Wikipedia:Peer review/Bill Clinton/archive5

Bill Clinton

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it was listed as a Good Article on September 7, 2011 and has been revised since then. I think it would be good to get a peer review to see what additional work it needs, if any, before it can be nominated for Feature Article status.

Thanks, yonnie (talk) 19:58, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

groupuscule comments

Hi yonnie, the article looks good and we can tell a lot of people have worked hard on it. In its current form the article does give a very favorable interpretation of the Clinton presidency. In particular, it leaves out a lot of Clinton foreign policy and decisions as Commander in Chief. Here's a list—please ask directly if there is trouble finding reliable secondary sources on any of these topics.

Article should discuss "Operation Uphold Democracy" and subsequent military occupation of Haiti.
Clinton had a personal hand in promoting the notorious sanctions against Iraq which caused a great deal of death and suffering among Iraqi children. This fact should be mentioned in the article about him.
Clinton created "Plan Colombia", a pretty severe and intense policy of providing military aid (including chemical weapons) to Colombia for use in the "War on Drugs". This fact should be mentioned in the article about him.
Clinton on Israel & Palestine: it's unbalanced to mention unsuccessful high-profile peace talks while not discussing billions of dollars in US military aid for Israel. By the way, Clinton was just awarded Israel's Presidential Medal of Distinction.
When did the Afghan Mujahideen transform from CIA freedom fighters to enemies of the U.S.? The answer is not known, but this article hits hard for one side of the story. (Namely, that Clinton was 100% Trying To Kill Osama bin Laden. But also see.)
Was Clinton actually a "peacetime" President if he ordered bombing of Iraq and Bosnia? (And weren't there U.S. troops in the Balkans throughout Clinton's second term? Maybe even through his first term also?) Yes, there's the "declared wars" argument, but you'd have to classify Lincoln as a "peacetime" president, just for starters.

Hi Groupuscale, thanks for the comments, I plan on addressing all on these but I thought I'd get this one out of the way first. When it comes to Lincoln and The Civil War, it was an internal conflict, thus no official declaration of war was necessary as it would have recognized the South as a sovereign entity, which was entirely what the North was fighting them for after they attacked Ft. Sumter. If you really wanted to get picky, there have been ZERO peacetime presidents. The USA has always had a world-wide military presence as long as we had boats. yonnie (talk) 15:08, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The article as written seems awfully credulous of Clinton's motives for authorizing military intervention. An example would be:

In response to the 1998 Al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed a dozen Americans and hundreds of Africans, Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes on terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan.

... when even the very incomplete Wikipedia article on the topic says:

Officials later acknowledged, however, that "the evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first portrayed." Indeed, officials later said that there was no proof that the plant had been manufacturing or storing nerve gas, as initially suspected by the Americans, or had been linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident of Khartoum in the 1990s."

"Don't ask don't tell" is the only military policy mentioned in the lead?
Last but not least... Regarding NAFTA, the article now reads: "Opposition came chiefly from anti-trade Republicans, protectionist Democrats and supporters of Ross Perot." Opposition may have come from these places, but it's probably necessary to mention the opposition by farmers and the working classes of Mexico and Canada. NAFTA is one of the most hated policies in recent memory. (See: "Media Push an Unpopular Trade 'Centrism'", "NAFTA's Hung Jury" and plenty of other articles from FAIR.)