GOP Platform 2016: Preparing for More War [Update]

[Update] Great insight by Juan Cole:
○ Top Cringe Worthy Foreign Policy Moments in GOP Debate | Informed Comment |

The Democrats are not doing so bad themselves, global terror is on the rise and both Iraq and Afghanistan have not become democratic nations free from violence, on the contrary. ISIS terror has spread from Iraq into Syria and the global jihadists have left the AfPak region and nestled themselves in Arab countries following the so-called Arab Spring or Uprising.

Due to the unrest in the greater Middle-East, Europe has been flooded with refugees and migrants, bolstering the right-wing anti-immigration parties. A world in turmoil is a threat for world peace. It was not just John Bolton under the Bush presidency, but the Obama administration has made the United Nations irrelevant … mission accomplished for Bush & Co and its neocon backers.

Bush went into Iraq because it was good for Israel and had the backing of Ariel Sharon… the U.S. Congress wants war on Iran because Netanyahu says it’s for the security of Israel and the world. Iran is a threat for Europe and the United States. Anno 2016, are the people of the U.S. willing to believe this crap and vote for another right-wing president from the Republican party?

○ Jimmy Carter Uses The Oligarchy Word: Blasts U.S. ‘Political Bribery’

How Likely are the GOP Presidential Candidates Top 10 to drag us into War? | Informed Comment | [links added are mine – Oui]

… sending US troops back into the Middle East and going to war there is virtually a plank in the GOP platform. After the disaster in Iraq, they are actually running on war and against diplomacy for the most part!

I think this saber rattling in part has to do with the advent of truly big money in US politics and the end of campaign finance limitations. Since the Republican Party is in general the representative of the 50% of the economy dominated by big corporations, and since arms manufacturers are among those big companies, the GOP has become increasingly the party of war and belligerence.

Here is how they stand on this key issue of war and peace, life and death:

Donald Trump (with a polling average of 23.4 percent):

“America’s primary goal with Iran must be to destroy its nuclear ambitions. Let me put them as plainly as I know how: Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped-by any and all means necessary. Period. We cannot allow this radical regime to acquire a nuclear weapon that they will either use or hand off to terrorists. Better now than later!”

former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (12.0 percent):

Rejects diplomacy with Iran, wants to send more US troops to embed with the Iraqi army in Iraq.

So, two wars?

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (10.2 percent),

Walker said “that not only would he undo any deal with Iran on his first day as president; he would do so even if our European allies wanted the deal to continue.”

So, brinkmanship and unilateral action.

Opinion: Pope Francis’s ‘attendance’ at GOP debate is going to help sink the party

In my diary from the July 2007, I came across some astute observations or at least astounding remarks …

‘Israel is Holocaust obsessed, Militaristic and Xenophobic’

White man’s burden by Ari Shavit

The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it’s possible. But another journalist, Thomas Friedman (not part of the group), is skeptical.

1. The doctrine

WASHINGTON – At the conclusion of its second week, the war to liberate Iraq wasn’t looking good. Not even in Washington. The assumption of a swift collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime had itself collapsed. The presupposition that the Iraqi dictatorship would crumble as soon as mighty America entered the country proved unfounded. The Shi’ites didn’t rise up, the Sunnis fought fiercely. Iraqi guerrilla warfare found the American generals unprepared and endangered their overextended supply lines. Nevertheless, 70 percent of the American people continued to support the war; 60 percent thought victory was certain; 74 percent expressed confidence in President George W. Bush.

Re: Noam Chomsky…. (4.00 / 7)

A cold war against Iran? Good God, the American foreign policy establishment is just incapable of functioning now that the slow morphine drip of Soviet peril has been withdrawn. They’re like a bunch of old junkies, desperate for the needle.

I can understand why Iran makes Israel jumpy, but it’s not much of a threat to the US, and there is certainly no possibility of its becoming a threat on the scale that the Soviet Union was a threat. There’s just no comparison.

by eodell (eodell at naqada dot org) on Mon Jul 30th, 2007 at 02:10:56 PM PDT