Reply #49: I think a comparison could be with "angry Islam" and Al Quada

[Tom Rinaldo]

Clark for a long time has talked about our need to engage in a war of ideas with those in Islam who are angry with the West; that we can't either ignore them or somehow think we can simply destroy them. But he acknowledges that there is a very small core of die hard extremists who are sworn to destroy us, who probably at this point number in the small tens of thousands world wide, who we may not be able to have any constructive dialog with, who we will need to contain and may need to combat. By that standard there could be some in Iran, the hardest of their hardliners, who in the short term at least we may need to "contain" by minimizing their influence by working around them with others who are more flexible, including some who now are in the hard liners grouping. In a sense that is ultimately the strategy that was pursued with the P.L.O. under Arafat when the U.S. recognized it as the legitimate voice of the Palestinian people. So there is a matter of definition. At one time the P.L.O. was written off as composed of hard liners, later that view became more nuanced and factions within it were dealt with differently.

Donna you know that it frustrates me that Clark is not running in his own right for President. Clinton is not on his campaign staff; he can't fire her or discipline her when some of her words or actions possibly send the wrong message. Many activists on this board and elsewhere hope that Clinton does not win the Democratic nomination. She is certainly not my first choice on the issues, but clearly there is a high liklyhood that she will win the nomination. If so I hope she is influenced to say and do the right things to the greatest extent possible. I am glad to see Clark speak out here with such simple clarity about Iran. He is one of the people many of us are going to need to count on to be a positive influence on American foreign policy if Hilary Clinton does get elected.