Anthony Lake, Bill Clinton’s first National Security Advisor, withdraws his name from nomination to be CIA director, issuing a stinging statement about his withdrawal. He says that Washington had gone ‘haywire’ and decried the “gotcha” atmosphere that had taken over Washington, favoring partisan politics over policy.
Lake’s nomination came under fire from Republicans in Congress, though the specific indictment against him is that he was responsible for allowing Iran to funnel arms and assistance to Bosnian Muslims, who were fighting Serbian forces. It isn’t necessarily the first nomination to go awry over politics – “nannygate” had already become a syndrome – but it highlights a breakdown in the bipartisan consensus over foreign policy.
Without the Cold War as an organizing principle, there were deep divides over America’s role in the world. But the partisan politics of the 1990’s (and beyond) obscured that there was a debate to be had, and perhaps also blinded the United States to the full dimensions of its humanitarian crusade in the former Yugoslavia, that is, that there was a Muslim angle that reached into the Middle East, and that indeed many al Qaeda veterans and radical Islamists were exercising their global ambitions by fighting in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Albania.
Day: March 17, 2021