[RD] The Democratic Nomination

[Takhisis]

Oh, a mere three or four orders of magnitude above what health and safety standards allow.

Now, I'm reading through Spanish-language media on how thousands and thousands of long-term (10, 20, 30 years) residents are trying to become US citizens all of a sudden. Apparently they want to vote anyone but the Repubs because Drumpf has his wall rhetoric and Cruz/Rubio are both doing a lot of inconsistent anti-immigrint talk.

 

[_random_]

It's pretty easy for me.

Because I've been "the guy." Not President of the US, obviously, but at my own level I was "the guy." Decision to be made? I made it. Plan to be laid? I laid it.

Did I have plenty of people after the fact yammering about every minute detail I "could have managed better" and every bad consequence "that I should have seen coming"? Bet your butt I did. Every freakin' time. And those yammering people, the next time the fan was blowing feces everywhere? Not a f'ing peep out of 'em, until someone willing to take the heat came along to tell them what to do...and that was once again me.

So, yeah, when I look at "Clinton's Africa policy" I see that he stood up when the majority of Americans were pretty satisfied with the then current "well, AIDS will just kill them all so no worries" policy of the previous administrations and pushed against the tide...and I respect that. Sorry if it doesn't show up good enough in the history books after a couple decades of analysis.

Was Clinton better than his predecessors? Maybe. But I'd rather get pissed on than shat on and that's not a terribly meaningful endorsement, if you'll pardon the vulgarity.

I really don't see a spin on Clinton's inaction in Rwanda or his attack on al-Shifa that's actually positive.

I probably wouldn't have brought it up if he hadn't used "Africa" as a diversion from criticism of his administration. Like if that's the route he's selecting then it only seems fair to point out there's lots of criticism of his administration to be had there as well. He's a true internationalist when it comes to screwing over black people. And with his wife's successful efforts to lower the minimum wage in Haiti on behalf of American clothing manufacturers I'd say they're united in that regard.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If you can't see the improvement over "well let's just hope they all die" then there's probably nothing that can be successfully pointed out to you. At least your consistency makes you predictable.

 

[jackelgull]

That was a broad policy. Africa policy was strictly based on AIDS. Many African nations at the time were governed by warlords who "paid" their troops primarily in rape, pillage, and plunder. Infection rates in these "militaries" were frequently well above fifty percent. There was a very realistic but cynical perspective that as long as we avoided doing any research regarding finding a cure or hindering the spread, AIDS would pretty much depopulate the continent in a generation or two.

So, yeah, when people say Clinton was "evil" in his stance towards Africa I immediately have to say "compared to what?"

What steps did Clinton take to change that policy? Did he fund AIDS research? Raise awareness on how to stop it from spreading? I suppose my question is how precisely was he a marked improvement? Cause it seems no one talks about his Africa policy except "He failed in Somalia" so my knowledge on the subject is lacking.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Whether it was improved Africa policy or just acknowledgement that our own people were dying there was a marked step from "AIDS is good" to "holy cow we're gonna have to do something about this." I think in large part that was just the bare minimum of humanity surfacing, so maybe crediting Clinton is in some regard excessive, but the previous administration had actively kept that basic humanity at bay.

Reagan and Bush may not have endorsed "AIDS is God's way of punishing gays" or "AIDS is what Africans deserve for being African" but they certainly didn't suggest any alternative perspectives. Current Americans have a hard time comprehending that not that long ago people, by and large, were callous enough to accept that death was okay as long as it was confined to "the other." It didn't take much in the way of shrugging it off by a popular president for everyone else to just go along.

 

[Camikaze]

If you can't see the improvement over "well let's just hope they all die" then there's probably nothing that can be successfully pointed out to you. At least your consistency makes you predictable.

random did recognise that in the first paragraph of his post - but "that's not a terribly meaningful endorsement".

As I understand it, Clinton was not claiming that he was merely better than his predecessors and successor*. He was effectively making a positive claim that his African policy was good. Whether that is true or not has nothing to do with the policies of his predecessors and successor, except to the extent that the policies of his predecessors hamstrung his own policy. As such, pointing to Clinton's predecessors and successor does not negate any argument about how good Clinton was in regard to e.g. Rwanda, or Somalia.

*As I understood it, African policy was one of the few areas where it's generally thought George W. Bush actually did some good.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Africa policy is an interesting thing, not because Clinton's predecessors were "so much worse" but because they were representative of the people who chose them. Americans of the time couldn't have cared less if Africa sank into the sea killing every human being on the continent. So, yes, Clinton led in a direction that was revolutionary at the time.

Does that mean he had a magic wand that could solve the endemic problems of Africa with a wave and a puff of glowing dust? No, but neither does anyone else, as far as I can tell. Do you? Does Random?

 

[_random_]

Of course not. He did, however, have a cruise missile, and he fired it at a goddamn medicine factory, and I'm opposed to that sort of thing.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Of course not. He did, however, have a cruise missile, and he fired it at a goddamn medicine factory, and I'm opposed to that sort of thing.

I held the entire planet hostage with nuclear fire, and I'm opposed to that sort of thing...but it seemed like a good idea at the time and even in retrospect there is a sense that maybe it was.

Conclusion: life gets complicated. Life as a US president probably gets REALLY complicated.

 

[_random_]

I held the entire planet hostage with nuclear fire, and I'm opposed to that sort of thing...but it seemed like a good idea at the time and even in retrospect there is a sense that maybe it was.

You remain, as always, a delightful enigma.

Conclusion: life gets complicated. Life as a US president probably gets REALLY complicated.

This seems like an effective apology for any action of any US president ever.

And don't get me wrong, I'm all for nuance, but my basic sense of morality kicks in at a point.

 

[Zkribbler]

Of course not. He did, however, have a cruise missile, and he fired it at a goddamn medicine factory, and I'm opposed to that sort of thing.

No, he fired it at a goddamn bin-Ladin-owned factory making VX nerve gas. This was first reported by the Sudanese opposition and was later confirmed by VX components found just outside the fence.

You will point out--and you'll be right--that subsequently these charges could not be definitively proven. However, neither have they been disproved. The attack was made in retaliation of al Qaeda's attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed hundreds of innocent people. I'm opposed to that kind of thing.

 

[Arakhor]

Well, there was the year, in the early Noughties I think, when an American missile hit a hospital somewhere in the world, but the only other target nearby was the Chinese embassy. I don't know what came out of that situation.

 

[W|M]

There was that time this year when an American bomb hit a hospital in Afghanistan

 

[AdrienIer]

It happened twice IIRC

 

[Lexicus]

You will point out--and you'll be right--that subsequently these charges could not be definitively proven. However, neither have they been disproved. The attack was made in retaliation of al Qaeda's attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed hundreds of innocent people. I'm opposed to that kind of thing.

So reprisals are cool - when civilians are killed the proper response is to kill more. And of course the people at the business end of the missile are guilty until proven innocent.

 

[metalhead]

So is it just me, or has Bernie Sanders completely abandoned any attempt to sell himself as president? Increasingly his message appears to be, "here are all the things wrong with Secretary Clinton, these don't apply to me so I'm the better choice." It feels like his campaign is going off the rails - he's not really selling himself to the voters as anything other than a vessel for change. Call me cynical, but the last 2 presidents campaigned on changing Washington, and both failed miserably at bringing about any kind of change.

Why then should Bernie Sanders be president? This doesn't seem to be a question his campaign is answering, maybe hasn't been answering all along, in any meaningful way. I get the sense now that he is coming under more scrutiny, the campaign pendulum is swinging away from him. His response to a perceived lack of depth has been to double both the frequency and volume of his attacks on Hillary, and his attempt to show depth was to finagle an invite to a small academic conference in Vatican City, where he will speak for 10 minutes on a papal encyclical.

 

[Light Cleric]

Jesus Christ the Clinton revisionists are still trying to whitewash al-Shifa?

I guess if we bomb something we're right unless the people we bombed can prove a negative.

Also, the Clinton administration used the "equipment" thing for about a day (without actually proving it) and then suddenly changed their tune to cite the soil sample showing EMPTA, which can be mistaken for other materials in testing if it's not done perfectly.

There's an old NYT piece on this. Notably:

American officials have acknowledged over the years that the evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first portrayed. Indeed, officials later said that there was no proof that the plant had been manufacturing or storing nerve gas, as initially suspected by the Americans, or had been linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident of Khartoum in the 1980's.

The last few pages about al-Shifa and Bill's response to BLM really read like stuff I've seen from right-wingers, especially from neocons about Iraq("we've never proven that Iraq DIDN'T have WMDs!").

I held the entire planet hostage with nuclear fire, and I'm opposed to that sort of thing...but it seemed like a good idea at the time and even in retrospect there is a sense that maybe it was.

Conclusion: life gets complicated. Life as a US president probably gets REALLY complicated.

Well, hey, I guess we can't blame Bush for that whole "invading Iraq" thing. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time and life as a US president gets really complicated.

If someone doesn't want to get held accountable as President, maybe they shouldn't run for the job. Unless we're considering people dying to be "nitpicking".

 

[_random_]

I honestly don't know if I should regret bringing it up or be glad I did. It's brought out a rather disturbing element in the forum.

So is it just me, or has Bernie Sanders completely abandoned any attempt to sell himself as president? Increasingly his message appears to be, "here are all the things wrong with Secretary Clinton, these don't apply to me so I'm the better choice." It feels like his campaign is going off the rails - he's not really selling himself to the voters as anything other than a vessel for change. Call me cynical, but the last 2 presidents campaigned on changing Washington, and both failed miserably at bringing about any kind of change.

Why then should Bernie Sanders be president? This doesn't seem to be a question his campaign is answering, maybe hasn't been answering all along, in any meaningful way. I get the sense now that he is coming under more scrutiny, the campaign pendulum is swinging away from him. His response to a perceived lack of depth has been to double both the frequency and volume of his attacks on Hillary, and his attempt to show depth was to finagle an invite to a small academic conference in Vatican City, where he will speak for 10 minutes on a papal encyclical.

So about that finangling, it does seem that the Sanders invitation was the idea of a senior Vatican official and that he did not pursue it himself. Also, there will be two current heads of state speaking as well, so that's pretty cool.

But aside from all that, I'm not sure what you're getting at. There's definitely been a more negative focus from both campaigns lately, but I don't see how it indicates he's not attempting "to sell himself as president." It's certainly more of an agenda-driven campaign than a personality-driven one (compared to Obama 08, for example) but Bernie's general pitch seems clear enough to me.

 

[Arakhor]

If someone doesn't want to get held accountable as President, maybe they shouldn't run for the job.

If only that was the case once they're actually in the job, when suddenly they can't be criticised because that would be unpatriotic.

 

[Lexicus]

I honestly don't know if I should regret bringing it up or be glad I did. It's brought out a rather disturbing element in the forum.

I'm glad you did, I've added one poster to my mental list of bloodthirsty fascists so that's all to the good.

Call me cynical, but the last 2 presidents campaigned on changing Washington, and both failed miserably at bringing about any kind of change.

You are probably right to be skeptical.

Whether Bernie wins or not though the issues raised by his campaign are not going away any time soon. Bernie (and Trump) are just the beginning.