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PRELUDE TO RETALIATION:__ BUILDING A GOVERNMENTAL CONSENSUS ON TERRORISM George Bush OFN THE NIGHT OF 14 APRIL 1986 U.S. Navy and Air Force planes struck selected targets in Libya. As all the world knows, this action was taken in retaliation against Libyan-sponsored terrorist attacks on Americans, particularly the Libyan-organized bombing of a Berlin nightclub several days earlier, in which one American soldier was killed. The raid came after repeated warnings to Libya's president, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, and after economic sanctions had been imposed. Our targets were all related to Libya's policy of supporting terrorism. They included training camps for terrorists, communications centers (from which orders had been broadcast to terrorists around the world), and command centers. Our strike was, as they say,surgical: precise and limited. But the response to it in the United States was not limited at all. It was jubilant. At last, Americans said, the United States had shown both the will and ability to hit and hit hard against international outlaws like Colonel Qaddafi . The president had acted strongly and decisively, and America approved. As a participant in the meetings leading up to the president's decision to move against Qaddafi, I was involved at every step in the process of reaching that decision. As a result, my view was different from the public's. I did not see the months prior to our raid— the period, for example , following the TWA hijacking— as a time of inaction. Neither did I see the strike against Libya as a change in policy or as a sudden awakening of the American giant. From my vantage point, I saw a process George Bush is vice president of the United States. He has also served as head of the U.S. liaison office in Beijing, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and director of the Central Intelligence Agency. 1 2 SAIS REVIEW evolving over a ten-month period. In specific terms, the process started when the president asked me to lead a cabinet-level task force to examine and evaluate U.S. policies, programs, and capabilities for combating terrorism . In a real sense, however, the overall process started back in 1981 . The task force, therefore, really represented an example of the leadership the administration has taken on critical issues. The process by which the Task Force on Combatting Terrorism was created is one that has a great deal to do not only with the success of the Libyan operation but also with why we no longer hear that the presidency is too much for one man and that the U.S. government is unmanageable. From a personal as well as institutional perspective, I saw this new process of leadership as having greatly enhanced the nature of the vice president's office. This style of presidential leadership, the role of the vice presidency in it, and how these were brought to bear on the problem of combating terrorism— these are my topics for this article. NO STUDENT OF RECENT U.S. HISTORY needs to be told of the mounting burdens on the presidency in the two decades before Ronald Reagan took office. The frustration of our nation's chief executives has been a popular theme among commentators for more than thirty years. We have all heard Harry Truman's remark just before Eisenhower took office. Truman said that Ike would find that being president was not like being a general. As general, he could give an order and see it obeyed. As president , he would give an order and find that nothing happened. Whether or not Ike actually found the government so unresponsive — and recent historians have been impressed with his effectiveness — Truman's characterization became a kind of motto for observers of the modern presidency . Time and again, under both Republicans and Democrats and before, during, and after Vietnam, we saw divisions within the government and battles between the White House and Capitol Hill leave presidents paralyzed. Republicans have been inclined to attribute these divisions to the liberal bias of the media and the Democratic majorities in the Congress. These suspicions are, in many respects, well founded. But they don't tell the...

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