Wampum

Old Faithful

Some things happen with such regularity that they seem inevitable. When William Safire hears voices in his head, you just know that it is Richard Nixon calling. When the Chicago Bulls were tied with 17 seconds left to play, you knew Michael Jordan would get the ball. The Democrats will play “Happy Days Are Here Again” at the convention this summer. It was no surprise when Columbo had “just one more thing” to ask about.

When Sixty Minutes II broke the story about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, it was only a matter of time before someone on the right decided that it was Bill Clinton's fault.

Oh, there were some other trial balloons floated. Via Media Matters we learn that Ann Coulter and Linda Chavez blame the scandal on allowing women into the military.

George Neumayr, of The American Spectator blamed it on feminism. Cal Thomas blamed Muslins. James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal blamed academic liberals.

That someone would eventually blame Clinton of the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners was completely predictable.

Atrios points us to George Must Go, who has the transcript of an NPR interview with Joel Himmelfarb of the Washington Times discussing the cause of the prisoner abuse scandal. Himmelfarb did not disappoint:

Now, certainly one thing I will say is that I believe, as, as a lot of folks on the, on the political right believe, that our military has been undermanned for many years, and it's very, very difficult to fight a war like this with a, a military that basically is, is Bill Clinton's military and a military that basically was formed during the days when we were all talking about the "war is peace" dividend.

Until I read Himmelfarb’s remarks, I was unaware that the right thought that our military was inadequate for the challenges of the Iraq war.

How could we be so sure that the blame for the scandal would eventually be assigned to Bill Clinton? History, of course.

After 9/11, no investigation was needed to know who was a fault. On September 12, 2001, one day after the terrorist attacks, NewsMax ran an article by Christopher Ruddy entitled “CIA Officials Reveal What Went Wrong – Clinton to Blame.”

It is not just public policy problems the right blames on Bill Clinton. For instance, when a Little League team used an overage player in order to gain an advantage, who should be blamed? Rush Limbaugh had no trouble deciding. SpinSanity reports that Limbaugh placed the responsibility squarely on Bill Clinton:

On his show Friday, the host said the fact that Danny Almonte, the Little League World Series pitching phenom from the Bronx, lied about his age was indicative of "[t]he era of Clinton ... illustrating itself in fine form."

When Gary Condit had an affair, who did Sean Hannity blame? SpinSanity quotes Hannity as asking Bob Barr the following “question”:

Look -- you know, Bob, look -- Congressman Barr, I was making the case last night this -- this is a natural consequence for having not thrown Bill Clinton out of office. We're getting the same thing -- sex with an intern, suborning -- charges of subornation of perjury and obstruction, parsing of words.

Now we don't -- not only do we not know what "is" means, "alone" means, now we don't know what "relationship" means. If you have sex with a woman for 10 months, that's not a relationship, by the way. This is a consequence of Clinton, isn't it, Congressman Barr?

Bill O’Reilly very much wanted Howard Dean to win the Democratic nomination for President because O’Reilly thought that Bush would clobber Dean in the fall. Since Dean failed garner the prize, someone has to bear the blame. Who does O’Reilly think is responsible for the Dean loss? Howard Dean? Joe Trippi? The media or the voters? Of course not, Dean’s loss was engineered by Bill Clinton.

When executives from Enron, WorldCom and other companies broke the rules and lost billions, who was at fault? Steve Forbes knows:

FORBES: Well, I think if you want to look at the tone of the '90s, it started right at the top, at the White House, where the attitude was anything goes. If you get caught, spin your way out of it. The only thing they didn't resist -- they could resist everything except temptation. So it started at the top.

You just knew that the right would eventually get around to blaming the abuse of Iraqi prisoners on Bill Clinton. It is as reliable as Old Faithful.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at May 11, 2004 04:03 PM | TrackBack