The Hill

October 10, 2001 Gingrich blames self and Clinton for failure to take stronger measures against terrorism

By Kerry L. Kantin and Albert Eisele

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said President Clinton should have done more to wage a campaign against terrorism, but conceded that he himself should have put more pressure on him to act more forcefully.

“In retrospect, I wish I had been much more consistent in holding President Clinton’s feet to the fire on this issue,” Gingrich declared. “There was a greater failure to wage a systematic campaign against terrorism at a time when it was obvious that we knew it was real,” Gingrich said, pointing to the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center, the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole last fall.

Citing private conversations he had with Clinton when both were in office, Gingrich said it was evident that Clinton clearly understood the threat that terrorists posed to U.S. security but was unable to translate that understanding into action.

Blaming the Clinton administration’s “pathetically weak, ineffective ability to focus and stay focused,” Gingrich said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks “probably would have had less chance to succeed if we had been serious” about combating terrorism during that administration.

Gingrich contended that Saudi Arabia and Turkey were prepared to support the United States if it had taken military action against Saddam Hussein after he refused to allow U.N. inspectors access to Iraq’s weapons facilities in l998.

Gingrich asserted that Clinton’s failure to act and his lack of leadership has forced the Bush administration’s national security team to pick up the slack.

Under former President Bush, “it was pretty clear we were a serious country, and then you saw it just erode for eight years,” he said. “If we do not have new governments in Afghanistan and Iraq when this is over, we will have lost the war.”

In a wide-ranging interview in the K Street office of The Gingrich Group, the former Speaker said:

• The greatest danger to the United States is “a weapon of mass destruction in an American city.” As a member of the Hart-Rudman commission, he learned Iraq and other nations are developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. “It seems to me we have been given a wakeup call on Sept. 11, and virtually the entire world would side with us if we said to Saddam, ‘Totally dismantle your systems or we will replace your government.’”

• The only justification for using nuclear weapons “would be to preempt a nuclear weapon. If we found out there was about to be a North Korean launch or something like that, then I think you’d say, ‘Okay, to save an American city, we’re prepared to eliminate the launch site.’ But short of that, I think for us to cross a nuclear threshold would be very, very dangerous.”

• It is too early to describe the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as a turning point in history. If the United States creates an alliance against terrorism and it eradicates it, then it will be. “On the other hand, if we get tired of it and accept getting bin Laden and al Qaeda and back off on Iraq and other terrorism, then this will be an incident; it won’t be a turning point.”

• The greatest obstacle to winning the war against terrorism is that the “American governing establishment will lose patience. The American people will tolerate whatever they are told is necessary for safety.”

• Americans may have to give up some of their personal freedom in order to combat terrorism but said much of that can be voluntary and it needn’t be draconian. “We are entering a world, for the purposes of mutual safety, we will accept certain infringements, which we have done now for 20 years, in terms of walking through a metal detector” in airports and public buildings.

• The principles for downsizing government set forth in the Contract with America after the GOP took control of Congress in 1995 have not been dismantled by the war on terrorism. “As Reaganites, we always thought national defense mattered,” he said. The key arguments are not whether government should have a role, he said, but whether that role should be “primarily through a unionized bureaucracy or should [it] be through the adaptation of modern bureaucracy or modern technology?”

• Criticism of his successor, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), by conservatives in his own caucus is unjustified because it is a function of “the natural tensions of the system. … He is being a bipartisan Speaker at a bipartisan moment.”

• Partisanship will soon return to Washington, probably no later than next February, when President Bush delivers his budget, because “budgets are about who won and who lost.” He added, “It is conceivable, not certain, that the combination of Bush’s personality, the end of the Reagan-Gingrich cycle of really big partisan issues and the Sept. 11 tragedy [could] bring people together more like the Congress prior to 1965.”

• The future of the Republican Party lies in utilizing new technology, keeping pace with new ideas, and especially in reaching out to Hispanics. “If the Republican Party becomes the party of choice for Hispanic Americans, we will be the majority party for the next half-century,” he said. “If we do not reach out and create that common bond, the fact is we’ll be a minority.” Gingrich, 58, appeared relaxed and comfortable in his role as a television commentator, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the head of his own consulting group.

Asked if he has any plans to return to public life, he said he wouldn’t be interested in any job in the Bush administration at this time but did not rule out the possibility of running for public office again.

“I’m the same age as Ronald Reagan was in his first term as governor,” Gingrich noted. “I’m not going to say that I’ll never be in public office, but I don’t have any plans.”

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

Answers

I'm shocked! shocked! Surely Billy has issued a denial by now...

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001