But The Swing Haunted Clinton

Fourth of 25 excerpts from The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer:

The United States had the military might to destroy Bin Laden and his followers literally at the flick of a switch. Steve Coll, in his brilliant Ghost Wars, described how with the aid of real-time video imagery transmitted by the Predator [drone], the most powerful and technically advanced military force in the history of the world was stable to stare from halfway around the globe at a tall, white-robed sheikh believed to be Bin Laden. The terrorist leader who had declared war against the United States could be watched as he walked through the primitive, undefended, mud-walled compound he and his terrorist associates and their families inhabited in the bleak, sage-brush-strewn plains outside of Kandahar, Afghanistan. The video imagery was so exquisitely detailed, U.S. officials viewing the videotapes at the CIA and White House could make out a lone child's swing hanging in the compound, known as Tarnak Farms. The robed man seemed to present an irresistable target for missile attack. But the swing haunted [President] Clinton . . . The swing suggested innocent children lived there. The United States, for all of its military prowess, was a hamstrung Gulliver in the face of Lilliputian terrorists willing to sacrifice innocent lives in a way no civilized nation would.

Copyright 2008 by Jane Mayer. All Rights Reserved