Regarding Mitch Holt’s op-ed piece about Bill Clinton leading the tsunami relief effort: I accept the premise that there is more to William Jefferson Clinton than the sum of his sexual exploits-this is true. Like all presidents before him, his was a presidency filled with good and bad, and most reasonable people accept that idea.
For the sake of space, I will pretend not to have noticed the author’s intended nuance suggesting that the investigation into Bill Clinton’s felonious acts was much ado about nothing, and instead focus on the reasons Holt’s article gives us for why we should all be happy that our 42nd President is heading up the relief efforts in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
Reason number one has to do with the ‘budget surplus’ that was achieved under Clinton’s administration. In reality, our surplus was a projected one. It is important to note this colossal difference.
The second reason has to do with the Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993. After careful and honest thought, I still am unable to determine how exactly this relates to Tsunami relief. In order to decide whether Clinton is the right man for the job of managing relief efforts in the developing world, shouldn’t we look at how well Clinton managed problems in the developing world during his presidency?
In the mid-1990s the nation of Rwanda was embroiled in a genocide that has since been labeled as one of the worst human tragedies the earth has ever known … Clinton ignored it. The number of people that died while the Clinton administration did nothing is estimated to be between 800,000 and 1 million, and millions more became refugees. Let’s also not forget about the failed peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia and the tragedy of Mogadishu (see Black Hawk Down ).
Bill Clinton is not an evil man, and his public appearances with George Bush are good for our nation, but to suggest that Clinton is the best man for the job in Indonesia, or worse yet, to advocate his becoming the secretary-general of the United Nations is absolutely outrageous.
Josh Massingill
Sophomore political science major from Abilene
