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It is my belief that Clinton refused to retaliate against al Qaeda after they bombed the USS Cole on October 12, 2000 because Al Gore was running on a "peace and prosperity" platform. If Clinton had done the right thing and sent troops into Afghanistan, obviously one half of that platform would have been questioned.
Regarding the prosperity half, former Clinton officials Alan Binder and Janet Yellen wrote of the 1997 balanced negotiations, "discretionary spending had already declined roughly 11 percent in real terms between 1992 and 1997. Further progress would be difficult because the entire cut had, to that point, come from the defense budget."
Akan S. Binder and Janet L. Yellen, The Fabulous Decade, p. 74.
In other words, as Rich Lowry noted in "Legacy," "This, not the 1993 budget deal, was Clinton’s big contribution to deficit reduction—-taken directly out of the hide of America’s military."
So cutting our military and intelligence budgets gave us a "prosperity" that ultimately left us much less secure. In truth, we had neither peace nor prosperity under Clinton.
