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Democrats And Their Chilling Apathy Toward War

By Caitlin Johnstone
Published on: 23:16 PST, Aug 31, 2016

War is, quite literally, the worst thing in the world. And Democrats are fine with it.

Remember when George W. Bush outraged liberals with his illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq? Remember when support for that disastrous war cost Hillary Clinton the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008? Well, it turns out all that opposition to the Iraq invasion had nothing to do with the all the death, destruction, suffering, slavery, rape, chaos, and terrorism which were inflicted upon the region as a result of the invasion and forced regime change, but was in reality due solely to the fact that the war was overseen by a Republican president.

The Democratic party now has as its presidential nominee a candidate who not only supported the Iraq invasion, but continued saying she had no regrets about that decision long after it became clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found there, and then later said that America should look at Iraq as a “business opportunity.” With much self-congratulatory fanfare, the Democrats have gleefully nominated a candidate who helped violently end the lives of 4,486 U.S. soldiers and more than a million Iraqi human beings with hopes, dreams, and families just like you and me.

She led the interventionist charge in America’s crucial role in toppling the Qaddafi regime in Libya, persuading a reluctant Obama administration to back the rebels and help depose the nation’s leader. When Qaddafi was killed and his body mutilated in the streets, Hillary Clinton laughed about it on national television. The nation has been immersed in violence and chaos since that time.

And it doesn’t end there. From Syria to Honduras, it’s fair to say that Hillary Clinton has been remarkably consistent in pushing for increased military interventionism throughout her political career. She has even been critical of the Obama administration for being too reluctant to utilize military aggression, despite the fact that Obama (who consistently spoke out against the Iraq invasion) has bombed seven countries, dropping 23,144 bombs on them in 2015 alone.

But that isn’t what I find so disturbing here. What I find absolutely terrifying is how the Democrats have been so overwhelmingly accepting of it.

I’d like to offer a few hypothetical situations for your consideration to help illustrate what I mean, my lovely Democratic friends. I’d appreciate it if you’d join me in exploring this rabbit hole real quick.

Consider the Iraq invasion for a moment. I know Hillary Clinton was not solely responsible for inflicting that unforgivable evil upon the earth, but she undeniably helped. Please consider the fact that if Hillary Clinton had helped participate in a deep south lynch mob, where, say, a young black man was tortured to death by many people after a mock trial, nobody would ever forgive her for that. If she was just the one who brought the kerosene and helped bind the man’s hands, she would still be viewed by the public as an evil monster, even if she wasn’t the leader of the mob, and even if she wasn’t the sole executioner. And the Iraq invasion unleashed far, far more needless death, destruction and suffering upon the world than any lynching.

Another hypothetical situation I’d like you to consider is this: what if Hillary Clinton had helped bring that destruction over here? What if your neighborhood was turned into rubble? What if it was you who didn’t know if your family was alive or dead? What if it was your kids getting ripped apart by cluster bombs? What if it was your sister getting sold into sex slavery by ISIS because Clinton helped destabilize the region? Would you be so forgiving of Hillary’s oopsie if you knew she’d had anything to do with visiting that destruction upon your world? If not, then why are you so accepting of it happening somewhere else? To other people’s neighborhoods and loved ones?

It’s absolutely stunning how compartmentalized Americans are about the reality of war and what it does, and this election cycle has really brought all that to the surface. The few Democrats who have been brave enough to face up to the reality of Hillary Clinton’s part in this horror usually justify their support for their candidate by saying something to the effect of “Well, Trump would probably be even worse!” or “But Trump wants to deport immigrants and build a wall!” I’m not here to support Trump, but it’s entirely baseless to say that he’ll be more warlike than a candidate whose entire career promises to be a lot more bloody than the already blood-soaked administration which preceded it. Trump’s platform has actually been less interventionist than Clinton’s in many ways.

With regard to Trump’s vile and hateful domestic policy, I offer you another thought experiment: Picture a busload of immigrants being deported back to Mexico. Now, picture a room full of children’s bodies blown apart by a cluster bomb. Which image brings up a more visceral reaction for you? This one is challenging, I know, but please bear with me. Picture the room full of bombed children killed in one of Hillary’s corporatist wars, and now imagine a gay couple being sad because Trump appointed a pair conservative justices to the Supreme Court, and now the gay couple is being deprived of some of their rights. Which is worse? Again, room full of dead children, bodies shredded by cluster munitions, or a Muslim being denied entry into the United States?

I’m not trying to defend Trump’s positions on any of these issues, or to dismiss the importance of immigrants’ rights, gay rights or Muslim rights, I’m trying to drive home my point that war is far, far worse than anything else on the table. There is nothing worse than war. War is the craziest, most destructive, least sustainable thing that human beings do. If war had never been invented, and you tried to pitch the idea of it to a world leader today, they’d recoil in horror and think you were insane. But the Democratic candidate is in love with it.

The truth is that neither candidate should be anywhere near the highest political office on planet earth. Seriously, how much evil would these two people have to wreak before Americans decide they’re disqualified for the position? If they each ate a human baby every morning, would Democrats say “Well I’m not crazy about her baby-eating policy, but at least she has a favorable position on immigration!” I sincerely want to know, because it doesn’t seem like there’s anything so vile that Democrats would consider it a deal breaker.

We have a problem, America. We’ve got a candidate on the right whose words disqualify him from the presidency, and a candidate whose actions disqualify her from the presidency on the left, but we’re being told that they’re our only choices. Something’s gotta change.

[Photo by AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster]

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