Reply #137: Your wing of the party insisted that the only way we could prove [View All]

we were "strong on national defense" was by giving the Pentagon everything it wanted, no questions asked.

And your wing wouldn't listen when we pointed out that we could have saved a lot on defense and actually had a more secure international situation if the U.S. hadn't taken a reflexive position of always opposing movements for social change around the world. It was a conservative Democratic State Department employee in South Africa, for example, who told the apartheid government where Nelson Mandela was hiding in 1962. I hope you'd agree we should apologize to the man for that.

The way to a secure world is to create a just world, not to try to make everyone accept the status quo(or to change according to U.S. specifications)by brute force. It isn't being "weak on defense" to point out that we don't always have to use the 82nd Airborne to solve the world's ills.

But your wing of the party, in power under LBJ and JFK, wouldn't listen to that. Except that JFK listened a little, which is probably what got him shot. And RFK listened a lot and embraced his own form of progressive politics, which is definitely what got him shot.