General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWith her speech today, HRC made herself the pro-slaughter candidate.
That's what pledging to do "whatever it takes" means on "keep(ing) this country safe".
I wanted to wish her well on her entrance into the race, but her decision to run on Scoop Jackson and LBJ's foreign policy makes it imperative for all Democrats who want this party to actually be different than the Republicans to work against her nomination.
A war president can't be progressive in actual action(she or he can be personally progressive, yet will be unable to do anything progressive). What LBJ did to the Great Society after the summer of 1965 proves this.
Powerless groups can't make any real gains while this country remains at war. What happened to the black freedom movement and to the United Farm Workers while we stayed in Vietnam proves that.
War can't be feminist and can never again liberate women(or anyone else). The failure of any women anywhere in the Arab/Muslim world to gain any freedom at all from U.S. military intervention proves this.
War is now the enemy of everything that progressive and humane people stand for.
If we want a progressive administration, we must fight to get the Democratic Party to renounce the idea that the U.S. is, as Phil Ochs one put it "The Cops Of The World."
She should just have talked about domestic issues today and left the rest of the world alone.
Horizens
(637 posts)Uh, Franklin D. Roosevelt !
OKNancy
(41,832 posts)hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Logical
(22,457 posts)hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)All domestic social progress came to a dead stop until VJ day.
It would have to be the same if we stayed in the Middle East.
And it's simply not our place anymore to "lead the world"...if it ever was.
The world doesn't NEED to be led-it can lead itself.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It doesn't matter if you're personally progressive if, as an officeholder, you can't actually do anything progressive. FDR wasn't even able to desegregate the military at a time when African-Americans and Latino-Americans were fighting fascism and Naziism just as hard as white troops were.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Btw your titke saying she is pro slaughter is garbage.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It can never mean anything humane or socially decent, because people like her don't accept that unrest is ever caused by legitimate human grievances against the existing order.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Perfectly reasonable thing to say.
It does not mean she is looking to start new wars.
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)by forcing 120,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans to surrender all their possessions and live in concentration camps in violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendment.
Are you willing to "turn Japanese" should Hillary Clinton decide to do "whatever it takes" to defend this nation?
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)She's cool with having diplomats spy.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/hillary_gets_wiki-served_20101130?ln
Hillary Clinton should cut out the whining about what the Obama administration derides as stolen cables and confront the unpleasant truths they reveal about the contradictions of U.S. foreign policy and her own troubling performance. As with the earlier batch of WikiLeaks, in this latest release the corruption of our partners in Iraq and Afghanistan stands in full relief, and the net effect of nearly a decade of warfare is recognized as a strengthening of Irans influence throughout the region.
~snip~
Instead of disparaging the motives of the leakers, Hillary Clinton should offer a forthright explanation of why she continued the practice of Condoleezza Rice, her predecessor as secretary of state, of using American diplomats to spy on their colleagues working at the United Nations. Why did she issue a specific directive ordering U.S. diplomats to collect biometric information on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and many of his colleagues?
As the respected British newspaper The Guardian, which obtained the WikiLeaks cables, said in summarizing the matter: A classified directive which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clintons name in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications system used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.
The Guardian pointed out that the Clinton directive violates the language of the original U.N. convention, which reads: The premises of the United Nations shall be inviolable. The spying effort derived from concern that U.N. rapporteurs might unearth embarrassing details about the U.S. treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the directives demanded biographic and biometric information on Dr. Margaret Chan, the director of the World Health Organization, as well as details of her personality and management style. Maybe shes hiding bin Laden in her U.N. office.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-spying-un
A classified directive which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clinton's name in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.
It called for detailed biometric information "on key UN officials, to include undersecretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers, top SYG [secretary general] aides, heads of peace operations and political field missions, including force commanders" as well as intelligence on Ban's "management and decision-making style and his influence on the secretariat". A parallel intelligence directive sent to diplomats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi said biometric data included DNA, fingerprints and iris scans.
Washington also wanted credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers for UN figures and "biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives".
~snip~
The UN has previously asserted that bugging the secretary general is illegal, citing the 1946 UN convention on privileges and immunities which states: "The premises of the United Nations shall be inviolable. The property and assets of the United Nations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of interference, whether by executive, administrative, judicial or legislative action".
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/30/us-wikileaks-details-idUSTRE6AT1I720101130?pageNumber=3
ARGENTINA
-- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton questioned the mental health of Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez, asking U.S. diplomats to investigate whether she was on medication.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)I brought up an example of "whatever it takes" to "defend the nation" by a "progressive President."
Right now, all our phone calls, email, etc. are being collected by a massive domestic surveillance system in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Holder doctrine has established a precedent that "due process does not mean judicial process" in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
Given that, are you willing to allow a "progressive President" to do "whatever it takes" to "defend the nation?"
Now answer the question: What's Hillary's position on domestic surveillance?
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)"Are you willing to "turn Japanese" should Hillary Clinton decide to do "whatever it takes" to defend this nation?"
I was not putting words in your mouth.
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)Like, having your cellphone become a beacon for a Predator drone strike because the Administration decided you're a terrorist and you need to be killed without a trial.
You cool with that?
Quit evading the question: What's Hillary Clinton's position on domestic surveillance?
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)And you have google. I am not here to educate you.
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)I thought you, as a Hillary supporter, would be able to tell me what her position is on domestic surveillance.
Instead, you either don't know, or don't want to say.
I'm sure the reasons you have for voting for Hillary are important.
Hillary eats at Chipotle, just like meeee.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)on the list of Things hrmjustin Is Unfamiliar With.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)She's obsessed with looking as "tough" and inflexible as possible.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I am for real.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)That came to my mind as well.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)FDR could only have built the New Deal in a country with a small military that wasn't in a war.
That's why our leaders have made sure the war budget stayed perpetually massive after 1945. And that's why no president since FDR has been able to be truly progressive.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)but won't help the children in poverty, our vets that are being neglected and our seniors that are going to have to sacrifice.
War makes the rich richer and the poor, poorer. Is that the new face of the Democratic Party?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)We haven't had progressive domestic policies on much of anything since then.
(the black freedom movement and the gains made by feminist, Latino and LGBTQ activists have been held to a minimum by our foreign policy of perpetual war.)
Logical
(22,457 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)it was the assertion that "progressives can't be war presidents"...
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I didn't say "progressives can't be war presidents"-I said "war presidents can't be progressive. FDR was a progressive individual, but he stopped all progressive policies the moment we entered World War II(something that was totally unnecessary, because it's not as though the South was going to back Hitler if the armed services were desegregated, for God's sakes).
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)FDR had no progressive domestic policies after we went into the war(yes, the war was necessary, but let's face it, everything good domestically stopped while we were in it.
And the early death of the Great Society programs in the name of funding our involvement in Vietnam vindicates my point again.
If HRC sends troops back in to Iraq and expands our presence in Afghanistan, she'll have to govern as a Republican at home, as LBJ did after the summer of '65.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)before fighting WWII.
Johnson is a better example of a president who signed progressive policies into law while taking the country to war.
And we know what happened when he did that.
Drunken Irishman
(34,857 posts)FDR also didn't do jack shit in his second term - and there was no war excuse for that. FDR didn't just instantly become less progressive because the U.S. went to war. That's just silly talk.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)But he was ONLY able to do anything progressive in his first term because, at that point, we were leaving the world alone and not treating force as the default solution to all problems.
Drunken Irishman
(34,857 posts)Which afforded him the opportunity to pass whatever he wanted. But that doesn't mean he was any less progressive in his third and fourth term (well first few months of his fourth). Nor was Truman, who had Korea, or Kennedy, who was laying the foundation for Vietnam or even LBJ.
You could make the claim that it could detract from domestic policy - but that is not what the poster claimed.
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)to surrender all their possessions and live in concentration camps in violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendment is hardly progressive, but YMMV.
BTW, what's Hillary Clinton's position on domestic surveillance?
cheapdate
(3,811 posts)in the world. Their armies had rolled over most of Europe before the United States entered the war. Nazi Germany truly threatened to extinguish democratic values and common morality from all of Western Europe and other parts of the world. They were an almost unparalleled horror and threat to humanity.
When modern politicians talk about "doing whatever it takes" to ensure America's "safety and security" they're NOT talking about the same thing as Nazi Germany. They're talking about using aggressive military action to stop even the potential for any Americans being harmed.
You can agree or disagree that the potential threat of criminal and ideological terrorist groups in the Middle East justifies violating the sovereignty of Middle Eastern countries and carrying out acts of aggression. But I don't think you can reasonably claim that Middle Eastern terrorists pose an existential threat to the United States in the same way that Nazi Germany did to out allies in Western Europe.
dflprincess
(28,079 posts)and, at the time, he didn't have a lot of reason to think he would be one.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You might want to edit.
OKNancy
(41,832 posts)That's a real stretch. You do know that diplomacy is also required.
Believe me, Sanders would say the same. He would do what it takes.
Every Presidential candidate wants to keep America safe. That's their job.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)We're just another country(a country I like, btw). We don't have to be the world's policemen, and this century has proven that we're no better at sorting the world out than anybody else is.
We need to let the world lead itself.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)It would piss off all the war profiteers who pay for political campaigns.
nightscanner59
(802 posts)That the little thing would go on infinitely. My problem with your suggestion is that it would require turning back time and reverse the cheating that got Bush II in, and got us into this colossal mess. intentionally.
I honestly feel dropping massive megaton Valium bombs throughout the middle eastern region, then massively invade from all UN allies and totally disarm the region while they're all asleep would go further at solving our problems than war.
And it could be packaged that the beauty of this for the arms merchants is they would have them to sell to other terrorists all over again.
brooklynite
(94,611 posts)...and if he did, an isolationist foreign policy would probably give us another Republican landslide.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)willingness to stick our noses into everybody else's business.
Libya: In late 2012, the New York Times reported that weapons from a US-approved deal had eventually gone to Islamic militants in Libya. The deal, which involved European weapons sent to Qatar as well as US weapons originally supplied to the United Arab Emirates, had been managed from the sidelines by the Obama administration.
Syria: More than once, American arms intended to help bolster the fight against ISIS in Syria and northern Iraq have ended up in the group's control. Last October, an airdrop of small arms was blown off target by the wind, according to the Guardian. ISIS quickly posted a video of its fighters going through crates of weapons attached to a parachute.
Iraq: American weapons supplied to the Iraqi army have also found their way ISIS via theft and capture. And weapons meant for the Iraqi army have also gone to Shiite militias backed by Iran. This isn't a new problem: As much as 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces between 2004 and early 2007 could not be accounted for.
. . . .
Somalia: In 2011, Wired reported that as much as half of the US-supplied arms given to Uganda and Burundi in support of the fight against al-Shabaab was winding up with the Somali militant group.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/pentagon-arms-lost-missing-yemen
As Secretary of State in the Obama administration from January 2009 to February 2013, Clinton was at the forefront of the U.S. response to the Arab Spring and advocated the U.S. military intervention in Libya. She took responsibility for security lapses related to the 2012 Benghazi attack, which resulted in the deaths of American consulate personnel, but defended her personal actions in regard to the matter.
Hillary could not go to these countries and pick up weapons our military lost. But as Secretary of State, Hillary had an obligation to remind the President and our military leaders that after you have finished playing with your toys, you need to put them away neatly. And if you played with them out of your house, you need to make sure that you bring them back in so that no one will take them and so that they don't get wet and ruined.
These incidents happened while Hillary was Secretary of State.
Keeping us safe means making sure we don't leave weapons in the hands of the bad guys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)[url=http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys.php][img][/img][/url]
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It's one of the coolest I've ever seen.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)under Violent Smilieys. The top link. http://www.freesmileys.org/
SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)ellisonz
(27,711 posts)Only 513 more days until the 2016 election
zeemike
(18,998 posts)Torture, mass slaughter of innocent people, and even genocide...that was also the Bush policy.
Is that now our policy too?...to dispense with morality for the sake of a false sense of safety?
Have we gone that far down the rabbit hole?
Things that make you go hmmm....
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Our whole society is crumbling yet the Oligarchs are worried about their safety. The 99% is worried about poverty, infrastructure, taking care of our vets and seniors. All these take a back burner when the neocons and the MIC take all our tax dollars for continuous wars.
PatrickforO
(14,578 posts)oligarchy!
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)they wouldn't have done all they could to stop the Arab Spring and keep the old tyrants(including the House of Saud)in absolute control.
All we have ever fought for in the Arab/Muslim world is oil. Nothing else mattered. That's why Afghanistan is still a religious fundamentalist hellhole(and why our leaders were perfectly happy to help create the Taliban back in the Eighties), even though they all knew what the 'ban was about from the very beginning).
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)lead by example and we fail miserably there. We no longer live in a democracy, but a plutocratic-oligarchy.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)"democracy" cannot be imposed as a spoil of conquest-because the conquerors will never allow it to be genuinely democratic. Look at Iraq, where our imperial vizier, Mr. Bremer, imposed constitutional bans on any oil tax above 15% and forced the privatization of the Iraqi oil industry(it is now almost totally under foreign control, and Iraqis no longer get any real share of the oil wealth their labor creates).
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)And strong National security. That's pretty much the hallmark of every liberal prez since FDR.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And they damn sure don't want us to keep militarily intervening in the Middle East a region where we've brought nothing but misery.
A HRC war in the Middle East would have to be exactly like a George W. Bush/Dick Cheney war there. No war can ever be progressive or liberating again, and none can ever be feminist.
We should reserve our military solely for protecting our own territory from EXTERNAL attack(and never from domestic protest). That's its only legitimate use.
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)That doesn't mean we can't trim the MIC budget, I think it will be easy to make the case that we can do both; strong defense and trim the budget. It's no mystery that the budget is bloated and most Americans would probably agree.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Would be to stop the world's poor from rising up and demanding what's theirs-to stop fighting to preserve corporate domination of this and other countries and to let all nations put the human needs of their own peoples ahead of the profits of the Western rich.
Do you think HRC, based on what she said today, would ever even consider doing anything like that?
I'd be pleasantly astonished if she did, but I think we both know what the odds of that would be.
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)SaranchaIsWaiting
(247 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)A Simple Game
(9,214 posts)Here's just one example, why all the saber rattling about the Ukraine? The EU GDP is almost $2 trillion more than the US GDP, let them figure out what to do with Ukraine. What defense of the US requires military bases in the EU and Japan not to mention countless other countries?
As for the Middle East? That mess just proves what I like to say, no one wins a war... no one, ever. Some may be able to claim victory but they never come out ahead, never.
The Republicans complain about the Mexican border, well here's a US jobs program they can support, cut the military by 100,000 troops primarily from the EU and Japan, then add 100,000 Border Agents. Win, win, we keep the border secure and the salaries of the Border Agents stay in the US and not contributing to the EU or Japan's economy.
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)That is the weirdest fucking thing I've read this week.
And I get around.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Last edited Sat Jun 13, 2015, 08:57 PM - Edit history (1)
It's now the unchallengable truth.
War can't liberate women, or free the oppressed anymore, or do anything but protect corporate profits.
No war has had any progressive or humane effects since VE Day-since then, they've all been just "wars of the national interest". And the national interest is always anti-woman, anti-poc, anti-worker, anti-poor, and anti-liberation.
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)Meanwhile, note that I wasn't actually talking to you. I was laughing at you.
Still am. "None can ever be feminist". I'm dyin' heah!
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The use of force played no positive role in that.
Sbrenica proves my point.
As for Kosovo, that mainly ended because the Serbian pro-democracy movement peacefully brought down Milosevic.
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)Without NATO strikes there would have been no settlement, because there would have been no way to eliminate Milosevic. It was a "war", certainly by your loose (and weirdly trippy) definition(s). We were running the show. The people of BiH were the victors. It was a resounding success.
And, despite it being "twenty years ago" it was well after WWII, yes?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)War is organized killing. Even when justified, that's all it ever has been. It isn't about "honor" a meaningless imperialist concept) or glory or ideals. It's just death.
That's reality.
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)What if it had been Eleanor's war?
Not very feminine feminist of her, would it have been?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)We will never again fight a war in which "winning" frees anyone. Our rulers have already made sure of that.
Nothing that can happen on any battlefield in the future can possibly be the equivalent of the defeat of Naziism-a defeat Western capitalists essentially nullified by plunging us, as soon as World War II was over and for no good reason, into a forty year fight against "communism" something they already knew was never going to reach past East Berlin).
And once that useless conflict died of its own dead weight, having created nothing but decades of misery, a conflict with another alleged "threat"-the mythical ideology known as Islamism-was created to keep the war machine fully funded.
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)So, anyway, we did fight a war which resulted in "freeing" quite a few people - by dint of an accord which allowed them to live peacefully with their neighbors. You want to dismiss it as a notta war, or a longtimeago thingy, fine. That's your revisionism, by your own standards. If you can live with that, ain't no skin off my back.
BTW, we also fought the Japanese in WWII. Other than their blowing up a few planes and killing a large handful of people, what right did we have to engage them? They were no threat to the Western World. They shoulda fought it out amongst themselves, right?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The Japanese were far less of a threat to us than Nazi Germany(not that I'd have supported them).
The fight in the Pacific was largely a trade war-Japan's objectives were to control the resources of Asia(which the U.S. also wanted to do, and which was also the main reason we sent troops to the unwinnable conflicts in Vietnam and Korea later-btw, you do realize that the Korean War is still technically going on, don't you?).
We technically "liberated" most of the Asian countries from Japanese rule, and then re-oppressed them by installing dictators aligned with us in the Cold War in most of them(other than Japan, where we sabotaged MacArthur's democratization efforts by rigging their electoral system and turning their economy over to people with an essentially samurai mindset).
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)Do you now support half of WWII?
Never mind, dude. I've given up on taking you seriously.
G'night!
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)that nothing I've posted here has been a personal attack on you. Sad that you felt it necessary to lower yourself to that level.
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)I said I no longer take you seriously. That's an observation about me.
Otherwise, I suspect that there are a lot of differences between us.
Sleep tight!
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I never said anything personally denigrating or dismissive about you.
This is about the candidates and the issues-not about me. Or you.
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)Check it:
If a black family moves into the 'hood, the way to respond is NOT to burn a cross on their front lawn. The way to respond is to go introduce yourself and invite them over for cocktails (or whatever).
The KKK would see cross-burning as "keeping the 'hood safe," but really they're creating a problem where none exists.
Hillary's foreign policy is all about creating problems where none exist.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)We can only have a progressive country if we stay out of foreign wars.
BeanMusical
(4,389 posts)wyldwolf
(43,867 posts)Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge--and more. - JFK
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)That's what "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any 'friend'" means. It means(and can ONLY mean)perpetual and perpetually unwinnable war.
And such war is always pointless and unjustifiable-just like everything the U.S. has done in the Arab/Muslim world since 1991 or so.
wyldwolf
(43,867 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)We need to totally break with that part of the Democratic foreign policy tradition...we need to admit that war no longer achieves much of anything, and that the U.S. shouldn't try to lead the world.
Leading the world is just a code phrase for imperialism.
wyldwolf
(43,867 posts)Or do you see the party as the only realistic vehicle to your objectives?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Why does that matter? It's not as if party loyalty requires a person to be a militarist.
wyldwolf
(43,867 posts)Not about party loyalty but more about standing in opposition to many objectives that have always been Democratic policy.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Last edited Sat Jun 13, 2015, 09:50 PM - Edit history (1)
Unless it's now "ideological" to say that it's a bad thing to go to other countries and kill people there.
I express my party loyalty by opposing things that are bad for the party-like the permanent war economy.
It's about making the party stronger and better by freeing it from bad things.
If this was 1860, would you argue that I was being disloyal to the party if I opposed slavery, the defense of which had "always been Democratic policy" until then?
If this was 1935, would you argue that I was being disloyal to the party in backing the Wagner Act, when opposition to the labor movement in any but its most timid and neutered forms had "always been Democratic policy" until then?
If this was 1964, would you argue that I was being disloyal to the party if I supported the seating of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party against LBJ's pointless insistence on seating the segregationist and pro-KKK regular Mississippi delegation?
And weren't you being disloyal to things that had "been Democratic policy" for over seventy-five years when you supported the anti-labor, anti-black, anti-poor and anti-activist Democratic Leadership Council in its project of turning the Democrats into a "centrist" read right-wing)party?
Hekate
(90,721 posts)It's sad when Hillary Derangement Syndrome carries you this far over the edge.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)So was Howard Zinn. So was Pete Seeger.
Not all World War II veterans lived out their days as implacable militarists.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)I never bought that PT109 fabrication of heroism. Those Japanese destroyers were not sound proof and in fact were very noisy tin cans. Even in the pitch black of night he and his crew should have heard it coming. Maybe they drank too much of JFK's old man's booze.
JI7
(89,252 posts)BeyondGeography
(39,376 posts)no exceptions.
Rex
(65,616 posts)nt
frazzled
(18,402 posts)being a convincing or useful argument, if your aim is to drive people away from Hillary Clinton. Anyone who listened to the speech did not come away with anything like a "pro-slaughter" sentiment (she talked about bringing all the other diplomatic and economic powers to bear), and your statement that a "war president can't be progressive" is patently absurd: I thought of FDR immediately, too.
Indeed, I watched Bernie Sanders on Charlie Rose the other night, and he sounded pretty hawkish, by your standards. He was asked if he agreed with Obama's decision to send 450 more troops as advisors. He started to agree and then said he hadn't fully studied it, but that (insert positive things here about Obama's policies in that regard) we needed to defeat ISIS. "Slaughterer?"
Hyperbole is not effective argumentation. Distorting speech isn't effective argumentation. Any presidential candidate is going to have to say they will keep this country safe. If you see blood dripping out the sides of their mouths, that's your problem. The rest of America will see it as a kind of basic requirement.
Fail on the attempt to scare people.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)since scaring people just might not have been the poster intended. Do you think that's there is any possibly that poster was expressing their opinion?
frazzled
(18,402 posts)By cherry picking half a phrase from a speech, my impression is that the OP didn't actually listen to it, but went to scour for something to be derogatory and alarming. The hair-on-fire hyperbole speaks for itself.
But that's just my opinion.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)that you're unwilling to extend to others?
Well, I'll give it to both of you. I think you mean well, but when it comes to winning people over, I think you're mistaken.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)She obsessed on labeling other countries as enemies and on defining our role in the world as nothing but a land if war, She said nothing of working for peace...nothing of diplomacy and negotiations...nothing of even trying to reduce global tensions.
George W. Bush could have given the exact same remarks on foreign policy.
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)"Roll Down the Stairs Laughing". That can be deadly, you know.
madokie
(51,076 posts)is not one of 'us,' she is one of 'them' as this speech showed us today
I'd love to see a woman president but I'll be damned if I'll shoot myself in the foot to get there
EX500rider
(10,849 posts)I am curious what kind of campaign slogan that would be?
"America....que sera sera"?
"America.....hope for the best"?
"America.....bravely run away!"
lol
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,710 posts)movonne
(9,623 posts)to me like going to war is the only way to keep us safe and I don't believe that... thinking
if Hillary is president we are going to war... maybe...
treestar
(82,383 posts)what a reach.
Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)Would you prefer a president who lies into a resource war?
Of course, the September 11 attacks deserved a response, but the invasion of a country that had nothing to it wasn't part of that response. By now, everybody should know that the invasion was planed before September 11, which served as a flimsy pretext.
The transition from oil and coal to wind and sun should begin now,, as in right now, this minute. If ExxonMobil and the other energy companies want to stay in business, let them invest in the future. Otherwise, I don't give a flying fuck if Rex Tillerson spends his last days in a gutter to die cold, hungry, broke and alone.
We don't need to secure a foreign source of oil by force. We don't need to make alliances with oppressive reprobates like the House of Saud or the Sultan of Bahrain. A barrel of oil is not worth one more drop of a young American fighter's blood. We need to begin the transition to renewable energy sources and make fossil fuels obsolete.
Does that sound doable? It should. The Koch brothers think it is and they're spending millions to put a stop to it.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Wars no longer protect us. Nothing we're doing in Iraq or Afghanistan has ever been about protecting this country-or about freeing anyone from anything.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
randome
(34,845 posts)[hr][font color="blue"][center]Treat your body like a machine. Your mind like a castle.[/center][/font][hr]
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)It's like people have lost their freakin' minds.
Sid
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Up to your usual standards of discourse, I see: Eloquent and original.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Maybe if Thelma and Louise's hair are also on fire.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)With an electric hair dryer...
freshwest
(53,661 posts)PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)leftofcool
(19,460 posts)A woman president wants to keep us safe and she is "pro-slaughter." A male president want to keep us safe and he is a hero. This is just ridiculous!
brooklynite
(94,611 posts)...better be prepared to throw him under the bus when he rolls out his foreign policy principles.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)in the way HRC does.
He won't see compromise and genuine negotiations as signs of weakness.
brooklynite
(94,611 posts)...was I wrong? Or does the President outsource his decision making?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And it's pretty clear that her price for withdrawing from the race in '08, rather than fighting for the nom to the bitter end even though she knew she had no way of getting the votes)was the SoS job and control of Obama's foreign policy(which is t he main reason that policy ended up having next to nothing in common with what he pledged it would be during the campaign)as well as Obama's endorsement in '16.
(side note-how did you manage to misspell "Obama"? It's a five letter word and we've all been spelling it since at least 2004).
brooklynite
(94,611 posts)It ranks right up there with "we all know" for completely unsupported assertions.
I also love how you managed to denigrate both Hillary Clinton (a power-hungry war monger) AND President Obama (so desperate to be President that he'd give up control of his foreign policy) in one sentence. Well done!
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Make the hard choices on national security.
cali
(114,904 posts)re foreign policy reflect knowledge and understanding. He wasn't duped into voting for the IWR by the stupid and transparent Bush. He didn't vote for it to gain political advantage. Can you even imagine anyone doing something that despicable? Bernie has never supported murderous coups. He's not a hawk. He doesn't reflexively support the MIC. Yes, he is qualified.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Choices to keep this country safe and you are saying he isn't a hawk so I guess the answer is he isn't ready for the job. Congress may have some strange experiences but not so much experience in foreign affairs.
cali
(114,904 posts)bogus war resolutions and support murderous coups and destabilize countries turning them into failed states have no business as CiC- regardless of their resumes. Hillary has demonstrated atrocious, bloody judgment over and over again. She has the blood of innocents on her hands. No better than most republicans.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)BeanMusical
(4,389 posts)mountain grammy
(26,626 posts)and have no doubt he would make the hard choices on national security. Maybe he'd make Hillary Secretary of State again. She was a damn good one.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)zappaman
(20,606 posts)Cleita
(75,480 posts)MisterP
(23,730 posts)pnwmom
(108,980 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)but when a FEMALE says it...hmm...hmmmmm....
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)If we weren't, we'd have supported Lieberman.
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)is only obvious to you now?
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Now what's the next war on the agenda?
NanceGreggs
(27,815 posts)It's all over the internetz, and is being discussed everywhere across the country.
Everyone who listened to Hill's speech today is calling her the "pro-slaughter candidate". She'll never live that one down!
No one wants to hear a presidential hopeful pledge to keep the country safe. What a despicable statement!
I'd say it's time to pack-up and go home, Hill -- you're toast! According to DU, you've already lost the election at least a dozen times now - and you know what they say, "As goes DU, so goes the nation!"
<<< for them what needs it.
Depaysement
(1,835 posts)She has no choice. She doesn't want to look weak. If she does, she'll never be President.
MineralMan
(146,318 posts)This is a desperation post you made. It's also quite offensive, in my opinion. Pro slaughter? Your exaggeration smacks of panic.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Not every candidate will be totally open-ended and unlimited about that.
And I stand by my comment-every war we are in right now is nothing but slaughter. None are being conducted with any real regard for common decency or any real moral limits. War pretty much can't be moral or humane.
And any further wars we got into(such as any military strikes against Iran)would be brutal and have massive numbers of civilian casualties(such as in Iraq, where we don't even count the local dead because "they're just A-rabs" and none of our leaders cae how many of them die).
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)Do you expect any candidate to list the limits they would set in defending the country from attack? 'Now, I won't surrender on day one, but look people it's not open ended, if the enemy is really ardent, we have to fold'.
You are really a piece of work. What you are doing here is not Pro Peace, because Pro Peace work involves language that builds understanding and accord, always avoiding hyperbole and characterization of the other.
You carry on as if she said things other candidates do not always say. Then you say they all say them, but she should and pretend she shouted about no limits and let's go get the A-rabs. It's disgusting. YOU are the person using anti Arab slurs, and that's not what Pro Peace folks do. You bring that to the table, and you pretend someone else did.
The main problem with this crap is that it implies Bernie is the candidate with a limited desire to defend the US. Do you really believe that?
And do you think Bernie, whose family was slaughtered by Nazis, thinks defending this country is bad or the same as being a Nazi?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)or "I won't bomb Iran".
We can't just take their lack of word for it that they won't be monsters.
Aren't there any limits to what you think should be done in the name of "defense"?
The nation doesn't need to be completely open-ended and unbound by any standards of morality, humanity, and international law when it comes to defense.
Neither Afghanistan nor Iran nor even Putin's Russia(a country that mainly just wants a defensive perimeter, as Russia's leaders have always wanted since time immemorial) are going to try to attack and wipe out the U.S. Neither is North Korea, a country that is doing a perfectly good job of disintegrating on its own.
"Saving the country" is not more important than retaining some semblance of decency. Once your nation has killed on a massive scale, it can never truly do anything good and beautiful again. It can never be truly moral again. It can never really be free again. It can just be "a great power"-and all great powers, all superpowers, have to turn into empires. There have to be some limits-or else we end up in a land that can never be anything but heartless, arrogant and hateful-a land where poetry, music, and joy can't truly exist anymore.
"Winning a war' can never be worth losing your soul-or your nation's soul.
World War II was a situation that will never recur-so was the Cold War. We will never need to do the things we did in those situations again. We're past that, and our leaders need to admit it. HRC refuses to admit it-refuses to admit that anything is different at all.
HRC doesn't want our country to present a humane, non-imperial face to the world. She wants us to go on being a "superpower"- a role in the world that can never be progressive or positive. And I have no reason to believe that she doesn't want us to stay in the Arab/Muslim world for the rest of eternity.
Essentially, she buys into Dick Cheney's fascistic "it is still a dangerous world" concept-the idea that nothing in foreign policy can ever be questioned or debated, that compromise and openness can never be permissable, that war can never be a thing of the past.
I'll back her if she's nominated, but why shouldn't I see her approach to the world us ugly and life-crushing?
I won't dignify your comments about Bernie and his family...because we both know that's not what I was talking about and that World War II was part of a whole different stage of history. That was the last just war, the last use of U.S. force in history that actually made anyone's life(other than the economic life of war profiteers) any better anywhere.
(my use of the "slur" was a satirization of the Bush/HRC/Kerry attitude on Iraq, and of the decision not to count the Arab dead, because our leaders all believe that the lives of Arabs are of no value. If they cared about them, Kerry and HRC would have insisted that those deaths be counted).
You need to accept that when the U.S. uses force, it's no more virtuous or "righteous" than any other country's use of it. And that there are fewer and fewer situations when using force can actually solve anything.
It's solved nothing in Afghanistan, and never can solve anything there.
Same in Iraq. It would be the same in Iran(in fact U.S. use of force to overthrow the secular democratic government of Iran in 1953 is pretty much the only reason the mullahs ever ended up in power there).
treestar
(82,383 posts)Standard post 911 - how in the world can you even bring in LBJ? Scoop Jackson? They lived in a different world.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)She has no foreign policy ideas that Scoop's 1972 campaign(or Johnson as president) wouldn't have supported(she knows perfectly well that war can't liberate women or free kids from misery, she just pretends that it can to make militarism sound "modern" . But she's still, at the depths of her being, "All the Way with LBJ" other than the tacky anti-poverty stuff, of course).
Kalidurga
(14,177 posts)I would advise you to tone it down a bit, but I have never been one to tone down a message myself. Besides you said Phil Ochs so you are redeemed 1000x over for any minor problems you have with expressing your sentiments.
Presidential Candidates typically take a tough stance on protectionism. I would like to see a candidate say we are going to end foreign involvement as much as possible, that we are going to concentrate more on humanitarian aid when needed and that we are going to strengthen our system towards fighting domestic terrorism and terrorists that are planning terror events in our country. I don't think the spying system is working very well, they are thinned out way to much, if your suspect 300 million terrorists it's really hard to keep tabs on them all. So, you are right Phil Ochs was right we should not be the cops of the world.
I don't think leaving Isis alone is an option. But, I'll be da**** if I know what to do about that situation. The current situation is clearly not working though. Boots on the ground clearly didn't work either.
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)She knows she's not a Democrat, another stunt to show alligence to what she really is . And it's brilliant to use the enemy against your own party, life is NOTHING but a chess match for her .
DCBob
(24,689 posts)All Presidents have to do what it takes to defend the nation.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Not without at least some small grounding in morality and international law.
DCBob
(24,689 posts)That's still garbage.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Based on her friendship with Henry Kissinger, the greatest war criminal in American history, yes.
When has anything she's ever done in foreign policy ever been about something besides "force projection" and "toughness"
When has compassion, empathy, grief over the war dead or any real notion of human solidarity ever been part of HRC's approach to the world?
This is someone who still thinks war and feminism can co-exist, for God's sakes-that war can benefit people other than deebse contractors and the owners of funeral homes-that returning young people to their parents in flag-draped caskets cam serve the greater good in some twisted sense.
DCBob
(24,689 posts)Not a warmonger or peacemonger. If you see something other than that you are biased.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)as she did in Haiti and Honduras, and as she most likely wants to do in Venezuela.
She has never publicly criticized her friend Henry Kissinger for murdering democracy in Chile.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)There seem to be a couple dozen active HRC acolytes who worship inside the protected shell of the Hillary Clinton Group bubble. Occasionally, they emerge to take potshots at the rest of us, before retreating back inside their protected space.
It all has a bit of Zardoz about it.
DCBob
(24,689 posts)and Hillary is likely to be our nominee. I guess we have an infestation here.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)You remind me of the Humphrey-Daley Democrats in 1968 who similarly referred to the McCarthy and Kennedy anti-war Democrats as vermin.
That didn't turn out so well, did it? Maybe for these guys it did.
DCBob
(24,689 posts)but regardless im sure its nonsense.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)But, I'm sure that you would never stoop to such nonsense. Would you?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)between them(link, the Wikipedia entry on the 1968 Democratic primaries) :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_1968
Eugene McCarthy - 2,914,933 (38.73%)
Robert Kennedy - 2,305,148 (30.63%)
President Johnson - 383,590 (5.10%)
Hubert Humphrey - 166,463 (2.21%)
Unpledged - 161,143 (2.14%)
Johnson/Humphrey surrogates:
Stephen M. Young - 549,140 (7.30%)
Thomas C. Lynch - 380,286 (5.05%)
Roger D. Branigin - 238,700 (3.17%)
George Smathers - 236,242 (3.14%)
Scott Kelly - 128,899 (1.71%)
minor candidates and write-ins:
(the "Johnson/Humphrey surrogates" vote was artificially inflated by such weird results as Stephen Young's 100% showing in the Ohio primary).
George Wallace - 34,489 (0.46%)
Richard Nixon - 13,610 (0.18%)
Ronald Reagan - 5,309 (0.07%)
Ted Kennedy - 4,052 (0.05%)
Paul C. Fisher - 506 (0.01%)
John G. Crommelin - 186 (0.00%)
brooklynite
(94,611 posts)by the way, how is President Kucinich doing? He was all the rage her 7 years ago, and since DU is the pure representation of Democrats in the real world.....
JI7
(89,252 posts)2banon
(7,321 posts)AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)And I have had ENOUGH of the hubris of the warmongers.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)when her ge opponent says the same thing.
It's like being at freeperville.
PatrickforO
(14,578 posts)then war must be banned.
TBF
(32,070 posts)From the campaign trail in 2008:
On the day of a crucial vote in her nomination battle against fellow Democrat Barack Obama, the New York senator said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in hopes that this warning would deter any Iranian nuclear attack against the Jewish state.
"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel)," Clinton said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/04/22/us-usa-politics-iran-idUSN2224332720080422
I keep saying that I don't really see what has changed since 2008 & she certainly was beatable that year. With these words she is telling us flat out that her hawkish positions have not changed.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Apparently, she thinks Dems can only win if we're three steps to the right of Col. Bat Guano on defense policy.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And that fight isn't our fight. Only the people of those countries can defeat it. It's imperialist for U.S. troops to get involved.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)It still occurred. We have to wake up in this country. We are not safe from further attacks.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Get even more fascistic and personally intrusive with airport security? Suppress even more dissent?
You should just endorse Jeb...because if you're a hawk on this, you're going to be right-wing on everything else.
I seriously doubt Ann Richards would be calling for U.S. intervention in the rest of the freaking Arab/Muslim world.
Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)>>>She should just have talked about domestic issues today and left the rest of the world alone. >>>>>
brooklynite
(94,611 posts)...campaign finance reform...
...immigration reform...
...voting rights?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)This speech signalled that she never really cared about those things, because only peace supporters actually do.
Beacool
(30,250 posts)"Pro-slaughter candidate"????
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There's no way to come up with a humane, progressive, no militaristic version of that phrase...or at least not one that her corporate funders would tolerate, because they won't allow her to run on a "make the world stable by ending global poverty and exploitation" platform.
It's still about saying "war can SO be liberal" and "it's okay when WE do it".
And she didn't need to talk about any of this at the launch. She could have gone with the good stuff she'd been saying on police brutality and prison reform(issues she won't be able to address while maintaining an interventionist foreign policy and a big war budget).
She made herself the militarist candidate, and did so in a year where Democrats don't have to be militarist to win the White House.