Sure he counts

Why did you cut the first sentence of that paragraph out? Douglas also repeatedly tried, without success, to get his colleagues to review the legality of U.S. military operations in Vietnam. Which says that Douglas' opinion was that both Vietnam and Cambodia were illegal wars.

Which makes his opinion match mine as I hopefully made clear when I said, That makes the Democrats actions illegal in at least some people's eyes (including mine) as well. (Emphasis added.) If you read more carefully I was not actually arguing that Cambodia was legal. I was arguing that the argument for its legality is identical with the argument for Vietnam's legality.

However I grant you that after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was repealed, and laws were passed saying that the bombing had to stop, that Nixon's shaky claim to legality for Cambodia was bankrupt. But I would also hold that after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was repealed, the status of Vietnam itself became more tenuous.

Therefore I admit that it is possible to claim that Johnson had a better claim to legality than Nixon.

However I still pile the lion's share of the blame for the casualties on Johnson, whether or not he acted illegally.

Cheers,
Ben

Rather than vaguely insulting people's reading comprehension, let's go back through the thread, carefully.

[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236428|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236428] is the entry point where I made it clear that in my opinion, both Democrats and Republicans are capable of being corrupt. But opportunity is the difference between them.
[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236433|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236433] is where you disagreed by listing a large number of Republicans that you dislike.
[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236571|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236571] is where I gave a couple of Democrats who demonstrate corruption. The first gave us the phrase "voting the graveyard." The second started as the protoge of the first but went into national politics. In the end his corruption became one of the driving forces allowing Republicans to capture Congress.
[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236572|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236572] is where you pointed out that you think that Nixon and McCarthy were worse than the ones on my list.
[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236580|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236580] was my reply. At this point I had not realized that your definition of bad was "killed lots of people", not "corrupted the political process".
[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236600|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236600] is where you brought southeast Asia into your list of what is bad.
[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236674|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236674] is where I realized where you were going and pointed out that in my opinion Democrats have more responsibility for southeast Asia than Republicans do. In other words Nixon's crimes are matched on the other side of the political aisle. Note that the Democrats who were responsible for southeast Asia were not the ones that I originally listed. (I had originally thought of listing JFK as a corrupt politician, but so many romaticize him that I didn't want to go there.)
[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236758|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236758] was your response. You demonstrated that you had no idea why I had responded with what I had responded with, and you demonstrated that there were some basic facts about Vietnam that you lacked. Things that were deliberately hidden then, but are obvious now in retrospect.
[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236762|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236762] is where I reacted by explaining my rationale for my response, and by presenting the fairly clear explanation of the case for believing that Nixon started with the intention of leaving Vietnam from the beginning.
In [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=237066|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=237066] you brought legality back into the picture. In other words, "Democrats may be responsible for more death's, but that's OK because it was legal." I probably should have just challenged the relevance of whether their bad actions were legal, but I didn't.
Instead my reaction was [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=237113|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=237113] in which I tried to make it clear that my opinion was that both Democrats and Republicans acted illegally. However if you want accept the official rationale for why what Johnson did was legal, then what Nixon did was also legal.
In [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=237158|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=237158] you pointed me at references to things that made the justification of the actions in southeast Asia illegal.
In [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=237184|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=237184] I acknowledged your point. I said that it was possible to be consistent and believe that Johnson's actions were legal while Nixon's were not. (Incidentally nowhere in this thread do you ever acknowledge that you were mistaken about anything. Period. I've noticed a similar reluctance in other threads from you.) I re-iterated my points that in my eyes both people acted illegally, and whatever the technicalities of the legality of the situation, Democrats still have the lion's share of the blame for the body count.
[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=237264|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=237264] is your last response. More on that shortly.

So I have hopefully now demonstrated that I am capable of "reading with comprehension", and have hopefully clarified where I was coming from all of the way through the thread. Now here are the significant points that come up in response to what you said.

The question was originally not about Vietnam. It was about whether Democrats were capable of being as bad as Republicans. I still think it is obvious that they can be. In fact the two parties are so similar that over the last few decades they managed to almost completely reverse their constituencies!
If your measure of corruption is, as mine originally was but I never clarified, how badly the people in question corrupted the democratic process, then the Democrats that I named were worse than Nixon. Think 1960. Richard Daley may well have stolen the Presidential election, but Nixon decided to not fight it. Whether or not he stole that one (there is debate on that point), Richard Daley stole tons of elections in Chicago, while to the best of my knowledge Nixon never stole any. (Nixon did try to get an unfair advantage by wiretapping people, etc.)
If your measure of corruption was number of people killed for no good reason due to that President's stupidity, JFK was involved in a whole series of covert operations around the world, one of which wound up with our involvement in Vietnam as escalated by Johnson. So Democrats again come out worse - but the bad ones are not the couple that I originally named.
You keep on focussing on the fact that what Nixon did in Cambodia was illegal. That is why I consider the question of whether Vietnam was legal to be relevant. I also note that, despite the fact that later Cambodia was clearly illegal, when the bombings started in the summer of 1969, the legal justification for Cambodia was identical to the justification for our war in Vietnam.
In general, I wish that you'd stop telling me to move to Orange County. I live too close to there as it is, and you should know that my politics don't agree with theirs.
I think it would be very nice if you were able to acknowledge mistakes from time to time. For instance can you admit that it seems that Nixon did intend to leave Vietnam from the start, and started the process right away?

Regards,
Ben

Post #237,184 by ben_tilly 12/6/05 1:27:17 PM Reply	Sure he counts Why did you cut the first sentence of that paragraph out? Douglas also repeatedly tried, without success, to get his colleagues to review the legality of U.S. military operations in Vietnam. Which says that Douglas' opinion was that both Vietnam and Cambodia were illegal wars. Which makes his opinion match mine as I hopefully made clear when I said, That makes the Democrats actions illegal in at least some people's eyes (including mine) as well. (Emphasis added.) If you read more carefully I was not actually arguing that Cambodia was legal. I was arguing that the argument for its legality is identical with the argument for Vietnam's legality. However I grant you that after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was repealed, and laws were passed saying that the bombing had to stop, that Nixon's shaky claim to legality for Cambodia was bankrupt. But I would also hold that after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was repealed, the status of Vietnam itself became more tenuous. Therefore I admit that it is possible to claim that Johnson had a better claim to legality than Nixon. However I still pile the lion's share of the blame for the casualties on Johnson, whether or not he acted illegally. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #237,186 by drewk 12/6/05 1:32:28 PM Reply	Fortunately, we have a phrase for that now "No controlling legal authority." See? Clears it all right up now, doesn't it? === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #237,264 by mmoffitt 12/7/05 8:31:42 AM Reply	Okay. You changed course and I didn't with you. I can read carefully. Can you? I was never discussing the "legality of Viet Nam", the number of deaths arising from actions taken by Democrats or anything like that. You compared Rostenkowski and Daley's illegal actions with Nixon's. That Nixon's illegal activities caused deaths and Rostenkowski's didn't and neither did Daley's. You couldn't defend your position that Nixon was no less a villain than Rostenkowski and Daley, so you changed your argument by attempting to put words into my mouth. So, in the final analysis, I guess you can declare victory and go home. If it makes you feel better. bcnu, Mikem It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
Post #237,280 by ben_tilly 12/7/05 1:38:47 PM Reply	And so we degenerate further Rather than vaguely insulting people's reading comprehension, let's go back through the thread, carefully. [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236428\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236428] is the entry point where I made it clear that in my opinion, both Democrats and Republicans are capable of being corrupt. But opportunity is the difference between them. [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236433\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236433] is where you disagreed by listing a large number of Republicans that you dislike. [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236571\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236571] is where I gave a couple of Democrats who demonstrate corruption. The first gave us the phrase "voting the graveyard." The second started as the protoge of the first but went into national politics. In the end his corruption became one of the driving forces allowing Republicans to capture Congress. [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236572\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236572] is where you pointed out that you think that Nixon and McCarthy were worse than the ones on my list. [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236580\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236580] was my reply. At this point I had not realized that your definition of bad was "killed lots of people", not "corrupted the political process". [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236600\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236600] is where you brought southeast Asia into your list of what is bad. [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236674\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236674] is where I realized where you were going and pointed out that in my opinion Democrats have more responsibility for southeast Asia than Republicans do. In other words Nixon's crimes are matched on the other side of the political aisle. Note that the Democrats who were responsible for southeast Asia were not the ones that I originally listed. (I had originally thought of listing JFK as a corrupt politician, but so many romaticize him that I didn't want to go there.) [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236758\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236758] was your response. You demonstrated that you had no idea why I had responded with what I had responded with, and you demonstrated that there were some basic facts about Vietnam that you lacked. Things that were deliberately hidden then, but are obvious now in retrospect. [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=236762\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=236762] is where I reacted by explaining my rationale for my response, and by presenting the fairly clear explanation of the case for believing that Nixon started with the intention of leaving Vietnam from the beginning. In [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=237066\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=237066] you brought legality back into the picture. In other words, "Democrats may be responsible for more death's, but that's OK because it was legal." I probably should have just challenged the relevance of whether their bad actions were legal, but I didn't. Instead my reaction was [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=237113\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=237113] in which I tried to make it clear that my opinion was that both Democrats and Republicans acted illegally. However if you want accept the official rationale for why what Johnson did was legal, then what Nixon did was also legal. In [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=237158\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=237158] you pointed me at references to things that made the justification of the actions in southeast Asia illegal. In [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=237184\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=237184] I acknowledged your point. I said that it was possible to be consistent and believe that Johnson's actions were legal while Nixon's were not. (Incidentally nowhere in this thread do you ever acknowledge that you were mistaken about anything. Period. I've noticed a similar reluctance in other threads from you.) I re-iterated my points that in my eyes both people acted illegally, and whatever the technicalities of the legality of the situation, Democrats still have the lion's share of the blame for the body count. [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=237264\|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=237264] is your last response. More on that shortly. So I have hopefully now demonstrated that I am capable of "reading with comprehension", and have hopefully clarified where I was coming from all of the way through the thread. Now here are the significant points that come up in response to what you said. The question was originally not about Vietnam. It was about whether Democrats were capable of being as bad as Republicans. I still think it is obvious that they can be. In fact the two parties are so similar that over the last few decades they managed to almost completely reverse their constituencies! If your measure of corruption is, as mine originally was but I never clarified, how badly the people in question corrupted the democratic process, then the Democrats that I named were worse than Nixon. Think 1960. Richard Daley may well have stolen the Presidential election, but Nixon decided to not fight it. Whether or not he stole that one (there is debate on that point), Richard Daley stole tons of elections in Chicago, while to the best of my knowledge Nixon never stole any. (Nixon did try to get an unfair advantage by wiretapping people, etc.) If your measure of corruption was number of people killed for no good reason due to that President's stupidity, JFK was involved in a whole series of covert operations around the world, one of which wound up with our involvement in Vietnam as escalated by Johnson. So Democrats again come out worse - but the bad ones are not the couple that I originally named. You keep on focussing on the fact that what Nixon did in Cambodia was illegal. That is why I consider the question of whether Vietnam was legal to be relevant. I also note that, despite the fact that later Cambodia was clearly illegal, when the bombings started in the summer of 1969, the legal justification for Cambodia was identical to the justification for our war in Vietnam. In general, I wish that you'd stop telling me to move to Orange County. I live too close to there as it is, and you should know that my politics don't agree with theirs. I think it would be very nice if you were able to acknowledge mistakes from time to time. For instance can you admit that it seems that Nixon did intend to leave Vietnam from the start, and started the process right away? Regards, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #237,359 by mmoffitt 12/8/05 2:10:46 PM Reply	Got a mouse in your pocket? bcnu, Mikem It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
Post #237,366 by ben_tilly 12/8/05 4:00:24 PM Reply	Why do I bother wasting energy on you? I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #237,748 by mmoffitt 12/12/05 12:48:48 PM Reply	I was thinking the same thing. Ironic, isn't it? bcnu, Mikem It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell

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