House of Eratosthenes

Just hours before the 9/11 terror attacks, Bill Clinton told a group of Australian businessmen that he passed on a chance to kill Osama Bin Laden, according to a revelation by an Australian media outlet.

Only 10 hours before the first plane struck the World Trade Center, Clinton explained at a conference in Melbourne that when he was President, he let the chance to kill Bin Laden pass because the operation would have also killed hundreds of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, according to a Sky News Australia report.

“I’m just saying, you know, if I were Osama Bin Laden — he’s a very smart guy, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about him — and I nearly got him once,” Clinton says on the recording of his speech. “I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him.”

“And so I didn’t do it,” the former commander-in-chief adds.

How come it is that we’re only finding out about it now? They were public comments, were they not?

Observation #2. It is a well-worn TVTrope that has ruined many movies that might have otherwise had some great potential. It ruins the movies because the sentiment is completely pointless. Kill bin Laden and you’ll be no better than him? Hours after the comments were made, bin Laden succeeded in killing ten times as many people as President Clinton mentioned as living in Kandahar. I don’t expect U.S. Presidents to predict the future, but I do expect them to learn from mistakes. The trope just doesn’t work in real life. It was given a more than fair shot here.

Observation #3. Leaving aside the thoroughly-worn-out trope and looking at the broader issue, I notice liberals consistently speak in this cadence, there’s almost a rhythm to it, like iambic pentameter. “Oh yes of course [insert common sense conclusion here], BUT the thing is, there is this [insert some dazzling road-flare distraction here] and so we must [insert silly thing to do here, which they end up doing].” The road-flare distraction is usually something based more on emotion than on reason, like so-and-so “felt the sting of race/sex discrimination” — and so, we need to pretend that person is an authority on some subject, when he or she actually isn’t. Or, income inequality. In Clinton’s example, at least, there is some connection between that final silly-thing-to-do, and the emotional-distracting-road-flare thing: Because he chose to do nothing, the people in Kandahar did presumably live. That redeeming linkage is more the exception than the rule with these lefty “Oh yes of course X but we have to consider Y and so we must Z” statements.

But then again, how’d that work out.

This is much worse than being merely mistaken; it is a methodology inclined to systematically select wrong conclusions, and produce bad outcomes. It’s like the difference between a liar and a bullshitter — the liar has to maintain a conscious knowledge of what truth is, whereas the bullshitter doesn’t care. This is more like lying. It identifies the conclusion common sense would dictate, and then it gravitates toward something that is not that, so that the super-sophistication of the deciding authority can be advertised — look at me, I decided on this opposite thing rather than the common sense thing, that proves I saw the road flare. Because, heck, I sure wouldn’t do that odd thing for any ol’ reason, would I?

We’d be much better off just doing the common-sense thing, swatting the fly. That was proven true in this case. Most of the time, it’s going to be like that. Liberals have a wonderful methodology here for producing wretched results.

Or, if you choose to listen to the right instead of the far left, Clinton could have killed only terrorists but was worried about damaging a mosque:

http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/08/01/ex-head-cia-bin-laden-unit-new-clinton-tape-hes-monumental-liar

“…it would have killed no one but Taliban people and Usama bin Laden and his crew.” Huh…you smokin’ again Slick Willie?
- P_Ang | 08/07/2014 @ 13:25
Yeah, I love Bubba’s implicit assumption that we couldn’t have found out when he was away from town, where he was away from town, and dropped a Hellfire on him then. If he’d really wanted it done. One of these days, Bubba’s going to learn to shut his diarrheic gob. Probably not before Death comes for him, though.
- Rich Fader | 08/07/2014 @ 14:07

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Bill Clinton Acted on a TVTropeThursday, August 7th, 2014

Bill Clinton Acted on a TVTrope
Thursday, August 7th, 2014