I find this significant because I think Dems have been too soft on Trump’s trade policy and on Syria/Afghanistan.
For Dems to deliver on improving wealth and the standard of living for millennials, they have to embrace free trade/fair trade ideas. You can’t go into fortress Trump. Also, Dems need to go after Trump’s compromising relationship with Russia (they’re getting a little better there), but also reaffirm NATO (it’s very popular so that should be an easy one) and also reaffirm and better explain what we’re doing in Syria and Afghanistan. This last bit is a little harder, but is needed. Syria has been one of the most successful military interventions we’ve had in a long while. For a small number of troops, Obama backed ISIS into a corner and basically crushed it while building an international coalition of odd bedfellows. He strengthened the Kurds as a buffer, protected Israel, kept Iran in check and put Assad on the defensive. However, the election of 2016 threatened all of that, and now Trump has let ISIS back into the game. This is a big deal.
On Afghanistan, a candidate needs to take a bold Obama like approach to reorient policy around more diplomacy and the use of military to protect the gov’t and provide assistance. The long term solution there is a negotiated settlement with the Taliban that is enforceable. Our policy has been too military focused and not diplomacy focused. We can’t bomb our way to a lasting settlement. There’s a lot we can do to convince the Taliban that we view a democratic and western oriented Kabul as a strategic priority and are prepared to be engaged for the long haul and will be the last line of defense militarily. We can then find ways to co-opt them or buy their acquiescence to a diplomatic settlement of the matter with the US military supporting the Afghan gov’t to enforce it.
I can understand how we got there, but things have not improved since 2002. This war has lasted this long because of stubbornness of Bush, the cowardice of Obama (he was afraid of republicans calling him Muslim sympathizer), the pride of the generals and the greed of the Military-Industrial Complex.
This is where you see what appears to be a lot of “crap” being made up by people to fit their recollections
(1.) Richard Cleaveland, a 65-year-old truck driver from Ogden, Utah, disagrees and wholeheartedly backs Trump and his foreign policy.
(2.) “I think it’s time for our troops to come home — Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria,” said Cleaveland, who was interviewed on speaker phone as he drove his semitrailer through western Kansas. “I lost a lot of good friends when I was in Vietnam. I think that was a stupid war too.”
OK - let’s roll this back to the plausible timeline … this guy was born in 1953 … turned 18 in 1971 … if he graduated from high school - be may have gone to basic training as early as June of 1971 - maybe July … get through training - shuffle around a bit - normal stuff - gets to Vietnam (if he actually did go there) … spent time there ?
Well - here is the total by year of American War-Related Deaths by War Year and Post-War:
1972 - 641
1973 - 168
1974 - 178
1975 - 161
This includes war related deaths that occurred years later - and includes all of the non- combat / accidental deaths - and there were many, many non-combat deaths - in final year many were logistical / evacuation related.
Oh - don’t forget - reported actual grand total US troop levels (all branches) -
1972 – 24,200
1973 – 50 … yeah … “50”
so how credible is our “crusty over-the-road-trucker?” who knows for sure … but the timeline suggests that he might be parroting a cliche
… but OK he can cling to what ever memory he chooses - - however - it would be interesting to know what pejorative terms he used toward the people who voiced opposition to that war at the same time that he thought it was “stupid” … gonna guess that he disparaged them soundly - and has no problem loving draft dodger Trump - and scorning John Kerry & and the shrapnel fragments from live fire that is still embedded in him to this day.
I seem to recall that, in the aftermath of the devastation of World War I, and a realignment that featured Japanese imperialism and the rise of European fascist dictatorships including Hitler, Franco and Mussolini, a group of American isolationists under the banner of “America First” promoted a similar outlook: leave Hitler and Japan alone, and maybe they’ll leave us alone.
Any history buffs care to weigh in on how that turned out?
I agree, it’s confusing that the racists are against our long-standing alliance with the white European nations who they explicitly cherish as the ideal race.
Here’s my best guess: one thing racists have in common with the anti-NATO crowd is that they’re very hostile to any kind of meddling in “internal” affairs by outsiders. Southern racists gravitated toward “States’ rights” arguments because they wanted to be left alone with their racist institutions. The GOP has always been against the US signing any international agreement to promise to not do very evil things to vulnerable people.
It’s not how they like it, they’ve just been caught in a vicious cycle with a bunch of fairly terrible people in positions of violent and oppressive power. If we’d stepped up foreign aid when the Soviets left, the country could’ve been stabilized then. Instead, we funded the rise of a perpetually-violent sect (the mujahedeen, which metastasized into the Taliban and AQ) and then left them with no way to make money except the opium trade.
Me too. The ADL has some data for 2008-2017.
“Over the past 10 years (2008-17), domestic extremists have been responsible for at least 387 murders; of these, 274 (71%) were committed by right-wing extremists of one type or another.”
The GOP and the NRA are terrorist organizations. Lots of terrorist organizations are fueled by drug money, so are in a sense employed by drug empires. The GOP is fueled by the Kochs, Adelsons, and Mercers. The NRA is fueled by Putin’s Russia.
