From Iraq, with Love (by guest blogger Dorian Davis)

I was too young, at the time, to have a clear recollection of Bill Clinton's address to the nation on the evening of June 26, 1993, announcing a missile strike on the Iraqi intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, in retaliation for an assassination attempt against former President George H. W. Bush. That speech, for me, melted into the farrago of white-haired blurs from the Oval Office that characterized the Clinton administration; none of them memorable, or even notable, and most of them packed with tough rhetoric that conveyed the distinct impression he was advocating decisive action, though the nature of that action was never immediately apparent. He cited "compelling evidence" of a plot to assassinate George H. W. Bush:

It is clear that this was no impulsive or random act. It was an elaborate plan devised by the Iraqi government and directed against a former President of the United States, because of the actions he took as President. As such, the Iraqi attack against President Bush was an attack against our country, and against all Americans.

John Davis wrote, in an article for White House Studies, that the limited scope of the Clinton response to state-sponsored terrorism didn't coincide with the "level of the public statement" that he had made in regard to an "attack against all Americans." He pointed to a press briefing, a few days after the bombing, in which Clinton had admitted that the Mukhabarat consisted of "multiple facilities," but insisted that he had "severely damaged" the "main building," as if the destruction of one building in the middle of the night--at 12:22am--was a proportional retaliation for Iraq's "attack against all Americans."

The bombing of the Mukhabarat was unsuccessful; it wreaked minimal damage on the Iraqi intelligence service, it did no harm to Saddam Hussein; it was engineered too cautiously to avoid collateral damage; and it made the United States appear, frankly, anemic in its initial response to state-sponsored terrorism. It was a fiasco that William Safire called "phony tough" in his weekly column for the New York Times. "When one head of state tries to murder another," Safire scolded, "that is an act of war."

He continued:

Maybe that's too complicated for the new team; maybe it thinks its pitiful wrist slap will be taken for serious resolve; or maybe it thinks we can deal with state-sponsored terrorism by sending them a 'proportionate' message rather than teaching them an unforgettable lesson.

If our anti-terrorist policy is to send messages circumscribed by what is to appear onscreen, then Saddam and similar potentates will get the feeble Clinton message all too well: There is little risk in trying to assassinate a U.S. president, or knock out a U.S. city.