If we're still bombing Iraq in 2016, Joe Biden AND HRC will have a moral obligation NOT to run.

[Ken Burch]

Both will be implicated in the carnage if the bombing is still going on...and neither they nor anyone else in this administration will have any moral right to seek our party's nomination for the presidency...since neither they nor anyone else in the administration, due to their continued support of what we have known since 2003 to be an unwinnable, pointless, and hopeless war, will be able to do anything progressive or anything remotely Democratic.

Anyone who is still backing the bombing in 2016, if it is still going on, must be considered a war criminal and owes it to common decency to remove themselves from contention for OUR party's nomination for the presidency.

Our only hope for electoral victory, and the only reason our party will have any reason to exist, in 2016, will be for our NEXT nominee, and all of our candidates for Congress and the Senate, to be completely unimplicated in, and implacably opposed to, ANY more killing and ANY more U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

[Boudica the Lyoness]

1. Thank goodness Obama had the balls to

stop ISIS.

If ISIS isn't stopped it will be you they are killing soon.

[grahamhgreen]

2. SO SCARY! But we're far more likely to be killed by police or lack of public health care.

[Boudica the Lyoness]

19. Not so much in England.

[Ken Burch]

5. Humphrey delegates sounded like that in Chicago in '68.

Last edited Sat Aug 9, 2014, 03:59 AM - Edit history (1)

(rewritten so that no longer sounds like a personal slam...at least I hope.)

[Boudica the Lyoness]

26. This is what I hate about DU

the silly name calling.

Why don't you call me a bigot or something while you're at it.

[Ken Burch]

28. It was about the sentiment, not the person.

What that post was was simply an echo of everyone who has ever issued a defense of any unwinnable war in history.

Everyone who went to Chicago as a Humphrey delegate in '68 KNEW they were voting to elect Nixon and defend the indefensible...and yet they mindlessly did it anyway. They didn't CARE how many Vietnamese civilians they were consigning to death, and they didn't care that they were pissing on the dreams and hard work of everyone who had fought hard for Kennedy and McCarthy throughout the primaries. They didn't care that they were making it impossible for anybody to believe the fall campaign still mattered. Democrats of THIS century need to be better than that.

I have nothing against you...but please re-consider what you wrote. You're better than that. Bombing in Iraq can't have any progressive or humanistic results...it can't have any positive results at all.

[BuelahWitch]

18. It's the ghost of Richard Nixon!

Dick, can you give me some good lottery numbers?

[Boudica the Lyoness]

21. Stop calling me a dick.

[cui bono]

38. Wow. Now we've gotten to fearmongering to support war here on DU.

Last week was torture rationalization.

What will next week bring? I'm seriously afraid to find out.

[woo me with science]

47. +1

[m-lekktor]

48. warmongers don't take disagreement well.

remember the fucking teabaggers 10 years ago? I was called every name in the book by hecklers at anti war events.

[TeamPooka]

55. With a mushroom cloud, right? #heardthisshitbefore

[morningfog]

64. Lol! That's the funniest thing I've read all day.

No one believes that. Not even you, lost likely.

[grahamhgreen]

3. Guy was elected to get us out of Iraq, still hasn't closed gitmo and forgives torture... We're toast

if we can't present alternatives to violent aggression.

[newfie11]

42. +infinity!!!!!

[Scuba]

43. + Eighty Gazillion

[Major Hogwash]

4. Joe is not going to run in 2016.

I think he was just throwing that out there to see who would bat it back to him, but it stuck to the wall instead, and nobody really thought that much of it when he said he might run.

Hillary may run again in 2016, but she will never be the President of the United States, so who cares what she does between then and now.

[Purveyor]

6. I have the same pledge for those Dems that still support apartheid israel come

2016.

Enough is enough and I will not vote for any that continues to condone
the 'atrocities' taking place in Gaza and I'm am not limiting those 'atrocites' to the last few weeks. Years is more like it.

That may indeed make it a bleak election year for we liberals and I might add, for the first time since 1976 I didn't bother to vote in the Michigan primary election that was held this past Tuesday.

[Cali_Democrat]

8. Pretty much every Democratic member of Congress backs funding Israel.

...and I'm sure most Dems outside of DC would also back Israel.

Is there a prominent Dem that doesn't back Israel?

Is Israel the most important issue to you as an American? That's a little strange IMO.

[Purveyor]

10. I do consider aparthied/genocide the 'trump card' but we shall see come

November now won't we?

No fucking longer shall I go along, just to get along. My 'goose-stepping' is over and besides it is hell on my back.

[Cali_Democrat]

13. When did this happen? Recently?

Israel has been bombing Palestinian towns for years.

You never decided to base your vote on that until now?

[Cali_Democrat]

7. Regardless of whether or not strikes are still happening in 2016...

...you still wouldn't want them to run.

Seems like you're trotting this out as an excuse to call on them not to run.

[Ken Burch]

12. Wrong...it's about an issue of common decency and common humanity.

Hubert Humphrey should have done the decent thing and absolutely refused to run as Johnson's chosen anti-peace candidate in '68...and this is the same thing.

And I'll extend it to anybody else in the party who'd still be defending the bombing if it were still happening at the time.

We can ONLY win in 2016 if we nominate someone who is totally clear of this immoral decision.

A defender of continued bombing by then couldn't do anything distinguishable from a Republican president, and couldn't possibly are about creating a just and fair country for all or a world at peace. It would be like it would have been if the Dems had nominated Scoop Jackson in 1972...even if he'd won, you wouldn't have seen any meaningful change.

[sabrina 1]

14. Did you support the war in Iraq?

[Cali_Democrat]

15. I was protesting in the streets against it.

Did you support the war in Iraq?

[Ken Burch]

16. If you still care about stopping that war...

you CANNOT support the nomination of anyone who isn't an absolute opponent of continuing it. Any candidate who shows even ambiguity on the issue will inevitably be pressured by the insiders into becoming a hawk...as Obama has now been pressured into being.

It's not possible to persuade an Iraq hawk to ever become an Iraq dove, and no other issue justifies giving a candidate a "pass" on that issue. Nothing else matters more. Period.

[sabrina 1]

17. Then why are you supporting the continuation of it now?

[Cali_Democrat]

20. Why didn't you answer my question?

I answered yours.

[Ken Burch]

22. You didn't answer her question about your current position on the slaughter-from-above.

Do you oppose the current bombing, or not? It's a simple and unambiguous question.

BTW, Sabrina is obviously opposed to the war now given what she's indicated in her posts, and if she opposes it now she would have to have opposed it then, so what else does she need to say? Are you saying that, if you were in antiwar protests then, it's ok for you to be prowar now?

If that's not what you're saying...what are you saying, then?

[sabrina 1]

27. I'm a liberal who has never supported Right Wing war crimes even when they are supported

by some Democrats.

I opposed that war from the beginning, before it was even obvious they were going to do it. Because we knew they would use 9/11 to do it.

I worked against them and their invasion and when that failed, I worked to get Democrats elected in order to stop it AND to start the prosecution of the war criminals who lied us into that invasion, since we failed to stop them.

I NEVER support Right Wing criminal policies even when some Dems go along with them.

So why are you supporting the continuation of the Iraq War now?

[Scuba]

44. +1

[Boudica the Lyoness]

25. Here's my view on that..

The war in Iraq was an invasion. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed. Saddam was contained with the no-fly zones and international weapons inspectors were looking for the mythical WMD.

ISIS was bombed because they were advancing on and going to kill 50,000 innocents.

I think this nasty mess is a result if Bush and Co invading Iraq in the first place. If the US and friends hadn't had stuck their stick in the hornets nest this wouldn't be happening to those 50,000 people. From what I understand, under Saddam, Christians and other's were allowed to live unmolested.

I don't consider this a continuation of the war. No boots on the ground this time.

BTW; I was very anti invading Iraq. My son, who is retiring this year from the USAF, went to Iraq.

[Ken Burch]

29. All U.S. military involvement in the middle east is exactly the same.

And it's impossible for any politician who defends or takes part in planning the bombing of Iraq to ever to anything progressive or morally redeeming later. Any who took part in this are morally blighted for life, beyond redemption.

[xocet]

37. I agree with your viewpoint. Bush et al created this mess.

If the US can save about 50,000 people from death, it is not wrong to try to do so.

Iraq's Yazidis trapped, hiding from ISIS in the mountains
By Nick Thompson, CNN
updated 7:23 PM EDT, Fri August 8, 2014

(CNN) -- No food. No water. And as they pass the hours in the scorching summer heat, no escape for 40,000 desperate people hiding in the mountains of northwestern Iraq from the killers surrounding them on the ground below.

When fighters from ISIS, which refers to itself as the Islamic State, stormed Sinjar over the weekend, the Yazidi minority who call the area home fled into the nearby mountains in fear of their lives. Some of them didn't make it.

"We heard sounds of mortars and in the morning they (Islamic militants) entered Sinjar," Zahra Jardo, a Yazidi woman who escaped the violence, told Reuters. "So we fled to the mountains, and those who stayed there are now suffering from thirst. They have no water. They also took girls and raped them. They said that Yazidis have to be converted to Islam."

The Yazidis, descendants of Kurds who follow an ancient pre-Islamic religion, have only bad options: continue to hide in the Sinjar Mountains and die of thirst, or come down from the mountains and be massacred by the radical Sunni militants who are forcing Islam or death on the communities they overtake as they sweep across Syria and Iraq.

...

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/08/world/meast/iraq-yazidi-people/

[Ken Burch]

39. We should just repatriate the Yazidis to the States.

If we have to bomb to "protect" them now, we'll have to KEEP bombing to "protect" them later. It isn't possible to "win" wars in the Middle East anymore...if it ever was.

Nothing is ever worth perpetual bombing and perpetual killing.

[LTX]

41. Presumably by teleporting them - first to the Enterprise, then to Southern California. n/t

[xocet]

46. That is an idea that would be difficult to implement, but it might be worthwhile under certain...

circumstances.

However, if we have to bomb now to protect the Yazidis from militants who would kill them right now, especially if those militants are using our weapons that the Iraqi Army abandoned, then it is perfectly ok to bomb the militants. Once those weapons are destroyed, the Iraqi government has had a chance to reform itself, and the Kurds have had some of the pressure taken off of them, perhaps the Iraqis and the Kurds can take up the role of protecting their respective areas along with all their citizens with improved effectiveness.

It does not seem to follow from this that perpetual bombing is necessary.

Perpetual killing seems to be a unfortunate and tragic feature of this world. However, this killing seldom manifests itself as preventable ethnic cleansing. When that situation is about to occur, it should be prevented from happening - just as the nations of the world should have acted to prevent the Holocaust, and the nations of the world should have acted to prevent the Rwandan genocide. What would your argument have been in those cases?

The goal of the current bombing campaign is a realizable finite goal. It is not about winning a war. No one ever wins a war anywhere. It is about preventing the immediate deaths of thousands of civilians.

Ultimately, the statement that "Nothing is ever worth perpetual bombing and perpetual killing." is true, but the statement is meaningless hyperbole because nothing that is real can ever require either perpetual bombing or perpetual killing.

[ReRe]

9. But, but, but....

... we have to be more like the Republicans! We'll never win another election!

[Scuba]

45. +1

[gordianot]

23. The United States may well not survive a Republican administration.

In spite of Obama's central theme Blue America and Red America being one America, partisan divisions are deeper than ever and permanent. I cannot find one Republican I can agree with about anything on any issue. I come closer to some trust of a Democrat to whom I have reservations than any Republican alive today who has expressed any interest in becoming President.

[Ken Burch]

24. I didn't say vote Republican.

The thing is, it would cancel out anything positive about any Democratic candidate if that candidate, in the primaries of 2016, was still backing the continued bombing of Iraq. Any decent person would have a moral obligation to oppose the nomination as a Democrat of anyone who still backed the Iraq bombing, if that bombing were continuing at that time.

Nominating a bombing apologist would be just as unconscionable as nominating Hubert Humphrey was in '68, or nominating Scoop Jackson would have been in '72.

No one who isn't a bigoted right-wing extremist would WANT us to nominate a person like that in '16...and no one who WOULD want us to nominate someone like that would vote Democratic at any level.

The ONLY way to win in 2016 is to nominate someone who is progressive, pro-peace other than defense of U.S. territory, and completely free of any involvement in these bombings.

[gordianot]

31. No life is not that easy.

The old tried and true Democratic tradition of tearing the guts out of each other in a primary is the perfect recipe for disaster. I figure what you describe may well come to pass, the alternative is vote Republican. We are at the "it can happen here moment"!

The stakes are much greater than the days of Humphrey and Nixon. As I recall Nixon had to get out of Dodge, that much agreement and oversight is long gone and will never return.

[Ken Burch]

34. It doesn't have to be tearing ANYONE's guts out.

We just need to make sure we don't have anyone running who defends continued bombing or other continued military involvement in the Middle East...ALL of which is immoral and reactionary.

Why can't we have only positive, inclusive, pro-peace progressives running in '16? Why do we even NEED any Scoop Jackson types in the mix? There's no such thing anymore as a voter who has progressive views on domestic issues AND wants us to keep trying to rearrange the rest of the world by force. Those days are gone and those voters no longer exist...they all turned into Reaganites in the Eighties and none ever voted Democratic again.

If we just nominate the person the media declares the frontrunner at the beginning of '16, we can't win. We can't win in a race no one can feel anything but bitter resignation about.

And there's no way nominating a pro-bombing, status-quo Dem in '16 will open the door to nominating a progressive later. You don't open the door by keeping it closed.

[gordianot]

40. You have chosen your issue good luck.

[Rapillion]

30. I wonder

Is this really the decisive issue? Iraq is one of about 100 foreign policy issues and there thousands of domestic ones.

Iraq is not Vietnam and 2016 is not 1968.

[Ken Burch]

32. If we're still in Iraq in 2016, nothing any Democrat or progressive supports

will even be possible. War is the enemy of all positive social change and all positive things in life.

We can't have a continuing war in 2016 and still have a race in which there are any meaningful disagreements between the Democrats and Republicans...the funds needed for ANY war are always stolen from the resources needed to fight poverty and inequality, or to give workers higher wages, or to clean up the environment.

Things that don't involve spending...like abortion rights or who gets to marry who...are worthy but minor compared to the things that are needed to be done to make this a just nation. And no one should be blown to bits in some other country just to get a couple of "Democratic" Supreme Court justices.

[woo me with science]

65. Excellent post. nt

[gordianot]

35. You are right there are a multitude of potential disasters 1968 is a walk in the park in comparison.

Oh my, which one to choose and make sure you lose.

[MirrorAshes]

33. If we'd listened to Biden,

We might have actually stabilized the region. He had more foresight than anybody else in what might actually work there.

[Ken Burch]

36. But he'll defend the bombings if he runs.

His silence now proves that.

He'll be this year's Humphrey-in-'68(without the pro-worker liberalism, of course). Why would we even WANT that?

[PowerToThePeople]

49. [phone]. They are war criminals

Those that voted to authorize violated the Geneva Convention. They are war criminals.

[conservaphobe]

50. I only vote on issues that affect my wallet.

Democratic administrations have been good to me and my family.

I will gladly nominate either to the ticket.

[OKNancy]

57. your post was alerted and was 0-7 to leave!

LOL

[PowerToThePeople]

58. For posterity sake

conservaphobe (779 posts)
50. I only vote on issues that affect my wallet.

Democratic administrations have been good to me and my family.

I will gladly nominate either to the ticket.

[Autumn]

51. Moral right??? These politician don't need a moral right to run. Just money and corporate backers.

They have plenty of that. All we have to do is vote for the democrat.

[elleng]

52. By that standard Wes Clark should have been elected,

should be in this administration, and should be elected in 2016, but how many agree?

[grasswire]

53. he's not too old to run.

I'd go for Wes Clark and Ambassador Joe Wilson

[elleng]

56. No, he's not too old.

just 69 now. Ambassador Wilson would add some MORE needed experience.

[former9thward]

60. "just 69 now"

I am sorry. That is too old.

[elleng]

61. I guess you're thirty-something, eh?

[former9thward]

62. I am not running for President so my age does not matter.

But I would rather see a candidate closer to the Constitutional minimum of 35 than to the age of Social Security eligibility.

[TeamPooka]

54. How are you linking HRC to the current actions of an administration she is not part of anymore?

That's a heck of a leap.
By your logic no Democrat would be allowed to run.

[Ken Burch]

63. The bombing campaign reflects her mindset.

HRC ALWAYS argues for the most militaristic and right-wing option in any foreign policy question. If she'd beem elected in 2008, we'd have continued at full tilt in Iraq, with no draw-down at all. And she still harbors the delusion that force can have progressive, humanistic and, most absurdly of all, feminist results.

This, despite the fact that no U.S. use of force has had any such results since VE Day.

[liberal N proud]

59. Projections