Regardless of the prospect that the Sudan/Afghani strikes of last week were executed as a matter of redeeming an image of proper presidential leadership for The Lying Bastard, it appears clear that his vaunted "legacy" will include an element which the most hardened criminal psychopath would envy if only he could lay his hand on the same machine to produce it. This Boy President, with an intemperate fit of international swagger, has now beset this country with the curse of small, fierce animals constantly biting at our tenderest parts. Apart from personal references to him attributed to various unmelodious howls in protest of the reprisal strikes, we are told that the future holds attacks against America, but they don’t really aim at The Man From Hope. As usual, he’ll skate. He doesn’t have to deal with the mess he’s made.

People who commit acts such as the bombings alleged as the reason for the cruise missile strikes generally take a view far longer than one constricted even to the most optimistic estimates of this man’s remaining tenure in office. He’ll be gone, and America will remain: draped in security against a madness only inflamed by his petty little two hundred million dollar swipe.

Joseph Nye, in his remark quoted above by the Associated Press, doesn’t purport to speak for the administration, but he might as well: it’s impossible to imagine that any official would dispute him.

These are people whose concern with image outstrips their grasp of reality. In the last analysis, they simply haven’t the fortitude to confront the truest nature of the adversary they pretend to face, because the brutality of it does not admit their manicured demeanor of civility in a Disney-tinted little global village. In a press conference this week, one official was asked whether the Afghan strikes aimed at Osama bin Laden were a contradiction of the standing United States doctrine against officially sanctioned assassination. He refused to entertain the question. That blank-out was a moment of confession to rank impotence: all this administration has is "signals" and "messages" couched in terribly expensive hardware wasted on the indiscriminate suffering of people, such as the residents of Khartoum, whose involvement with the true adversary would not stand a test of reasonable doubt in any American court of law.

In his look at the Vietnam policy of "graduated response", Colby was actually pointing to the importance of precisely effective applications of force when necessary, restraint of force when it will not properly serve a diplomatic objective, and the wisdom of distinction between the two very different circumstances. His observation exposes a principle: it is a fundamental error to confuse talk with action. To act and call it talk, even with sophisticated euphemism, is even worse. That sort of thing might placate public fears, real or presumed, but it will not fool real men of action who know the difference, and who understand what it means. Men of action respect, even in their enemies, comparable potency. They find pretense contemptible. A devotion to battle coupled with contempt often results in the most predatory of all adversaries, and there should be no surprise at oaths of continued battle from the terrorist quarter.

"I doubt that bin Laden’s organization will stop,'’ said Nye. "In other words, I think bin Laden and his organization were determined to attack American targets in any case, and I think this may induce a bit more caution.'’

Nye may very well be correct in his final assessment, but in a completely different way than he intended. A cautious terrorist is the very thing to be most feared and something directly opposite from the sort of blind pot shot taken by the current administration this week. A cautious terrorist implies precision: a cunning weave through every line of defense between him and his target with the purpose of striking exactly by design. This in no way compares to the contorted logic which piously denies assassination but yet crosses its fingers in random hope that a given man will be caught standing under a cruise missile when it happens to reach the end of its flight.

A man like bin Laden, rich as he is alleged to be, cannot mount such glamorous but stupid and impotent attacks. The first attribute [glamor] doesn’t concern him, and the second two are precisely why he will not be intimidated. He has no regard for that kind of thing, because it’s not where his action is. Because his circumstance dictates, he fights from the mind, first, and crafts his action accordingly. This attribute of intellect, however misguided in its ultimate goals, will serve him well in analyzing his stated adversary’s conduct of the battle. Only an engagement of similar fidelity to essentials and principles of war will stand any hope of success against him and his kind.

This administration might have, in a fit of nerve to challenge, chosen to engage the battle with a reach to authentic principles that recognize its truest nature. If the east African embassy bombings were so horribly offensive as is held out for the rationale of this week’s reprisals, it would not have been too much to expect a serious design of engagement. That would begin with a match of force to threat, and an off-hand toss of sheer technology in no way qualifies in this case. The first qualification would be a rolled-shirtsleeve abandonment of false civility, aimed at a man-to-man precision of engagement in an arena far too intimate for armies and against an enemy far too cunning for Global Positioning Systems.

The damage is done, now. That moment has passed, and the initiative will be vastly more difficult to recover. The bin Laden types now have a host on their side, allied by outrage over an extraordinary flex of imperial might which, in large part, is the actual impetus of the battle to begin with. This alliance will survive The Lying Bastard, the terrorists will use it well, and America will live with the consequences of his self-serving lash in the dark of a Disney-tinted village.

It should be remembered that America is not Disneyland, and it was never intended that we would conduct our lives through endless turnstiles.

Thank you, Bill Clinton.