March 21,1999

President Mixes Foreign Policies And Domestic Politics

News from abroad last week discloses that President Clinton has difficulty parsing the “P” word -- whether it stands for foreign policy or domestic politics.

Start with Haiti.

Commander of U.S. troops in Latin America, Gen. Charles E. Wilhelm, recommended we “terminate” our permanent presence there.

After five years of occupation, Haiti is near anarchy. President Rene Preval has dissolved parliament and rules by decree -- a form of governing we used to call dictatorship.

A score of political assassinations recently has everyone jittery. Our 500 soldiers there, a remnant of the original 20,000 sent five years ago to keep the peace, are said by Gen. Wilhelm to be “at risk.”

He probably recalls another U.S. force of the same number sent to Somalia five years ago to keep peace. United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan declared the country without government and directed a U.N. rescue mission to create one. Newly elected President Clinton grandly offered to supply leaders for the U.N. effort.

The American commander soon recognized the danger to his little humanitarian squadron. He asked for a couple of tanks and some heavy weapons but was refused lest he “aggravate” the situation. Several American soldiers were captured, killed and their naked bodies dragged through the streets -- all on television.

Peace keepers bugged out a year later. When last heard of, the Somalians were still fighting, starving and dying.

Another concern last week was the imminent outbreak of war in Yugoslavia. President Clinton says he will bomb Serbian targets there unless President Slobodan Milosevic, a convicted war criminal, ceases massacring ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo. Albanians went to Paris last week to sign a peace agreement drafted by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Milosevic didn’t bother to show up.

At this writing, a NATO strike force of 28,000 ground troops -- including 4,000 Americans -- is gathering in nearby Macedonia to try once again to impose peace.

If and when they are ordered to advance, they will be preceded by heavy bombing of Serb targets by American pilots.

Gen. Michael Ryan, U.S. Air Force chief of staff, warned a Senate hearing Wednesday that “there is a distinct possibility we will lose aircraft in trying to penetrate” Yugoslavia’s sophisticated defenses.

It is remembered that the 20,000 soldiers our commander-in-chief sent to Bosnia “for one year,” are still there four years later.

A strange bombing campaign continues against “selected” Iraq radar sites.

Reports persist that Iraq has successfully hidden up to eight atom bombs for use against Israel and possibly Iran, and that nuclear sites are the real targets of American planes.

It is interesting to note, that Saddam succeeded in expelling the United Nations inspection team just as it neared discovery of the suspected bomb cache.

The U.N. on Thursday -- hot to do good in Afghanistan controlled by medieval Taliban clergy -- ended a seven-month boycott that began when an Italian U.N. relief worker was killed.

American and British nationals were withdrawn from the new team upon demand by Afghanis. They are upset over Clinton’s surprise bombing of an international terrorist’s mountain camp there a few months ago.

Thus, we have two instances of rogue nations dictating the composition and scope of United Nations peace keeping commissions.

The most troublesome foreign policy blunder is that involving China which is thought to have stolen nuclear missile technology from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. A Chinese-American scientist there is believed to have given the secret of miniaturized multiple-targets war heads to Chinese nuclear experts. These put U.S. targets within range.

The delivery of secrets was disclosed by the FBI in April 1996 to Sandy Berger, then Clinton’s national security chief. This was the same month Vice-president Al Gore visited a Buddhist temple in California to pick up laundered Chinese money for his and Clinton’s reelection campaign.

Lee Wen Ho, the suspected spy, was allowed to continue in his work while other Chinese money flowed into the president’s campaign coffers. The Ho affair was not publicly known until uncovered by newspapers last month -- three years after disclosure to the White House. Ho now has been dismissed, but not charged with any wrong doing.

In view of all the above, Clinton’s foreign policies seem more like domestic politics. Until he, or we, separate the two, fasten your seat belts.

By Lindsey Williams, columnist for Sun Coast Media Group newspapers