn’t be in a constant series of messes.  No, Clinton is a tactician, a born counter puncher.  He has spent a lifetime learning how to avoid a punch, how to tire (delay) his opponents and how to deflect blows that would land on and knock out other politicians.  He’s a man who uses the available weapon.
    The upcoming conflict in Iraq is a perfect example.
    We’ll start with why he needs it.
    After years of delaying tactics, successful against  unsexy charges, he is now in the ring against the most dangerous opponent he has ever faced, sexual misconduct charges.  The American public, placid in the economic climate which in their outright ignorance they credit to his activities, has ignored land scams in Arkansas, amazing luck with cattle futures, the outrageous firing and replacement (and subsequent harassment of) the White House travel bureau staff, the possession of hundreds of FBI files on political opponents (having just one sent E. Howard Hunt to the pen during the Nixon administration), the locking up of one of the world’s finest low-sulphur coal deposits so his Indonesian pals would have a monopoly (all done in the name of protecting a national treasure), providing top secret security clearance to a man who went across the street to make unlogged phone calls to people associated with the Chinese communists, and on and on and on!
    Seats were almost certainly sold on the late Ron Brown’s overseas economic development journeys.  It didn’t matter to Americans.  Vince Foster was found dead in a park and all his papers were suddenly gone from his office.  It didn’t matter to Americans.  Files from the Whitewater-related Rose Law Firm in Arkansas disappeared.   Some magically reappeared months later on a table in Hillary’s apartments, others turned up in the trunk of a car in an Arkansas junkyard.  It didn’t matter to Americans.
    Bags of sequentially numbered money orders, some of them from dead people, were delivered to the White House to augment the legal defense fund.  Miami drug lords and Asian gun runners attended White House functions.  The Lincoln Bedroom was turned into a motel room that cost twenty grand a night … all of it happening in what Bill Clinton promised would be "the most ethical administration in history."  And, none of it mattered to Americans.
    Then, Monica turned up.
    The mainstream media flacks, who for years have handed out the party line from the White House, began to get nervous.  That other piece of "trailer trash," as they called her, Paula Jones, had refused a quiet cash settlement.  Demanded a public apology!  But, they could handle a tramp  who claimed that Bill Clinton, as Governor of Arkansas, had had her brought to his hotel room and subsequently exposed himself while demanding oral sex.
    That was a long time ago, and besides everybody does it, and besides, it was nobody else’s business.  They could handle it.
    And, there was that other woman.  During his first presidential run, during the primaries, speaking on the famed CBS television magazine show, Sixty Minutes, Clinton had denied having an affair with another southern bimbo (as Tom and Peter and Dan and Eleanor and Mark and the rest of the mainstream media scions no doubt view  her). Her name was Jennifer Flowers.  It is rumored, of course, that in recent testimony under oath, Clinton changed his, oh, we’ll call it "position" on this matter -- which means he lied on Sixty Minutes.  But, the mainstream mavens could handle that one, too.
    But, then came that damned twenty-one year old Monica.
    A young, beautiful intern, or White House political worker,  the White House access she enjoyed, even after leaving the place to take another job, was superior to some cabinet-level people.  (Boy, they really take care of their interns at the White House!) And the assistance she got in finding other employment!   The President’s closest friend, Vernon Jordan, was out on the stump, talking to the world’s largest and most famous corporations on her behalf.  Even if she didn’t want the sinecure in the Pentagon her future was assured.
    But, Monica had a big mouth.  She talked to a friend about having a long affair with Clinton.  Her friend was wired.  Twenty hours of tape resulted.
    But, fortunately for Clinton, when Newsweek got the story, they sat on it.  Not being crackpots like hate radio hosts (say, Rush Limbaugh) or rightwing fascist journalists (say, Freddy Barnes), they knew their duty.  This sort of thing must be handled in a mainstream, mature way.  (Read: since it might threaten a liberal president that probably more than eighty percent of the Newsweek staff voted for, it should be quashed or at least held back as long as possible.)
    But, unfortunately for the mainstream media and Clinton, a fellow named Drudge knew all about the situation.  He got tired of Newsweek’s stalling and put it on his website.
    Which, ultimately, means that Mr. Drudge is directly responsible for the guarantee that we will soon be bombing Iraq.  Drudge, by breaking this story, has eliminated the possibility of a political settlement even if Hussein wanted one!
    You see, this story, fleshed out as it now is, so to speak, does bother the American public.  Dirty old men fooling around with young girls bothers the American public.
    Even if Clinton didn’t tell Monica to lie about their affair under oath, it is still a potential knockout blow.  If he did tell her to lie, and it can be proved, his legacy will be resignation to avoid impeachment – but even if he didn’t, he will have finally established his precious "legacy," anyway.  He will be remembered as an obscene clown with his pants falling down.
    He knows this all too well.  Clinton, the counter-puncher, therefore, has got only a moment to react, or he’ll be sniffing canvas.  What we need is a distraction.
    Enter Iraq.
    Bush’s ratings went up into the ninety percentile stratosphere during the Gulf War seven years ago.  It fell in time for Clinton, following his Sixty Minutes campaign commercial, to defeat him, of course, but that isn’t the point.  Iraq offers the opportunity for some fast and loose maneuvres.  Moves that have to be completed or the U.S.S. Clinton is Waterloo-bound!
    Okay.  The mainstream media will make round the clock noise during the combat.  A day or so after it starts, we’ll offer Paula Jones a wad of money and the public apology she has demanded.  We’ll make this apology about the time Iraq begins to dissolve under bombardment, and it might show up on page 37 of the New York Times and get ten seconds at three in the morning on NBC.
    Since we don’t have to run for election, and since we told the truth about
Flowers under oath, that’s clean legally.  So, with Jones and Flowers out of the way, all that’s left is Monica.  Her dad’s a big DNC political contributor.  Hell, he’s already called Ken Starr a Hitler!  Mom’s on our side.  Jordan won’t crack.  Not Jordan.
    By God, even a direct apology to the people, an admission of the affair with Monica, couldn’t knock a ninety down below fifty.  Forty, at the worst!  Especially if we pull off this barely noticed and soon forgotten Jones apology under fire.

"Hello, is that you, Dick?  No, I haven’t got time to say anything to her.  Well, jerk the leash out of her hands!  Okay, now what do you think about this?  He’s playing right into our hands at the moment, but if he screws up the timing, or starts to chicken out, let’s see if Saddam would go for the short war we need right now.   Afterwards, give him the U.N. control of the inspection team he wants.  Have some arab kids, maybe a moslem or two, behind me on camera when I make the announcement.  What do you think?"
 
    Now, you know why this little war is guaranteed to happen.
    Just think of it as a minor Middle Eastern bimbo eruption.

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