An excellent 13-minute video on America’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria, etc. Featuring Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), and Cato Institute Fellow Emma Ashford. Produced by Free The People.
23 thoughts on “State of War Video on America’s Forever Wars”
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The concept of David slaying Goliath was possible in the days or yore and will continue to be a possibility going forward. The business of bomb making is flush with cash but these days a solid and inspiring idea (allow the marketplace to provide energy by whatever method is available] can defeat hundreds of millions of dollars[1].
[1]Mandated green energy lost in Arizona even though Tom Steyer funded it. https://ballotpedia.org/Arizona_Proposition_127,_Renewable_Energy_Standards_Initiative_(2018)
Except the “marketplace” is full of billions of dollars owned by corporate monopolists who’ve been pushing loot and pillage wars all over the planet. It’s just billionaire’s against billionaires since capitalism has destroyed society.
I don’t quite grok your statement. Yes there are corporate monopolist billionaires advocating for wars of death and destruction. Some of them support the various and sundry 2020 Democratic POTUS candidates yet I believe all the money behind the Military Congressional Industrial Complex will be for naught because Tulsi Gabbard is going to trounce each and every one of her primary opponents despite their greater experience and their support by the Status Quo.
https://ballotpedia.org/Tulsi_Gabbard
Prediction: Tulsi has a fair — not great, but fair — chance of carrying Hawaii, if she hasn’t dropped out by then.
There isn’t a single Democratic candidates for POTUS that I would even notice missing if they dropped out. Absent safety threats á la Ross Perot I would be surprised and disappointed if Tulsi Gabbard dropped out. Time will tell.
https://www.electionbettingodds.com/
And she may not drop out. If she doesn’t, I give her reasonable odds of doing well in her home state after finishing 3rd or lower in Iowa, New York, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Louisiana, and Puerto Rico.
She doesn’t appeal very well to either the Democratic establishment or the Democratic left. She does fairly well with people who prioritize anti-war, if they don’t look too closely. But that’s a small crowd in the Democratic Party, and some of them do look closely, then talk about it.
Wikipedia lists five endorsers for her so far. The most prominent one is a Hawaii state legislator whose last name is Gabbard.
Personally, I think she’ll drop out fairly early — in fact, before the Iowa caucus — for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that she’s not a fucking idiot and therefore knows she’s about as likely to be elected president as you are.
Assuming the rules aren’t changed, she’ll make the cut for the early Democratic debates. That will raise her profile nicely, and give her options. The three that come to mind, in descending order of likelihood, are:
1) Drop out, endorse and work hard for the likely Democratic nominee, and hope for a cabinet position in a 2021 Democratic administration;
2) Drop out, endorse and work hard for the likely Democratic nominee, and run for governor of Hawaii in 2022 (or US Senate if Hirono or Schatz decide to move on in 2022or 2024); or
2) Drop out, endorse and work hard for Donald Trump, and plausibly expect a cabinet appointment in a second Trump administration.
In the end all support depends on which issue a person really prioritizes. For me its end the occupation and wasteful wars and audit the federal reserve. Given that most political candidates don’t have either item on their top four list I get excited about anybody that does.
As for “She does fairly well with people who prioritize anti-war, if they don’t look too closely.” what are the issues/positions/past that would be more important among those people that prioritize anti-war?
As for the various scenarios I will claim the position of court fool by believing that she doesn’t need to work hard for anybody else, they need to work hard to be allowed to be in a buddy photo with her.
“what are the issues/positions/past that would be more important among those people that prioritize anti-war?”
Among other things, her affiliations with the Israel lobby and with India’s BJP/Hindutva nationalists, which may become a lot more … politically interesting … if the Kashmir situation doesn’t cool back down in a hurry.
Speaking of which, while many Americans don’t particularly care what religion their politicians claim to practice, many do. Hindus constitute less than 1% of the US population, and probably a much smaller percentage of its voting citizenry. There are probably 50 many times as voters who would not, under any circumstances, vote for a Hindu presidential candidate than there are who would actively prefer one.
As for the Israel lobby I rather think she could still be better than Trump based on her words on Yemen. I could be formulating such being the case based on rose tinted hopes.
Pakistan vs. India would certainly make for a more interesting scenario. Time will tell.
As for her religion JFK and Nixon got elected (lesser religious variances but I understand they were larger at the time). I rather think I have some feel for people and their tolerance. I’ve visited Catholic/2 Black Christian/couple of other variation churches and have yet to notice people particularly care. Maybe all the people that are of the “not, under any circumstances” I have never met due to personal self-selection (theirs and mine). People seem unaffected by having three Jews (33%) on the US Supreme Court without a hiccup that I can determine.
People these days tolerate quite a bit (I personally find Mexican music at Food City supermarket to be grating but I manage to cope). Even I don’t know the official theological Hindu position on abortion. Likely as practiced it is as fractal as those held by Roman Catholic government officials.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/006157127X/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_FinECbK00T7E7
I think the JFK comparison is apt, as would be a comparison to Romney’s Mormonism as a factor versus his presidential aspirations. The questions that were posed were along the lines of “will Kennedy take his marching orders from the Pope?” or “will Romney take his marching orders from the president/prophet/seer/revelator of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?”
That effect would presumably be greater with respect to Gabbard because of two things:
1) Christianity remains the majority religion in the US, and members of this or that sect can appeal to the shared tradition even if their own sect is treated as suspect by many other sects.
2) On the “marching orders” question, Gabbard isn’t “just a Hindu.” She has long-standing connections/affiliations with Hindu nationalist groups that have taken power in India over the same time frame as her own US political career. Some analysts charge BJP/Hindutva figures with “creating” Gabbard as a political figure from the very start by ensuring her campaigns get financed and so forth. (see, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_V-_AnHXZY).
Her opponents may or may not openly attack her on those grounds, but the whisper campaign is certainly already going in that direction.
There isn’t an “official theological Hindu position” on anything. Hinduism isn’t a single religion, IMO, it’s a very large and very loosely related group of religions. Ditto Christianity and Islam and Buddhism, etc. Once a religion reaches any significant number of adherents, there will be wildly divergent sects traveling under the same umbrella-name, claiming the same historical basis but reaching very different conclusions on all sorts of things. There are more than a billion Hindus. I’d be surprised if there were less than 1,000 sects within its four major denominations.
Interestingly, one criticism I’ve heard of Gabbard is that she’s some kind of “there’s only one true Hinduism, mine” fundamentalist, but the only evidence I’ve seen offered for the claim has to do with those BJP/Hindutva affiliations, which are more political than religious.
Side note: I’m not that interested in attacking Gabbard per se, although I’m not a fan. I am interested in her prospects for 1) the Democratic nomination and 2) the White House.
And at the moment, I’m not seeing that she has any significant prospects in either of those races. Assuming she’s not dumb, and I don’t think she is, her “presidential campaign” is a PR tour aimed at some other actual purpose. Probably a governor’s mansion, US Senate seat, or cabinet position.
I am always willing to admit that the likelihood of Tulsi Gabbard being elected president in 2020 isn’t any more likely, at that moment, than what ElectionBettingOdds puts out any given day (today it is at 1.3%) but my brain continues to visualize a scenario of supporters and funders getting tired of the same old new Democrats falling away and supporters of Gabbard getting more and more amped up as the status Quo Democrat candidates fall away.
https://www.electionbettingodds.com/
What do you think the chances of a dark horse campaign of Kyrsten Sinema/Hillary Clinton? Could that strange thing happen?
Anything CAN happen, but it’s not something that seems likely enough to spend much time thinking about.
If I thought Gabbard’s campaign would and could force the other campaigns to reckon with important foreign policy questions in public, I’d wish her well.
But I don’t think it can. Within the two major parties, Trump has the “not quite so interventionist for the most part” market cornered, whether he actually delivers on it or not. The other Democrats are going to attack Trump, not Gabbard, on foreign policy as such. To the extent that they have to engage her on , they’ll just dismiss her as Trump Lite (“soft on dictators,” etc.) rather than as an alternative to Trump, pick at her on other policy issues, and get their unofficial organs running the whisper campaign gamut (“she used to be anti-gay-marriage, you know — never mind that she got right on that before Hillary Clinton did;” “can a Hindu who wasn’t even born in the United States win the general election, or will it be another ‘birther’ thing but this time with more teeth?” etc.).
I don’t think she’s dumb. She knows she isn’t going to be president, she knows she isn’t going to be the Democratic nominee, and she knows she’s unlikely even as a veep pick. So she’s up to something else. If that something else is breaking the ice for foreign policy to get a more thorough discussion, well, good luck to her, but I think she will fail on that. If that something else is advancing her own career, she’ll make a judgment early this fall about who the likely nominee is going to be, drop out of the race, endorse that likely nominee, bust her ass working for that likely nominee, and then either await her reward in the form of a cabinet or sub-cabinet appointment or call in the chips she’s earned to get herself the governorship of, or a US Senate seat from, Hawaii … after which she might have a shot at the White House someday.
I like Tulsi Gabbard’s antiwar views, but what about her desire to do away with fossil fuels by 2030?
I would like to see an alternative to Trump. I’m so afraid he will eventually get us into a useless, wasteful war with Iran.
Glad wishful thinking makes you feel better. That’d be all fine and dandy if you actually lived in a representative democracy. Problem is, you don’t.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5797c9d60475dab7a554d63b9c9d9d18d44ed423633414c4442af4b91e68ff0c.jpg
The deafening music is not only annoying but it makes the video unwatchable. Whom ever put this disaster of a video together did not want people to watch it or is a complete failure at their job and should be removed. Please correct this and your viewership will increase many times over.
While the music track does slightly obscure the spoken words I disagree that it is anything near deafening. If you cannot make out the words due to the music there are two options, either with the sound muted or not to turn on closed captioning which is 99% accurate on this piece.
If you want your product to be viewed or widely distributed, wouldn’t you want to deliver it in a form that is easy for the recipient. Why would you personally present a product that is difficult to comprehend and outright annoying to try and comprehend. If you are attempting to sabotage the product being widely viewed and disseminated, kudos, job well done!
I have no problem with criticism of the video or its audio track. Your comment, properly titrated, is useful. I reviewed 26 comments on YouTube. None of them had a problem with the audio track. One comment started out “This video is masterfully well put together.”
Look out here come the humanitarians