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Apologize

November 22 1999, page 9

On August 7 of last year, terrorists connected to Osama Bin Ladin blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Two weeks later, in the early evening of August 20, America retaliated. Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from U.S. warships stationed in the Red Sea destroyed the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. Now, more than 14 months later, after repeated investigative reports and repeated evasions by the Clinton administration, it is clear that the missile attack was a mistake. It’s time to say so.

In the attack’s immediate aftermath, the administration made many claims on its behalf. Few have withstood scrutiny. Contrary to government assertions, the plant was indeed manufacturing medicines (about half of Sudan’s pharmaceutical needs). There was no heavy security at the facility, and it was not patrolled by the Sudanese military, as was alleged. It was not owned or controlled by the Sudanese government, but by a Saudi banker with anti-fundamentalist ties. The chemical EMPTA, which can be used to manufacture VX nerve gas and which was apparently found in a soil sample 60 feet from Al-Shifa’s property, does indeed have limited commercial applications. Subsequent testing at the site has found no materials associated with chemical weapons. And no evidence directly linking the factory to Osama Bin Ladin has ever surfaced. Despite all this, it is still possible that Al-Shifa was in some way involved with the production or storage of chemical weapons. But the weight of the evidence suggests it was nothing more than a privately owned pharmaceutical plant. And, if the Clinton administration has information to the contrary, it has not produced it.

For isolationists on both the right and the left, the Al-Shifa blunder is a godsend. It seems to confirm what they wish so much to believe — that this administration will find any pretext to punish the few nations not fully under its thumb. In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite. Al-Shifa was more the result of this administration’s discomfort with the use of force than of its overeagerness. And it proves once again a lesson that the Clinton administration has resolutely refused to learn: U.S. military campaigns that aim for symbolism and inoffensiveness end up failing not only strategically but also morally.

The targeting process leading to the Al-Shifa attack (and to a simultaneous attack against Afghanistan) seems to have had three goals: first, to attack both Bin Ladin’s Afghanistan base and a part of his network outside that country; second, to restrict the decision-making process to a small group of senior advisers; third, and above all, to minimize casualties. James Risen’s recent reporting in The New York Times suggests that the administration was intent on a simultaneous attack because it both paralleled the double embassy bombings and emphasized America’s ability to strike far-flung corners of the globe without risking harm to U.S. personnel. Hence the mission’s code name: Operation Infinite Reach. The Sudanese target was, then, largely symbolic. And, as such, officials seem to have insisted on a location that would result in the fewest civilian casualties rather than one where there was clear evidence of chemical-weapons proliferation.

The Clinton administration has done this before. In 1993, William Safire noted that, when faced with a similar choice about how to punish Iraq for its plot to assassinate former President George Bush, “Mr. Clinton chose from among the weakest military options.” And then, of course, there was Kosovo, where the administration waged a war against genocide premised on the notion that America must not lose a single soldier. In Kosovo, “interventionism lite” meant an air war when ground troops might have prevented ethnic cleansing. In Sudan, it meant a symbolic response when a real one was warranted. In Kosovo, it meant accidentally striking civilian convoys that pilots couldn’t see from a mile above ground. In Sudan, it meant destroying a medicine factory. In both cases, odious regimes were handed propaganda victories, and the isolationists had a field day.

“I was here on this island up till two-thirty in the morning,” Clinton told a church group on Martha’s Vineyard shortly after the strikes, “trying to make absolutely sure that at that chemical plant there was no night shift.” An admirable sentiment, but a misguided one. Loss of life is always regrettable, but, if it results from a serious blow against a terrorist operation that threatens American lives, it is justified. If, however, the attempt to kill fewer civilians leads to a strategically meaningless attack on a questionable target, then the innocent truly have died in vain. That is the prospect that should have kept Clinton up at night. And, tragically, it seems to have come to pass — not because this administration was too bold, but because it was too timid. It’s time to come clean.

 

CJHjr

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jksonc/docs/el-shifa-nr-19991122.html