Reply #32: The thing about black and white world views is they become absurd [View All]

[Tom Rinaldo]

It is like racial classifications. The census bureau wants them all neat and tidy but underlying "Caucasian" racism translates mixed white and black blood lines into "black", every time. There is your classic black and white world view.

Given our historical starting point, and factoring in all global realities, including domestic American economic and political realities, and how the sum total of forces were balanced at the start of Clinton's Administration, these three people did good in my book.

Outside of literally totalitarian societies there is no single command structure, certainly not a Presidential Administration, that can reverse the flow of American history on a dime. Given these circumstances there will never be a totally pure lily white Democratic Administrations nor an absolute coal black Republican Administrations. Neither has that much freedom of mobility even it the intent were there to break free from all existing paradigms and pre existing alliances among competing interests.

If Clinton were God he could have handled Kosovo very differently. Once divine inspiration revealed exactly the best way to proceed, he could have mandated total international cooperation on exactly that plan of action. China, Russia, Greece, Albania, and so on all would have fallen into perfect line. And if Leftist Gods were in power for enough years preceding Clinton, maybe all ethnic tensions across Yugoslavia would have been extinguished, replaced by instincts of Sisterhood, Brotherhood, and mutual aid inspired by our benign example.

Bosnia and Kosovo were collective horrors that were reeling further out of control. Rwanda was a nightmare that should have been directly confronted by America's military after American leadership forced the U.N. to act, and failing that we should have acted anyway. Over a million people were slaughtered in Rwanda. Clark wanted us to stop it. Clinton felt politically constrained against acting. But Clinton later in his Presidency went to Africa and apologized in person for his failure to act. Bill Clinton learned a lesson and admitted to the world his mistake. That is something that George W Bush will never freely do.