Bernie Sanders As Commander in Chief?
March 14, 2016 at 5:15 pm | Posted in Conceited, Fairness, Presidential election, Terrorism | Leave a commentTags: : Bernie Sanders, Commander in Chief, defense, Hillary Clinton, ISIS, Presidential election, refugees
Flag of the Islamic State.
This flag is also used by al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and Boko Haram. Graphic by Yo.
Here are some questions about Bernie Sander’s fitness to be the Commander in Chief.
Does Bernie Sanders agree that we need a capable – hence adequately funded – Department of Defence?
What capabilities of the Department of Defence does Bernie Sanders want to enhance?
How does Bernie Sanders plan to respond to the non-traditional military sitiations posed by terrorism and by countries (Syria, Russia, China, North Korea) that sneer at international law?
What policies does Bernie Sanders think should govern the use of drones?
What are his thoughts on collateral damage?
What areas of defense R&D does Bernie Sanders think needs to be pursued? What new weapons and tactical capabilities are needed?
What is Bernie Sander’s rough estimate of the proper level of funding for the Department of Defense next year? How many Divisions and how many aircraft carriers should we have?
A Syrian soldier aims an AK-47 assault rifle wearing a Soviet-made, model ShMS nuclear–biological–chemical warfare mask.
Unknown author – http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/0JoLDPpw5WbYCMAmPsXL1g
When Assad used chemical weapons against peaceful Syrians, did Bernie Sanders support the idea of US participation in setting up a no-fly zone to protect Syrian civilians from attack by Assad’s military? (A no-fly zone was not set up after Asaad’s use of chemical weapons, despite our prior hollow talk of a ‘red line’. That created a vacuum. That vacuum helped catpult ISIS into becoming a priminent player. Our lack of follow-through, and the hollowness of our threat, bears a major responsibility for the flourishing of ISIS.)
What would Bernie Sanders do to protect the non-extremist anti-Assad groups in Syria from Assad, and from Putin?
What would Bernie Sanders do to protect the very effective Kurdish fighters against attacks by Erdogan’s authoritarian Turkey?
Yazidi refugees and American aid workers on Mount Sinjar in August 2014″
USAID U.S. Agency for International Development – https://www.flickr.com/photos/usaid_images/14783000490
What would Bernie Sanders do about the desparate refugees who have fled ISIS?
Any candidate who cannot come up with thoughful, practical answers to these questions is utterly unfit to be commander and chief.
Any candidate who has not already pondered these questions is utterly unfit to be commander and chief.
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During the Presidential election, that will be obvious to anyone who values practical effects over wishful thinking.
Being good-hearted is not enough.
Economic fairness is important, but do not underestimate the importance that most voters assign to:
– adequate defense
– our role in supporting international fairness
– and to being respected internationally, and effective internationally.
Some of those latter urgeswere a major factor in the ability of Mussolini and Hitler to replace open political systems by authoritarian ones.
Those same aspects drive Putin’s high popularity in the face of the economic disaster he has brought to Russia.
The importance of same aspects are why China follows an aggressive, nationalistic policies in south-east Asia, despite the political and economic backlash from neighboring countries, and because of China’s falling rate of economic growth.
In the Presidential election, a candidate that lives in dream-land will lose to a candidate who at least cares about what is achievable, no matter how ill-considered are that candidate’s specific goals and paths to those goals.
So a vote in the primary for a well-intentioned candidate who does not care about defense and about foreign policy will inadvertantly aid the victory of the candidate of the opposite party, as long as that competing candidate does have strong opinions (however stupid) about defense and foreign policy.
Remember how votes for the egotist Ralph Nader first made George Bush president instead of Al Gore, and then four years later help George Bush win a second term. (Recall also Nader’s hypocritical claim that there would be no difference between Gore and Bush presidencies.)
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CREDO and MoveOn
October 25, 2014 at 4:19 pm | Posted in Enemies of Freedom, Terrorism | 1 CommentTags: ActBlue, al Qaeda, AmeriCares, Anna Galand, Becky Bond, Boko Haram, Color of Change, CREDO, CREDO Action, DCCC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democrats.org, DNC, DSCC, Ilya Sheyman, ISIS, Josh Nelson, Mari Tchijov, Matt Blizek, MoveOn, my.democrats.org, Nita Chaudhary, Organizing for Action, Patty Murray, Sister Simone Campbell, Susan Sarandon, Taliban, UltraViolet, Victoria Kaplan, Zack Malitz
Study for the head of a young man sitting in the foreground to the right of the fresco The Reconciliation between Aemilius Lepidus and Fulvius Flaccus of the Sala del Concistoro in Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Drawing acquired by the French state in 2004 for the Musée du Louvre, département des Arts graphiques, Domenico di Pace Beccafumi (1484–1551), 1520s, Musée du Louvre, département des Arts graphiques, Paris, France. Source: Livre De la Renaissance à l’Âge baroque : une collection de dessins italiens pour les musées de France. Exposition présentée au Musée du Louvre, salle de la Chapelle, du 8 juin au 29 août 2005. Paris : Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2005. ISBN 9782711849758
When well-intentioned organizations do not think things through, they can cause great harm.
Such is the case for CREDO and for MoveOn.
Both organizations are idealistic, and aspire to be humane.
But their opposition to the use of lethal force has become reflexive and unthinking. The result is that both organizations inadvertantly facilitate cruelty and evil.
Both organizations have become enablers of what they claim to oppose.
By opposing military action against ISIS, both organizations now facilitate beheadings, barbaric rules for women (stifling their natural human diversity), military action by ISIS, and by emulators of ISIS, such as the Taliban and Boko Haram. Indirectly, the attitudes esposed by CREDO and by MoveOn facilitate all those who chafe at the constraints imposed on civilzed behavior, including Putin (the great emulator of Mussolini), and the Chinese police, in their treatment of both real and imagined differences of opinion.
This comes on top of CREDO’s opposition to punishing Assad for using chemical weapons. All those who suffered from Assad’s subsequent use of barrel bombs, and his other attacks on civilians, owe their suffering in part to CREDO.
CREDO and MoveOn, you are facilitating evil by others. You are facilitating the suffering of innocents.
You are asking the open societies of the world to be suicidally passive.
If that is not the case, then prove it, by specifying specific situtations where you would regard the use of lethal force as justified.
Becky Bond, you are facilitating beheadings, barbaric rules for women, and the torture and killing and enslaving and coercion of innocents.
Zack Malitz, you are facilitating beheadings, barbaric rules for women, and the torture and killing and enslaving and coercion of innocents.
Josh Nelson, you are facilitating beheadings, barbaric rules for women, and the torture and killing and enslaving and coercion of innocents.
The same is true of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Anna Galand, Matt Blizek, Mari Tchijov, Sister Simone Campbell, Ilya Sheyman, Victoria Kaplan, and Susan Sarandon.
Astoundingly, the Democratic National Committee (the DNC), which should know better, recently broadcast an email promoting CREDO. That block-headed decision has proviked the present posting.
DNC, you are facilitating the torture and killing and enslaving and coercion of innocents.
Anyone who signs any of CREDO’s or MoveOn’s petitions is contributing to those organization’s facilitating of beheadings, barbaric rules for women, and the torture and killing and enslaving and coercion of innocents. The goal of an individual petition may be worthy, such as for overturning Citizens United, but more thoughtful organizations offer similar petitions.
Anyone who contributes to CREDO or to MoveOn is contributing to those organization’s facilitating of beheadings, barbaric rules for women, and the torture and killing and enslaving and coercion of innocents.
I contributed over $1000 to Obama’s first campaign.
Many emailed requests to sign petitions and to contribute have arrived come from CREDO and MoveOn and the DNC since the DNCs email promoting CREDO. All have been for causes I strongly support. Ordinarily, as in the past, I would have signed and contributed.
But ever since CREDO and MoveOn announced their opposition to using lethal force against ISIS and similar groups, it has become immoral to do so, even for the causes I support. I will continue to promote those causes, but not by any route that is associated with CREDO and MoveOn. Contributing or adding my voice to those two organizations or their facilitators, such as the DNC, would prolong the agony of those who are injured by ISIS and by those other vicious organizations, it would promote cruelty, intolerance, and would retard the continued existence of open socities, and their spreading.
No person who understands this should contribute to any of the organizations named above, for any of the causes they espouse, until those organizations rethink their positions about the use of lethal force against ISIS, the Taliban, al Qaeda, Boko Haram and like organizations, and Assad.
There are other organizations to which it might still be moral to contribute, since I am not aware of their having promoted CREDO and MoveOn. But after the DNC’s surprising decision to do so, we cannot be sure, until they make explicit their own positions on the use of lethal force.
The organizations in question are the DSCC (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee), Color of Change, ActBlue, AmeriCares, Organizing for Action, DCCC, and UltraViolet.
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