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Walter Watts
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virus: Of Boolean Networks and Blowjobs
« on: 2004-11-28 11:57:28 » |
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At first glance of the title and beginning of this article, I thought it
preposterous.
Then I harkened back to Stuart Kauffman's (Origins of Order) boolean
lightbulb networks and tiny attractors.
Now, not so preposterous really.
Walter
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Millions pay for Clinton's vulgar error
Jay Bookman
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/21/04
Watching coverage of last week's dedication of the Clinton presidential
library in Little Rock, Ark., I was reminded once again that the
Republicans are right.
It really is all Bill Clinton's fault.
And no, I'm not kidding.
One of the favorite debating topics among historians is whether great
people change the course of world events, or whether world events create
great people. For example, did the civil rights movement create Martin
Luther King Jr., or did King's leadership create the civil rights movement?
There is also, however, a little-known third category, in which the
course of world history is altered by what amounts to little more than
an accident. The best example I can imagine occurred the night of Nov.
15, 1995, when Clinton was confronted in the Oval Office by a young
woman bearing pizza, neither of which Clinton could resist. At that
moment, I would argue, the course of world events was altered in ways we
have only begun to realize.
For example, without that tawdry act of presidential self-indulgence
nine years ago, we would not have 140,000 troops in Iraq today,
struggling to pacify that brutal country. The more than 1,000 U. S.
troops who have died in that fight so far would probably still be alive,
many of them still in their civilian lives. The tragic events of Sept.
11 would still have taken place, but the international alliances that we
need to combat and defeat international terrorism would today be in much
better shape if Monica Lewinsky never had delivered that pizza. We would
also have a military option in dealing with challenges in Iran and North
Korea that is not available to us today, not with every available
soldier already committed to Iraq.
All of that, just because Clinton did too have sex with that woman?
Yes. And the explanation is pretty straightforward.
First, the Monica scandal and subsequent perjury and impeachment
tarnished not just Clinton, but everybody else in his administration as
well. That included his vice president, Al Gore. Without that scandal,
there is no question that Gore would have been elected the 43rd
president of the United States. Even with that heavy baggage, he managed
to win the popular vote.
Second, while a President Gore would certainly have gone after Osama bin
Laden in Afghanistan in the wake of Sept. 11, there's no reason to
believe that Gore would have used 9/11 as an excuse to launch an
unrelated invasion of Iraq. There's not much room for doubt about that
either. After all, Gore has been highly critical of the decision to
invade Iraq, as have most members of what would have been his foreign
policy staff.
All of that, I think, is absolutely certain. From there, if you choose,
you can venture still further into probables and further still into
possibilities. For example, if Gore had been president, he might have
launched a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan instead of holding back
manpower and other resources for later use in Iraq, as President Bush
did. And if he did that, we might have succeeded in capturing or killing
bin Laden.
Of course, none of this what-if history matters anymore. What's done is
done. Nor am I trying to add to Clinton's already considerable burden by
dumping this mess all on his shoulders. He had no way to foresee the
serious consequences of his mistake that night, a mistake that had been
made by countless people before him and countless people since. (Clinton
did, however, know that he was president, and that he was risking much
more than anyone else for his few minutes' gratification.)
It is also true that to get us into Iraq, a lot of other decisions had
to be made by a lot of other people since November 1995. While Clinton
has made this state of affairs possible; he did not by any means make it
inevitable.
Still, it's remarkable to me how so much can be changed so quickly, how
a relatively tiny little event can become an unexpected pivot point of
world history, permanently altering millions of lives.
That weird thought crosses my mind every time I see Clinton, and I shake
my head in wonder.
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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