Mrs Clinton's advanced from hurling china to obliterating Iran:
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president we will attack Iran,” Clinton said. “In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”
The point presumably is not that anyone in the Democratic base wants to totally obliterate Iran (whose leadership has, after all, endorsed Obama) but that your willingness to pretend you want to reassures the base that, come the general, you're not going to be this season's neo-McGovernik fall-guy getting Swiftboated as an arugulan wimp. The Dem contest is a triumph of post-modern politics.
There is a common pattern present in the discourse of both the Democratic Presidential candidates: Subjectivism and relativism in one breath, dogmatic absolutism in the next.
Barack Obama intoned yesterday, that:
"I don't want to just end the war, I want to end the mindset that got us into war. I want to initiate diplomacy. [President Richard] Nixon understood" the importance of diplomacy, Mr. Obama said, as did Presidents Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy, he asserted.
"I have said we will meet not just with our friends but with our enemies. I was criticized for saying that by McCain, Clinton" and by President George W. Bush, he said. "We should remember what John Kennedy said: we should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate.
Obama must be talking about the Jimmy Carter option (which, as I recall he denounced the other day--but only to a group of Jewish leaders)? I would note that even dhimmi Jimmy was aghast at the idea of meeting with Osama Bin Laden, though I'm not sure why, given his essential narcissistic take on world affairs and his unshakable belief that Jimmy Carter is more righteous than anyone else on the planet.
Now, by way of contrast to the contradictory discourses of Clinton and Obama, here is someone is willing to face reality:
History will hand down its own judgments. But right now it's for us to live and write that history, in the choices we make and the promises we keep. And we can be proud of our country. The world is often untidy and dangerous. But for millions who suffer under tyranny, or who struggle to maintain newly won freedom, there would be little hope without the active commitment of the United States.
As much as a nation of influence, we're also a nation of character. And that sets us apart from so many other great powers in history –- from ancient empires to the expansionist regimes of the last century. We're a superpower that has moral commitments and ideals that we not only proclaim, but that we act upon. Today, in a tough fight, we are turning events toward victory. And the world will be a better place because of what the United States of America did.
Don't waste your time looking for any sense in the contradictory demands, promises and rhetoric of the political postmodernists--better known as the Democrats.
Being a postmodernist means never having to face reality.
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