|
Edited on Sat Apr-16-05 09:45 AM by Tom Rinaldo
You might get that impression I suppose if you paid very little of no attention to everything that Clark has been saying for years and continues to say about the fallacy of injecting American forces directly into the region. He fought the Bush Administration about going into Iraq, and now he is fighting the Bush Administration about going into Syria and Iran.
Of course there is a fault line on the Left between those who think the U.S. never on Earth should have gone into Iraq, but since we did we now have to work with the Iraq government to find a sensible way out that doesn't just abandon the country to more chaos; vs those who feel that since we had no real business going there in the first place, we should basically pull out of there today.
But Clark is addressing a different fault line with his comments on Maher. It is the one reaching back to the Viet Nam war days when some anti war activists were spitting on some soldiers when they were getting off the boats and planes returning from Nam. The Right played off those mental images ceaselessly since then, and wove it into the mantra that Democrats are weak on Defense and National Security, that they dislike, disrespect, and even hate the military, that we don't support our young men and women in harm's way defending our Liberties yada yada yada.
There were two reasons why Bush kept hammering Kerry on his "I actually voted for that Bill before I voted against it" line. One was to portray Kerry as hopelessly indecisive. The other was to show Kerry as a man who cares so little about our young men and women in uniform that he wasn't even willing to pay for the supplies, and body armor, that they needed to protect their own lives while serving America in Iraq.
Clark has a very clear and constant refrain: He, and the Democratic Party, loves the men and women in our Armed Forces. They are the best trained and disciplined military in the World. They effectively follow through on orders given them by their Civilian command and do whatever they are asked to do by that Civilian command. Clark's quarrel is with the Civilian command, which repeatedly under Bush and the PNACers shows horrible lack of judgment and intent, and needlessly sends our military into harms way, often in situations that ultimately erode our National Security instead of enhancing it. It is the Democrats in Congress introducing legislation to take care of Veterans, and military families facing hardships, not the Republicans. We are the ones who support the men and women in our military and don't want to see them sacrificed as pawns to a ideological uncaring agenda pushed by Chicken Hawks.
One may or may not agree, but Clark is looking forward to the 2006 and 2008 Elections, and trying to help position Democrats to defang the obvious coming Republican attacks, so that we will prevail. That is what I saw Clark doing last night on Maher, but he was cut short and didn't get to close the circle on his larger points. I commented on that dynamic, and how Clark adjusted, on another thread. You may remember that the right wing guest actually injected Viet Nam into the conversation as a reason why those in the military "lean" Republican.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
