This Post Is An Attack On The Democratic Party

October 17, 2011 in Montana

by lizard

The midterm elections of 2006 saw strong national Democratic gains in Congress due in large part to their opportunistic co-optation of the anti-war sentiment against Bush’s preemptive war doctrine. People like me voted for politicians like Jon Tester based on the stated intentions of politicians like Nancy Pelosi, that giving them congressional control would mean a check on Bush’s recklessness. I was very happy that Jon Tester won a squeaker of a race here in Montana.

To highlight the sentiment before the 2006 elections, here is the lead in to a NYT article published November 2nd, 2006:

A substantial majority of Americans expect Democrats to reduce or end American military involvement in Iraq if they win control of Congress next Tuesday and say Republicans will maintain or increase troop levels to try to win the war if they hold on to power on Capitol Hill, according to the final New York Times/CBS News poll before the midterm election.

But Democrats failed to do anything substantial to address Bush’s preemptive war based on lies. Two years later, the American electorate gave Democrats the White House with the election of a president who capitalized on the broad disgust over Bush’s destructive eight year reign, and though Obama was more hawkish on the campaign trail than many in the anti-war movement would have liked, there was hope that the change promised would include getting us out of Iraq (so we could fight the “right” war in Afghanistan).

Now it’s 2011, and despite the Obama administration’s best efforts to keep as many as 10,000 troops in Iraq, that number has reportedly been conceded by administration officials to potentially be as low as 3,0000.

Administration and Pentagon officials had hoped to secure Iraqi-government approval for a larger troop presence in Iraq into 2012, with the U.S. recently pushing for a final figure of around 10,000. But administration officials have lately come to believe that approval would be hard to get for anything more than a few thousand troops.

So the administration will continue to reluctantly draw down troops from the total political/economic disaster that has been our eight year occupation of Iraq, but that won’t stop them from continuing to deploy a dangerous, incompetent foreign policy.

Like, for example, with Iran.

A used-car salesmen, a DEA agent posing as a Mexican drug cartel member, and an alleged plan to assassinate a Saudi Arabian ambassador. This absurd plot (which professionals like Ray McGovern are trying to digest) has apparently provided the Democrats an opportunity for some more unnecessary saber rattling against Iran. And to ratchet up the tension, Democrat Diane Feinstein goes to Fox news of all places to say irresponsible shit like this:

The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says the thwarted Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States shows the “collision course” that awaits unless Iran changes directions.

“To cross to the other side of the world and try and attack in this country is an escalation,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on “Fox News Sunday.” “And that’s what concerns us.”

This “collision course” with Iran is something neocons and their Israeli allies have been lusting after for quite some time, and Obama is either powerless to shift that trajectory, or willingly condones this dangerous rhetorical escalation.

Based on his casual use of the US military to impose regime change in Libya under the cover of NATO and “humanitarian intervention”, I tend to think the latter.

Oh, and I guess over the weekend we now have troops advisers heading to Uganda to help dispose of the Lord’s Resistance Army:

The White House says the first troops arrived in Uganda on Wednesday. Ultimately, they will also deploy in South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Congo.

A White House announcement said the troops will be combat-equipped but are not to engage in combat except in self-defense. It said they will aid in removing LRA leader Joseph Kony “from the battlefield.”

America, global cop. Fuck yeah.

This post is a clear attack on the Democratic party, and at this point, I really don’t care what party loyalists want to say about the messenger. Call me morally bankrupt, half-baked, incoherent, and self-righteous. My message remains the same: Democrats fail by design.

I’ve been waiting 6 years for Democrats to shift the dangerous trajectory of our foreign policy. I’ve voted for politicians who pay lip service to doing just that, then, once in office, they do the opposite.

It’s time to step outside the two wings of the war party. It’s time to #occupysanity.