The Middle East needs Senator Bernie Sanders, not a neoconservative Hillary Clinton
Senator Bernie Sanders is chipping away at Hillary Clinton’s lead in Iowa and New Hampshire. If he wins both the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary, the odds favor Sanders to win the Democratic Nomination in 2016. Perhaps the most important element of Sanders’s surge is the fact that he voted against the Iraq War, while Hillary Clinton voted for the quagmire.
The Middle East needs an American president with the wisdom of Bernie Sanders, not Hillary Clinton, since the current turmoil in the region needs less American military involvement; not a continuation of past mistakes. In addition, Bernie Sanders literally foreshadowed the repercussions of removing Saddam from Iraq. He voiced vehement opposition to sending Americans into a counterinsurgency conflict, despite the fact that 72% of Americans supported the Iraq War in 2003 and the political climate equated war with patriotism.
While Sanders never cared about polls or political expediency, others don’t have this value system. True, Clinton called her vote a “mistake,” however this mistake cost America dearly and destabilized the Middle East. Almost 4,500 Americans were killed in combat in Iraq, over 32,000 Americans were wounded in combat, and close to two-thirds of Americans killed or wounded in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan were the victims of IED blasts. As for the Iraqi death toll from civil war (starting shortly after the fall of Saddam), one estimate states 500,000 Iraqis have died. To put the war in perspective for Iraqis, during George Bush’s last four years in office, there were 19,535 terrorist attacks and from 2003-2010, Iraqis experienced 1,003 suicide bombings. Unspeakable catastrophe, not “mistake,” are the words that should be correlated to Clinton’s Iraq War vote.
In early 2015, when 62% of registered voters supported sending American ground troops to fight ISIL, Senator Sanders stated that Muslim countries should send their own ground troops to fight ISIL, not America. Sanders, unlike Clinton and GOP candidates, has clearly articulated his views on American involvement in the Middle East. In late 2014 on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, Vermont’s Senator called for Arab nations, not the U.S., to fight ISIL and other regional threats:
You have countries like Saudi Arabia sitting right, sharing the border with Iraq which has the fourth largest defense budget in the world more than U.K., more than France. They have 200,000 soldiers in their army.
Ed, where are these guys? They have a major air force. You have Turkey sitting over there. If this becomes a war between the United States and ISIS, the West and the East Christianity and Islam, it`s a losing proposition. It is what ISIS wants.
This is, as I understand it, a war for the soul of Islam and if that is the
case, the Muslim countries in that area have got to stand up and they have got to fight. They have got to provide the ground troops.
Should the United States, the U.K., France be supportive, provide weapons?
More here: http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/Political-Analysis-Without-Euphemism-or-Hyperbole/The-Middle-East-Needs-Senator-Bernie-Sanders-Not-a-Neoconservative-Hillary-Clinton-407910
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