Monday, August 13, 2007

The Democrats Are Selling Out the Peace Movement

And much of the peace movement is selling out to the Democrats…

By Justin Raimondo

".......how in the name of all that's holy can these people support any of the Democratic "majors" in the race for the White House? After all, the leading Democratic candidates for president support keeping our troops in Iraq – for years, as the New York Times reports.....

When the rhetoric really begins to smoke, they'll spark a shooting war by overblowing some border incident and framing the war question in terms of regaining America's "honor." Will we "cut and run"? Or stand and fight? It's an argument the War Party always wins – until it comes out that the incident in question was either completely manufactured (as in the Gulf of Tonkin incident [.pdf] during the Vietnam War era), provoked by the Americans, or wildly exaggerated.

Unfortunately, at that late date, it's hard if not impossible to do anything about it: the war has already begun, the orgy of "patriotic" mindlessness is unleashed, and cries of "we're here, we have to make the best of it" drown out all else. Stripped of partisan hoo-hah, rhetorical pandering to the base, and outright demagogy, that is the basic Democratic position on the war, and the core of Hillary Rodham Clinton's stance......

The neocon project is all about creating a reliable ally in the region, a base from which to wage new wars of "liberation" – and ensure American control over much of the world's dwindling oil supply. What the Democrats are promising, therefore, is to be more successful at being imperialists than their incompetent Republican rivals. This is a distinction without a difference, one that is certainly not worth either voting for or even passively cheering on in the name of "change." After all, it could well be a change for the worse.

I know that's hard to imagine, at present, but, then again, it always is. It is not all that inconceivable that the Democrats will take up where the Republicans left off. With Iran looming in the background as the next theater in our perpetual "war on terrorism," all the major Democratic candidates are outdoing each other in appeasing the Israel lobby and pledging to confront Tehran......."

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