Armed Liberal is angry: “I’m back from the Warren Christopher lecture, and I’m seriously having trouble understanding the strength of my own reaction“:
I doubt that I’ll get to the bottom of it in this post alone, and there will be a longer discussion to follow.
But here’s what pissed me off – a close paraphrase of one of Christopher’s comments:
Why didn’t the Americans attack Iran – maybe we should have. Based on Valentine’s Day thought Iranian govt would solve it. He, Vance, Carter thought keeping the hostages alive would be the priority.
Maybe if forceful action had been used Reagan wouldn’t have been President.
[emphasis added]Not “maybe we wouldn’t be looking down the barrel of a major confrontation with state-supported Islamist radicals.” Not “maybe 9/11 wouldn’t have happened, and tens of thousands of people wouldn’t have died.” Not any number of other things involving the United States and our relations with the rest of the world. Ronald effing Reagan’s election is as bad a thing as he can imagine.
I can’t imagine a more insular view of things. And I’m terrified that one of the actual people who shaped events can’t see past the mirrored window of his political party.
He adds:
This is a bipartisan issue. This isn’t remotely a Democratic issue, although I hammer the Democrats about it a lot because they’re my party and I want them to change so they can win. And I push them hard on the issue of foreign policy because we need a real set of debates.This is an issue involving all the ‘insiders’ who have forgotten why power is worth having.
Isn’t power for its own sake precisely what drove the second administration that Christopher served in the 1990s?
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