Samira wrote:
Quote:
Mainly, I'm making the point that this is a far more *likely* explanation of any alleged coverup of the Kennedy assassination then Haig's kinda weak "The Dems would have lost power if the truth had come out" argument. He's assuming political positions and atmosphere that didn't really exist at the time.
Haig may be or may have been lying, but he was fu
[/i]cking THERE, so I doubt he's assuming sh[i]it. In particular there's no reason to assume he was incapable of assessing the political tenor of the times. Since, you know. Unlike you or I, he was there.
Hehe. And he has no political motivation to make these statements now?
I'm probably going to lose my secret Republican decoder ring for this, but let's be honest. He's using arguments and ideas that play incredibly well *today*. Coincidence? I think not. Given that one of the arguing points by Republicans (which I've used myself in fact) is that the Dems would rather bury their heads in the sand and ignore attacks against the US in favor of maintaining a "status quo" on the foreign policy front, it seems beyond coincidence that Haig ascribes political motivations to covering up Cuba's involvement in the JFK assassination that are identical to those being leveled at Dems right now.
Doesn't take a genius to connect the dots. Replace "Cubans assassinate JFK" with "Evil Arabs topple WTC towers" and then compare the reactions. If you can imply that the Dems covered up the Castro connection back in 1963, then it lends weight to the theory that the Dems would politically prefer not to take action in the Middle East against terrorism, not because of any altruistic motives, but because they are afraid of losing power. This translates directly to the idea that Dems are dragging their feet *today* on the whole "war on terror", again, not out of altruistic values, but because they see it as giving in to Republican politics and therefore losing power. It also provides greater weight to the theories that Clinton deliberately ignored the threat of Al-queda in the 90s because of the same reason. Adopting a stonger and more agressive foreign policy would "give power to the Republicans", so he'd rather cover up the threat then deal with it because dealing with it would cost his party power.
I don't happen to ascribe to the ideology that Dems are inherently more or less strong on foreign policy. That happens to be the case *today*, but there's nothing inherent to the political partys to say it must always be that way. However, if you can create the impression that it's that way and always has been, then it becomes much easier to present negative reasons for various actions. You saw the response to the suggestion Haig made in this very thread, right? Now. Apply that to "Clinton downplayed the threat of Al-queda because he didn't want the Democrat party to lose power". It's the exact same statement, made via the same assumptions.
It's a very clever bit of media manipulation. I'm non-partisan enough to point out when my own side does it, and this is *clearly* one of those times.