If we turn our backs on his defiance, the credibility of U.S. power as a check against Saddam will be destroyed. We will have fatally undercut the fear of force that stops Saddam from acting to gain domination in the region. … That is why I have ordered a strong sustained series of air strikes against Iraq.
—BILL CLINTON
When [CIA] field agents or the Afghan tribals were apparently uncertain of whether they had to try to capture bin Laden before they used deadly force, I made it clear that they did not. … I extended the lethal force authorization by expanding the list of targeted bin Laden associates and the circumstances under which they could be attacked.
—BILL CLINTON
THE SOFT SIDE OF BILL Clinton’s foreign policy face—economic globalization and support for human rights and democracy, his efforts to mediate between the Israelis and the Palestinians, plus his reluctance to put U.S. troops in harm’s way in the Balkans, Somalia, and Rwanda—was complemented by a hard side: a stern refusal to let the United States be pushed around, visceral outrage against acts of terrorism, and a willingness to apply U.S. material power coercively (through economic sanctions and, if driven to it, the use of military force with capabilities and strategies that did not entail a lot of U.S. casualties). The harder aspect of the Clinton face was revealed particularly in response to belligerent provocations by Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
EDGING TOWARD REGIME CHANGE IN BAGHDAD
A half year into the Clinton presidency, tensions between Baghdad and Washington escalated dramatically. On June 15, Ambassador Madeleine Albright presented the UN Security Council evidence that Iraqi intelligence agents had plotted to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush in April during his visit to Kuwait to commemorate the second anniversary of the Gulf War. Albright’s revelation was followed by a nighttime raid, ordered by President Clinton, with twenty-three Tomahawk missiles that demolished the Iraqi intelligence headquarters in central Baghdad.1 Clinton’s recollection of this experience in exercising his power as commander in chief show him to be deferential to military judgment, but also wary of how things can go awry in war:
I asked the Pentagon to recommend a course of action, and General Powell came to me with the missile attack on the intelligence headquarters as both a proportionate response and an effective deterrent. I felt we would have been justified in hitting Iraq harder, but Powell made a persuasive case that the attack would deter further Iraqi terrorism, and that dropping bombs on more targets, including presidential palaces, would have been unlikely to kill Saddam Hussein and almost certain to kill more innocent people. Most of the Tomahawks hit the target, but four of them overshot, three landing in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood and killing eight civilians. It was a stark reminder that no matter how careful the planning and how accurate the weapons, when that kind of firepower is unleashed, there are usually unintended consequences.2
It was not clear that Saddam himself had ordered the 1993 assassination attempt. But from then on, throughout his first term, Clinton warily focused on the Iraqi leader as if they were engaged in deadly high-stakes game of poker. Iraq’s continuing violation of the Gulf War cease-fire accords and Saddam’s machinations against the inspection efforts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) continued to raise Clinton’s ire. In October 1997, when Saddam blocked UN inspections and demanded the U.S. inspections personnel be fired, Clinton both tightened economic sanctions on Iraq and visibly augmented U.S. military deployments in the Gulf.
Finally, after a year of on-again, off-again feints from Baghdad with respect to UNSCOM and IAEA access to the nuclear facilities, Saddam on October 31, 1998, summarily and completely shut down all the international inspection activities. The U.S. response—military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf and strong verbal hints from U.S. officials speaking on background that a major strike on Iraq was being prepared—produced the typical promises from Baghdad to resume cooperation with the UN inspectorate. But Clinton had enough. He signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act (passed by unanimous consent in the Senate and 360–38 in the House), which declared, “It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.” But, as yet, according to the act, U.S. Armed Forces were not authorized by Congress to effect such regime change.3
For a more restricted purpose, on December 16, 1998, the president unleashed Operation Desert Fox—a 70-hour campaign of 650 bomber and missile sorties against a wide range of Iraqi targets. “Earlier today,” he announced to the world, “I ordered America’s armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capability to threaten its neighbors.” The decision to use force, he said, was in response to Saddam’s repeated failure to cooperate with the UN weapons inspectors mandated to oversee Iraq’s adherence to its Gulf War cease-fire agreement to dismantle and not re-create its weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems. If Saddam was allowed to get away with this defiance, Clinton contended, “he would conclude that the international community—led by the United States—has simply lost its will. He will surmise that he has free rein to rebuild his arsenal of destruction, and someday—make no mistake—he will use it again as he has in the past.”4 (The reference was to Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war and against Kurdish civilians in northern Iraq, also his firing of Scud missiles against Israeli cities.)
The air strikes, explained the president, “are designed to degrade Saddam’s capacity to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction and to degrade his ability to threaten his neighbors.” This was not a one-time response. It was part of a long-term strategy:
First, we must be prepared to use force again if Saddam takes threatening actions. … The credible threat to use force, and when necessary, the actual use of force, is the surest way to contain Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction program, curtail his aggression, and prevent another Gulf War.
Second, so long as Iraq remains out of compliance, we will work with the International community to maintain and enforce economic sanctions.
And then, there was the ultimate objective of regime change. Clinton did not use that phrase but did say, “The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, and the security of the world.”5
In her memoir, Madeleine Albright recalls that Operation Desert Fox “marked a turning point in what had become an international soap opera. The United States shifted its policy toward Saddam from containment with inspections to an approach we called containment plus. We counted upon allied military forces in the region to keep Saddam in his box, while we took other steps to weaken him. In practice, this meant enforcement of the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq. When provoked, we did not hesitate to hit Saddam’s radar and antiaircraft facilities. … We took steps to unite and strengthen the Iraqi opposition, And we adopted ‘regime change’ as an explicit goal of U.S. policy.”6
At that time, it should be noted, the Clinton administration’s “regime-change” policy, consistent with the Iraq Liberation Act, did not include plans for an actual invasion of Iraq with U.S. troops. Aerial bombardment, yes; aiding and abetting internal dissidence, yes; but a full-scale war and occupation, no.
GOING AFTER BIN LADEN
Informed at 5:35 A.M. on August 7, 1998, by his national security adviser Sandy Berger that the U.S embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, had just been bombed, President Clinton, like Berger, CIA director George Tenet, and the rest of the national security team quickly focused on Osama bin Laden. The CIA had been tracking bin Laden since 1993 as a major financier of extremist jihadists worldwide, and in 1996 the agency had set up a special unit to analyze intelligence and plan offensive operations against him and a terrorist group he appeared to be directing called al-Qaeda. Although bin Laden was residing in Afghanistan in August 1998, the CIA, which had been monitoring al-Qaeda’s activities in Nairobi, was able to definitively fix responsibility for the embassy bombings on the wealthy Saudi entrepreneur.7
Clinton believed that the simultaneous bombings, reportedly killing over 200 people, including 12 Americans and 40 local employees of the embassies, and injuring nearly 5,000 Americans and Africans, clearly warranted a forceful response—directly at bin Laden if possible. The CIA learned that several hundred terrorist leaders were to be meeting with Osama at a camp near Khost, Afghanistan, during the third week in August, and this encampment became the prime target to attack. There was debate in the administration, however, over whether to strike targets outside Afghanistan that were al-Qaeda and/or bin Laden assets. A consensus developed around hitting such assets in Sudan, the locale of Osama’s organizational activities in the years before he moved his headquarters to Afghanistan. Clinton rejected one of the Sudan target options, a tannery thought to be owned by bin Laden, on the grounds that striking it could kill ordinary workers who were not necessarily terrorists, and anyway bin Laden himself and his chief lieutenants were no longer there. The president settled, rather, on targeting a Khartoum pharmaceutical plant that was believed to be manufacturing, with bin Laden’s support, a precursor ingredient for nerve gas that could have terrorist uses.8
On August 20, U.S. Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea shot some seventy-nine cruise missiles at the selected targets in Sudan and Afghanistan. And President Clinton publicly announced that the United States had launched an attack on “one of the most active terrorist bases in the world” located in Afghanistan and operated by groups affiliated with Osama bin Laden. “We also struck a chemical weapons-related facility in Sudan,” which he said was “the terrorists’ base of operation and infrastructure.” He gave four reasons: evidence that the target groups had played the key role in the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; that the groups had executed terrorist attacks against Americans in the past; that they were planning additional terrorist attacks; and that they were seeking to acquire chemical weapons and other dangerous weapons.9
The attacks destroyed the chemical plant in Khartoum and killed 20–30 people in the al-Qaeda encampment in Afghanistan. But the big prize, bin Laden, was missed by a few hours, according to CIA director Tenet.10
The retaliatory action was not all that popular in the United States. Some opinion leaders regarded it as a disproportionate response. Others criticized the claim that the Sudanese chemical plant was producing a nerve gas component as insufficiently demonstrated. Still others complained that the air strikes did not accomplish their main purpose of killing bin Laden and decapitating al-Qaeda. Clinton’s political opponents alleged that the whole thing was hyped up to divert media attention from the scandal involving his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. All members of his national security team angrily denied that the president’s military response to the embassy bombings, and their own advice to him, was driven by any considerations other than the nation’s vital interests.