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Clinton''s selective memory: views espoused by the former president are incongruous with past actions. (against the current).

Article Excerpt
An unwritten adage of US political life demands that politics stop at the water's edge. To secure national interests and to project a sustainable international commitment, matters of foreign policy should be untangled from opportunistic recriminations, internal infighting and partisan quarrelling. Convention also dictates that former presidents should not malign their successors over sensitive matters of foreign policy. As citizens rally around the flag in a time of crisis, the president is not just a political actor but a symbol of national strength and resolve. Former President Bill Clinton's public sharing of differences with the Bush administration is a strong break with tradition.

At the invitation of Prime Minister Tony Blair, Clinton's October 2002 keynote speech addressing the British Labor Party annual conference offered a sharp critique of Republican foreign policy. Clinton implicitly praised Blair for his efforts in restraining US hawkish impulses, condemned the US strategy of aggressive pre-emptive strikes as destabilising, and noted Washington's `moral failures' in the 1980s (during the Reagan and Bush Sr administrations) which had helped prop up Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath Party regime. He maintained that blunt unilateralism and the arbitrary use of US power was damaging America's credibility. George Bush was accused...

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