Clinton had the chance to make a difference. He didn’t. Now, he lectures others.
Israel went to war against Iran on June 13 in order to hit Iran’s nuclear program just as the program was close to producing a nuclear weapon — this, after Iran has repeatedly threatened to wipe out Israel.
What did former President Bill Clinton have to say? He said that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to war just to save his job, just to stay in office.
This, from an American president on whose watch:
• American diplomacy in 1994 to halt North Korea’s nuclear program failed. Despite his failure, Clinton shelved his military plan to attack North Korea’s nuclear facilities, which, unlike Iran’s, were all above ground, ready for the picking. Instead, Clinton settled for an “Agreed Framework.” North Korea cheated (surprise, surprise) and became a nuclear power, and is now working on missiles powerful enough to deliver those nuclear weapons to American soil.
Thanks, Bill, for your wisdom on Bibi’s attack on Iran.
More recent wisdom from Bill Clinton: Israel’s war on Iran would necessarily entail the “outright constant killing of civilians.”
Actually, Israel saved the lives of countless Iranian civilians by warning them in advance of impending Israeli strikes — strikes aimed strictly at military targets, unlike Iran’s strikes on Israel, which were aimed strictly at civilian targets.
On that, Clinton has been silent.
He also has not bothered to mention his own monumental failure in the “outright constant killing of civilians” category. On Clinton’s watch:
• Some 800,000 innocents were murdered in the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
Clinton stood by. Clinton did nothing.
O yes, Clinton piously mouthed “Never Again” at annual Holocaust “Days of Remembrance” in Washington, but when he was faced with an actual genocide, he did nothing.
Thanks, Bill, for your solicitude concerning the “outright constant killing of civilians.” That occurred in Rwanda, 1994, when you could have made a difference, but did not; and did not occur in Iran, 2025, when Netanyahu and Trump could make a difference, and did.
Also in the “outright constant killing of civilians” category, Clinton did not bother to mention the thousands of Israelis — men, women and children — on buses, in pizzarias, on street corners, in bedrooms and out in nature who were murdered by PLO terrorists, whom Clinton brought back from exile in Tunisia to the West Bank under the 1993 Oslo agreement he negotiated with Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin.
Thanks, Bill, for conveniently overlooking your own record, even as you offer your wisdom on Israel’s.
Postscript:
Also bungling the 1994 nuclear negotiations with North Korea was ex-President Jimmy Carter, who showed up in North Korea as a freelancer, uninvited, convinced it was he alone — he was the chosen one — to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear program. Like Clinton, Carter failed, and also like Clinton of late, this did not stop Carter from offering derogatory observations on Israel’s struggle to contain its enemies, bent on its destruction.
© IJN 2025
