2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumWhy This Veteran Will Cast His Super Tuesday Vote For Bernie Sanders
Fri, Feb 26, 2016
by Andrew Carleen
Why This Veteran Will Cast His Super Tuesday Vote For Bernie Sanders
For a time during the summer of 2012, American service members in Afghanistan were being killed at a rate of one-per-day.
As a reservist mobilized for duty with the coalitions counter-improvised explosive devise task force, I had a front-row seat to the dying, to the incessant drumbeat of tactical reports and makeshift combat-zone memorial ceremonies.
Those of us who were there also saw other things first-hand: immense expenditures on useless projects, such as equipping the Afghan army with bomb disposal robots, without a parallel plan to train them in their maintenance or to provide them with replacement parts; gigantic salaries paid to contractors; and endless rewriting of the strategy for a war that had already dragged on for 11 years. It was a visceral, personal lesson in quagmire.
There is an assumption in Washington to which the establishments in both parties subscribe: American military power is the antidote to all the worlds problems. This notion is so deeply entrenched that all the empirical evidence to the contrary has done nothing to shake the conviction of those engaged in making foreign policy.
Secretary Clinton deserves credit for backing away from her Iraq War vote, but she seems to have learned nothing from its disastrous fallout.
She supported the intervention in Libya, which took place without Congressional authorization and has left anarchy in its wake; she has been a leading voice among those calling for the U.S. to take a more active role in Syria; and she has backed the Obama administrations expansive drone war, which has served as an effective propaganda tool for terrorist recruiters.
Clintons supporters tout her foreign policy acumen.
In large part it is how they distinguish her from her rival. Senator Sanders, they argue, dodges foreign policy questions and lacks in-depth knowledge of and plans for dealing with the international crises of our day. What that really means is that Senator Sanders has not bought into the establishments assumptions about American power....
.....snip....
Please read the rest here~
http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2016/02/26/super-tuesday-clinton-versus-sanders-andrew-carleen
giftedgirl77
(4,713 posts)RiverLover
(7,830 posts)wow
giftedgirl77
(4,713 posts)so & so. We don't just jump inline because one of our peers have.
Its a well-written piece by a wise young man who doesn't jump in line with our US policy of endless war. He's knows first hand how destructive & pointless & tragic it is. I'm grateful he's out there.
Enjoy your status quo should we be unlucky enough to have a Clinton2 presidency.
giftedgirl77
(4,713 posts)I missed out on a lot of my kid's toddler & adolescent years because of endless deployments & ended up 100% disabled so please don't try & lecture me on this nonsense.
I would much rather have HRC in control then a republican even tho I disagree with much of her foreign policies.
stonecutter357
(12,682 posts)debunction.junction
(127 posts)giftedgirl77
(4,713 posts)or share the same skin tone as someone it means I'm either just jump on their bandwagon or cause.
roguevalley
(40,656 posts)It isn't about you.
pangaia
(24,324 posts)Vattel
(9,289 posts)She has been consistently clueless on issues of foreign policy.
djean111
(14,255 posts)Or maybe there are just a lot of Democrats who like war.
Bernie supporters are not going to "bring the DNC down" - the DNC is going to change so much that people will just leave.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)& conservative candidates while actively working against possible progressive challengers within the party.
Walking away. If Hillary is our nom, that's what I'll be doing. She is corrupt & doesn't represent me, nor do I believe for a millisecond she would work for women or workers or minorities or students other than pretty speeches. She'll be too busy triangulating for policies which pay back the enormous debts she owes to corporations & banks.
djean111
(14,255 posts)publicly support and fund-raise for her GOP buddies, and publicly decline to support Democrats running against them - and I am supposed to fucking fall into line behind that? That is not going to happen.
Hillary does not represent me, either. As a woman, I am embarrassed that she and her supporters thought I would blindly support her, and ignore the issues I feel so strongly about, just because I am a woman.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)too bad her decisions have been largely terrible.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)This isn't good leadership.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)she has blood on her hands. But of course, Americans can't give a shit about that.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/14/hillary-clinton-and-syrian-bloodbath
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)People need to know.
The U.S. policy was a massive, horrific failure. Assad did not go, and was not defeated. Russia came to his support. Iran came to his support. The mercenaries sent in to overthrow him were themselves radical jihadists with their own agendas. The chaos opened the way for the Islamic State, building on disaffected Iraqi Army leaders (deposed by the US in 2003), on captured U.S. weaponry, and on the considerable backing by Saudi funds.
If the truth were fully known, the multiple scandals involved would surely rival Watergate in shaking the foundations of the US establishment.
The hubris of the United States in this approach seems to know no bounds. The tactic of CIA-led regime change is so deeply enmeshed as a "normal" instrument of U.S. foreign policy that it is hardly noticed by the U.S. public or media.
Overthrowing another government is against the U.N. charter and international law.
Dustlawyer
(10,493 posts)corrupt when it comes to these things. The leader in Iraq we knew was corrupt and we sent billions in CASH over there which "disappeared." That's the foreign policy our leaders know. Allowing all of these contractors to go to war zones for profit on top of our soldiers meant everyone got to dip their beak in the money of war. They were paying contract truck drivers $150,000 a year, secretaries over $100,000 which means that they cost the taxpayers a lot more than a soldier doing that job like they used to. When they buy their politicians, they buy them for wars!
It's the same problem as private prisons. You will have more prisoners for longer sentences when there is a profit motive. Now they (private prisons and law enforcement) fight medical and recreational marijuana only to preserve the numbers of prisoners and the budgets to pay to catch them.
It's a coordinated thing, the politicians get us into wars for less and less cause, the contractors come in and sell us the robots to diffuse bombs and don't worry that we didn't train the locals, they sold their product and got our tax dollars.
Hillary and Bill go to Davros every year to meet with all of the parties to decide what they are going to do in the coming year so everyone gets to dip their beaks in our tax dollars. It's a big club, but we are not in it!
Laughing Mirror
(4,185 posts)Not so clueless if you consider she was and is being paid to take exactly the positions she takes. Her war machine has been functioning pretty well until recently.
erlewyne
(1,115 posts)I was taught that after we blow a country off the
face of the earth the hard work will then begin.
Someone has to go in and clean up the mess.
That was us guys. The infantry,
We never cleaned up North Korea. we Lost
We never cleaned up Viet Nam. we Lost
We have not cleaned up Iraq.
We will not clean up Afghanistan.
Yes, we are the most powerful country in the world.
I am voting for Bernie because we have work to do here in the U.S.A.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)Thanks for voting for Bernie!!! The more people look past msm & see what's really going on, the more people will come around to the good side. I just hope its in time.
democrank
(11,052 posts)Like I`ve said here many times before, I`v spent a lot of time in several VA hospitals speaking with vets. A lot of vets aren`t so eager to make excuses for that Iraq War vote.