wonton

Well, here are some more of his opinions from that same interview, which are backed by facts and, by any rational judgement, appear indisputable imho:


Clark: Sadly, I think most Americans don't have an opinion about our foreign policy. Worse than that, when they do think about it, it's in terms of the demonization of enemies and the exaltation of our capacity for violence.

When the Gulf War started in 1991, you could almost feel a reverence come over the country. We had a forty-two-day running commercial for militarism. Nearly everybody was glued to CNN, and whenever they saw a Tomahawk cruise missile taking off from a navy vessel somewhere in the Persian Gulf, they practically stood up and shouted, "Hooray for America!" But that missile was going to hit a market in Basra or someplace, destroy three hundred food stalls, and kill forty-two very poor people. And we considered that a good thing.

It's very difficult to debate military spending in this country today - which is unbelievable, because our military spending is absolutely, certifiably insane. Just to provide one example: We still have twenty-two commissioned Trident nuclear submarines, which are first-strike weapons. Any one of those submarines can launch twenty-four missiles simultaneously. Each of those missiles can contain as many as seventeen independently targeted, maneuverable nuclear warheads. And each of those warheads can travel seven thousand nautical miles and supposedly hit within three hundred feet of its predetermined target. If we fire them in opposite directions, we can span fourteen thousand nautical miles: halfway around the world at the equator. This means we can take out 408 centers of human population, hitting each with a nuclear warhead ten times as powerful as the bomb that incinerated Nagasaki.

Jensen: This is all from one submarine?

Clark: One submarine. And we have twenty-two of them. It's an unthinkable machine. Why would you have it? What kind of mind would conceive of such a machine? What justification could there be for its existence? What would be the meaning of daring to use it?

Yet the debate about military spending in this country never raises these questions. Think back to 1980, when President Carter and Governor Reagan were arguing about the military budget. At that time, you could see the end of the Cold War approaching; the risk of superpower conflict was waning rapidly. Carter came in with a 7 percent increase in the budget, when it should have been reduced. And Reagan, of course, topped him with a proposal for an 11 percent increase. Carter's response was that he could spend 7 percent more effectively than Reagan could spend 11 percent, so we'd be stronger on Carter's program. Nowhere in this debate did we - or do we now - hear anything about the morality or the sanity (even the fiscal sanity) of such huge military budgets.

Our foreign policy is based on the use of our military might as an enforcer, exactly as Teddy Roosevelt implied when he said that we should "speak softly and carry a big stick." What does that mean? It means: "Do what I say, or I'll smash your head in. I won't make a lot of noise about it; I'll just do it."

Jensen: How many times has the United States invaded Latin America in the last two hundred years?

Clark: It depends on who's doing the counting, but in the twentieth century alone, it was undoubtedly almost once per year. Off the top of my head, I could count probably seventy instances.