Sunday, April 30, 2006

Bill Clinton peacemaker



I have never been backwards in mentioning to people my admiration of President Clinton. I must say that he certainly spent plenty of time working on creating peaceful solutions throughout the world, and was instrumental in trying to get Israel and Palestine to be favorable of each other. I found Bob Harts blog which is aptly named and there is a brilliant video of President Clinton being whipped onstage and asked to sing with 40 Jewish and 40 Arab children. I notice that in the audience was Ariel Sharon, so I guess it was taken sometime last year before he became ill.

You'll need a fast internet connection, but be sure to watch the video it is great.

Bobs blog

7 comments:

High Power Rocketry said...

: )

Stephanie said...

Clinton... schwing. He made politics sexy.

Anonymous said...

Bill 'Poster Boy' Clinton made the US politics a similiar to a reality soap opera. A unique tool that kept the worlds people tuned in to hear/see outcomes and what would happen next, yet during all this he obtain critical acclaim for his policatical negotiations with palestine and Iran and was able to turn the media around and use it as a useful tool to gain the media attention he required to build support.

Anonymous said...

Yeah I liked Billy. Apart from screwing the pooch in Somalia I think he did a fantastic job. (Those of you that felt Blackhawk Down was an accurate depiction of the US's actions in that country are grossly mistaken)

Too bad the jesus freaks here couldn't handle the pres getting a bit of oral action from "that woman"

Andrew said...

Great video of him singing... very personable.

He was a great president. And what married man wouldn't lie about a blow job on the side?

Rymann, so what did happen in Somalia? Can you point out a webpage to read? Sounds interesting...

Anonymous said...

And let's not forget his less than ideal handling of Kosovo etc. Like the guy, like his of screen skills, but like most democrats, needs a bit more backbone/guts to make the hard decisions that need to be made. Perfect president? Clinton with Bushes follow through.

Anonymous said...

Andrew - there is a lot of good material out there, probably one of the best is a book called "Me Against My Brother : At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda" by Scott Peterson. He was an independent reporter at the time and his accounts of what happened there are truly incredible.

It outlines how the US went in under the auspices of a UN mission, and proceeded to wage a military campaign that was completely at odds with the UN mandate it was meant to enforce. Playing off factions against each other, using relief food as a strategic weapons, turning the other way as arms poured into the country etc etc the list of questionable activities is almost endless.

When you have US soldiers lobbing mortar rounds indiscriminately into a city of civilians from a UN compound, and corn fed grunts blowing away starving children with a .50 sniper rifle, there is something very wrong with your peacekeeping policies. The antics performed by US soldiers in Mogadishu make Abu Ghraib seem like a weekend at Disneyland.

In a perfect world I would like to have seen Admiral Howe (USN, Ret) taken to the Hague on war crimes charges. Its wishful thinking though, and tantamount to heresy in the US of A.

Its a complex topic, and one that Americans are easily riled up by. I don't want to hijack robs page too much, I could talk about it for days...
But if you do get a chance, Me against my brother is well worth the read.