Dumb Questions Aside, Airstrikes Didn’t Imitate Art

A few hours after President Clinton’s order to launch military attacks Thursday on select targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, it became clearer than ever before that Americans watch way too many movies.

The president’s domestic foe, independent counsel Kenneth Starr, was in Little Rock, Ark., when news broke of the U.S. airstrikes.

Know what he was asked?

“Have you seen ‘Wag the Dog?’ ”

That’s right. As the supreme commander of our armed forces was undertaking the dangerous business of retaliating for Aug. 7 bombings at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania--acts of terrorism that left hundreds dead (including 12 Americans) and thousands maimed--some joker felt the need to ask if Starr had seen a 1997 film about a U.S. president who manufactures a war to divert attention from a sex scandal.

“Yes, I have seen it,” Starr answered, diplomatically, “but other than that I’m not going to comment.”

Big of you, Ken.

A comment that the president “would never do such a thing” would have been too much to ask.

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There really are some funny parallels between Barry Levinson’s film, in which Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman scheme to declare war on Albania, and the real-life complications for Bill Clinton this week.

But come on, get serious.

Nobody fabricated those embassy attacks. That wasn’t a make-believe Marine sergeant they buried Wednesday at a military funeral in Tallahassee, Fla.

If anyone actually thinks that a president would bomb an Afghanistan terrorist training camp and a Khartoum chemical weapons factory just to improve his popularity, then there are characters out there more twisted than any developed in Hollywood.

Clinton is capricious, not diabolical.

Yet even his secretary of defense, William Cohen, was not spared the indignity of being asked whether Clinton’s actions in southwest Asia and north-central Africa were motivated in any way by his acknowledgment of an inappropriate tryst.

To his credit, Cohen didn’t overreact. He replied, “The only motivation driving this action today was our absolute obligation to protect the American people from terrorist activities.”

The questions people ask.

(“Oh, definitely,” Cohen was evidently supposed to say. “And if this Paula Jones thing pops up again, I guess we’d better warm up a few more jets.”)

A little honest skepticism is always welcome, but this kind is ludicrous and best left to extremists or stand-up comedians.

Thursday’s decisive action was not the equivalent of an in-and-out intervention of Grenada, expedient but hardly vital to national security. This was a tactical response to terrorists who “planned, financed and carried out” extremely violent acts, as Clinton said, and were plotting more.

And while Afghanistan and Sudan have been “warned for years” not to provide safe haven for those responsible for such acts, it was the timing of the Kenya and Tanzania bombings, plus the “compelling evidence” of future such attacks, that led to the U.S. retaliation, Clinton made it clear.

“I decided America must act,” he declared.

It did, oddly, bring the president full circle to January, when the Monica Lewinsky allegations first were made public just as tensions arose in Iraq.

One wonders if cynics around the globe will believe Clinton capable of such a thing--demonstrating international might at a time of domestic weakness. Turning the tables. Changing the mood.

Wagging the dog.

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It is quite possible to disapprove of a president’s methods without speculating that he took a tremendous risk abroad to sweep under a rug his mess at home.

A spokesperson for the Muslim Public Affairs Council based in Los Angeles issued a statement expressing concern that Clinton’s military action could expose “innocent civilians to danger, without a clear objective.”

Yet innocent civilians have already been exposed to considerable danger. Long before the Africa embassy bombings, Americans were experiencing terrorism on their native soil. And the U.S. can no longer ignore associates of suspected Saudi terror-banker Osama bin Laden, particularly when they issue statements promising more attacks so that “America meets a black fate.”

Clinton did what was necessary.

He didn’t need a hidden agenda.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053, or phone (213) 237-7366.