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Weissman writes: "Bernie Sanders sometimes gets it right. Being human like the rest of us, he sometimes gets it wrong. But nowhere is he doing both more than on the one question that could swamp his entire wish list of domestic reforms."

Senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: Jabin Botsford/WP)
Senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: Jabin Botsford/WP)


Will Bernie Ever Rejoin the Anti-War Movement?

By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News

27 June 16

 

ernie Sanders sometimes gets it right. Being human like the rest of us, he sometimes gets it wrong. But nowhere is he doing both more than on the one question that could swamp his entire wish list of domestic reforms. Should the United States continue to intervene militarily in Muslim countries from Afghanistan and Iraq to Syria, Yemen, and Libya?

Most pro-Sanders progressives, of which I’m one, applauded when he repeatedly hammered Hillary Clinton for backing George W. Bush’s war against Saddam Hussein in 2003.

“Does Secretary Clinton have the experience and the intelligence to be a president?” asked CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, at the April 14 primary debate in Brooklyn.

“Of course she does,” Bernie answered. “But I do question her judgment. I question a judgment which voted for the war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country.”

He similarly faulted Hillary for leading the effort to overthrow Muammar Gadhafi in Libya. “This is the same type of mentality that supported the war in Iraq.”

“I surely have always supported Libya moving to democracy,” he directly confronted Clinton. “But please do not confuse that with your active effort for regime change without contemplating what happened the day after.”

In the Brooklyn debate and his continuing fight to reshape the Democratic Party platform, Sanders has also challenged Clinton’s lack of balance on Israel and the Palestinians. He clearly agreed that the Israelis have every right to defend themselves. But he joined most of the world in calling their 2014 attack on Gaza “disproportionate.” He also announced - heaven forbid! - that “we are going to have to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity.”

“We are going to have to say that Netanyahu is not right all of the time,” he declared in a pointed barb at Clinton.

As a result, the latest draft of the party platform now pays homage to “Palestinian aspirations.” But the Clinton majority on the drafting committee decisively rejected any call for “an end to occupation and illegal settlements.”

Bernie also showed enormous skepticism about the use of drones and extra-judicial targeted assassinations. He would use them, he said, but only sparingly. Many times and in many places, he told ABC’s Martha Raddatz, drones “have been absolutely counter-effective and have caused more problems than they have solved. When you kill innocent people, what the end result is that people in the region become anti-American who otherwise would not have been.”

A proud veteran of the anti-war movement against America’s disastrous military intervention in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, Sanders also lambasted Clinton for praising Henry Kissinger, “one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country.” He was, said Bernie, “not my kind of guy.”

Bernie got most of this right. What he got seriously wrong, in my opinion, was accepting – however reluctantly - the military assumptions of the “War on Terror,” or whatever we are now supposed to call it. Last October, when Obama announced he would leave 5,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Sanders sprung to his defense.

“Clearly, we do not want to see the Taliban gain more power,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think we need a certain nucleus of American troops present in Afghanistan to try to provide the training and support the Afghan army needs.”

How would a few thousand troops hold back the Taliban when 140,000 failed? How would they avoid sparking local resistance to an armed foreign presence? And how long would it take them to train a poorly motivated Afghan army? Bernie never raised these obvious questions. Nor did he tackle the underlying issues of no-win colonial wars that some of us have been writing about for years.

Bernie similarly backed Obama’s decision to send “a limited number” of additional “non-combat troops” to Syria as part of the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS).

“ISIS has got to be destroyed,” Sanders told a town hall meeting in Philadelphia in April. “And the way that ISIS must be destroyed is not through American troops fighting on the ground. ISIS must be destroyed and King Abdullah of Jordan has made this clear, that the war is for the soul of Islam and it must be won by the Muslim nations themselves.”

“I think what the President is talking about is having American troops training Muslim troops, helping to supply the military equipment they need, and I do support that effort,” he went on. “We need a broad coalition of Muslim troops on the ground. We have had some success in the last year or so putting ISIS on the defensive, we've got to continue that effort.”

It sounds plausible, but Bernie should know better. Working with Muslim troops will certainly win battles, but what happens then? Do we keep troops on the ground to make sure the ISIS militants never return? Do we stay permanently allied with the Sunni Muslims, who have their own ambitions in Syria, where they are battling the Shi’a Muslims of Syria, Lebanon, and Iran? And how will battling ISIS in Syria keep them from having their terrorists attack New York as they had them attack Paris and Brussels?

As I’ve argued for nearly two years now, Islamic State’s only chance of long-term success depends on convincing their fellow Sunnis in Iraq, Syria, and beyond that they are defending Islam against foreign invaders. The more the US intervenes militarily in Islamic countries, the more willing recruits Islamic State will find and the more people they will kill, both in Islamic countries and in Europe and the United States.

Bernie, please don’t play their game. Come back to your anti-war roots and help us keep President Hillary Clinton from making this whole mess even worse.



A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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