Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994
|
Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 2:11 pm Post subject: Then and Now: The relevancy of Watergate |
|
|
There is a good article on Asia Times Online by Judith Coburn. She tries to put the Iraq War and the Bush Administration into historical context by comparing what has been happening recently to previous wars, policies, presidents and scandals. It's worth a read.
A short excerpt from: Opening the Watergate Floodgates
Few now remember that it was Indochina, not the burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Complex, that really set Watergate, the scandal, in motion and led to a pattern of presidential conduct that seems eerily familiar today. In his 1974 book, Time of Illusion, Jonathan Schell wrote of "the distortions in the conduct of the presidency, which deformed national politics in the Vietnam years - the isolation from reality, the rage against political opposition, the hunger for unconstitutional power, the conspiratorial mindedness, the bent for repressive action". He concluded that three presidents "consistently sacrificed the welfare of the nation at home to what they saw as the demands of foreign affairs".
To recast an infamous Vietnam slogan: They had to destroy American democracy at home in order to save the world for democracy.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GK24Aa01.html |
|