Reply #124: I want to make one thing clear from the start

[Tom Rinaldo]

I absolutely reject the logic of your statement:

"If only we had two long books written by the other candidates and repeated statements and interviews restating the same message over and over again, as we do for Clark. (And just because we don't, doesn't mean we're not allowed to comment on Clark's world view -- don't you agree?)"

The implication from that is "Aw shucks, we just have no way of knowing what the people who don't write books really believe in - so we can't discuss their views on matters like this." I turn your logic around; the people who you refer to who "have not written books" for the most part are people who came to the public and asked for their trust to represent them in government. They are people who served in Congress; they are people who vote on the budget every year for all of the programs that the United States participates in. They fund the United Nations. They pay for the military. They enact the tax codes with corporate loopholes. They are the ones who sit in on the closed hearings and confidential briefings. They are the people who confirm presidential appointments to executive offices. They are people who sit in the hearings on issues big and small and decide what matters warrent legislative attention and which ones don't. The are the people who are directly accountable for how the United States government has or has not operated over the last several decades either through their action or their inaction.

People who have served in Federal government during whatever time period you chose to focus on are the ones who have direct accountability for what they either allowed to happen or not happen during their watch in government. And when their power to bring about fundemental change fell short of that needed to accomplish noble and necessary goals, they are the people who have always had a platform to speak out from in protest, as duly elected Senators and Congressional Representatives with tax payer paid offices and staff on their payroll, and mailing privildeges and travel budgets to reach out directly to the public, not to mention direct access to the media.

So I start out with an assumption then that Democrats who have been elected to federal offices ARE on record about all of this. If they did not actively oppose the overall thrust of American involvement in the world that so concerns you then they were party to it. Actions speak louder than words. In a representative Democracy we the people handed them our proxy votes to steer our nation through this world. Even if they didn't write books they actually voted on the budgets, they held the hearings, they vetted federal appointments, and they ran on platforms. If the issues that concern you were not chosen as campaign issues to speak up on when these people asked us for our votes, than their silence on them speaks louder than written words, because these are the people who got to vote on what is best for America. I tire, 1932, of your compulsion to pin the evils of American capitalism on a man who never has never had the power to investigate and change them, contrasted by your frequent silence regarding Democrats who we elected to positions of power where they were and are duty sworn to safeguard our liberties and represent our true values in the world.

It is not for a personal dislike of John Edwards that I indirectly referenced him in an earlier post to you on this thread. There is much that is admirable about John Edwards, as there is much that is admirable about Wes Clark. Yet you came onto this Clark themed thread to call into question his judgement and committment to values that many here on DU hold dear. You pin the tail of imperialism on a Wes Clark donkey and argue that he furthers negative ends using sentances like this one to frame your argument:

"People like John Perkins have written books convincingly arguing that things like the invasion of Iraq are just the third step in a very consistent 3-step intimidation process that the US has applied all over the globe since the Eisenhower administration."

And yet, 1932, it was not Wes Clark who sponsored the resolution that opened the doors for an invasion of Iraq. It was not Wes Clark whose passionate arguments about the need to confront Hussein in Iraq got featured on George Bush's White House Web Site. It was not Wes Clark who literally supported invading Iraq when and how we did for the reasons articualted by George Bush. It was not Wes Clark who appeared on Hardball three months into the literal American occupation of Iraq, knowing then that no WMD's had been found in Iraq, to unflinchingly reaffirm his belief that the invasion of Iraq was justified. Yet you have no harsh judgement for the person who did all of those things. Instead you support him for President.I find that to be, at the very least, intellectually inconsistent and perhaps worse.

So no, I will not be confined by you to a discussion that limits itself to arguments over the interpretation of passages in two books to the exclusion of the record in government of those who we have elected to represent us there.

As to your repeated references to WelchTerrier2's short written exchange with Clark at Table for One, I am no more willing to non critically except your version of what was said and what was implied there than I was to accept your version of what Clark said and what he implied in his Congressional testimony that is the subject of this thread. I went to the trouble to confront you line by line with the ways I felt you twisted Clark's words in that case and it's as if that effort fell on deaf ears. Why do I bother some might ask? I believe you are intelligent with much to offer 1932, I believe you hold true progressive values, but you continually have infuriated me with the way you take liberty with words, and it is a pain staking effort to deconstruct your claims and point our exactly how your read is a subjective version of the truth that you may well subscribe to but which is not objectively supported by those words. So when I actually go to the effort, and you respond by switching the subject, like you have here by asking me if I had read Perkin's books, it is very very frustrating.

I was on that site when the exchange you reference with WT2 took place, and I strongly dispute your read on what was actually said. If one is bold enough to write two entire books on a complex subject, it is not hard for an adversary to find selected passages that can be wripped out of the context of the whole work and reframed in a negative light. But you are capable of doing the same with virtually any snippet of a statement that Clark makes. You did that earlier on this thread and I took you on regarding that. It is time consuming to repeatedly do this 1932, and if your interest in attacking American imperialism continues to seemingly begin and end with your negative critique of Republicans, Right Wing Democrats, and Wesley Clark, I won't play that game with you. I am trying to be honest with you here. These are my true feelings.

The critique you make applies to at least 95% of the Democratic party 1932 at the level of elected officials. Stop passing it off as some unique slam on Wes Clark and we can talk about it intelligently. Admit that, like it or not, what Clark writes about is highly representative of the views of the vast majority of Democratics who now hold or have held office, except for those conservative Democrats who think the U.S. should lead more with our military, and then our discussion can become interesting. But as long as our discussion takes the form of an endless attempt of "Gotcha" regarding Clark, I have more productive things to do with my time. And if you want to have an honest discussion, rather than simply lay a series of rhetorical intellectual traps to try to catch Wes Clark in, then you might want to read more about why I support Clark. I can point you directly to those writings.

You can start with the introduction to my own blog: "A Left Turn FOR CLARK" which you will find here:
http://www.aleftturnforclark.com/2006/10/more_about_me_and_this_blog.html#more