See Bernie Sanders on foreign policy starting at 4:00 minutes into the video. The phrase that disturbs me the most is "I believe the US should have the strongest military in the world."
Currently the US spends 34% of the world total on military spending - Russia comes in at 4.8%. Add in the NATO countries to the US total and you reach 50%.
The real question for Sanders remains how can you fund the "strongest military in the world" and still afford to provide free college tuition, free medical care and fulfill the other social spending priorities he promises?
The problem with Bernie's campaign is that half of him is trying to be an insurgent candidate and the other half of him is trying to play the Democratic party inside baseball strategy. It's a contradiction and can't be sustained over the course of a long campaign. He's running a campaign with half his brain and heart tied to a ball and chain.
My opinion is that Sanders won't get the nomination and he is failing to use this golden opportunity to really tell the truth to the American people - our military empire is killing our domestic economy, we can't afford social progress at home and pay for endless war at the same time.
Notice that Sanders does not question US foreign policy moves to dominate the world on behalf of corporate capitalism. His critique is limited to we can't go it alone - we have to work in conjunction with our allies in a more effective way. (He calls for our head chopping ally Saudi Arabia to do more since they have a big military which is largely supplied by the US military industrial complex.) He doesn't touch the issue of whether our bombing of Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia was just, legal or immoral. (He does briefly say Bush's Iraq attack was wrong but that is all he says.) For example he endorses drones and promises he'd do a better job of using them - he won't kill so many innocent people. Bernie sticks to the same old Democratic Party foreign policy outlines. He's got no balls.
If he would have the courage to address our out-of-control military machine then I'd be all out for the Bern....but sadly he's half-stepping which won't cut the mustard in my book.
1 comment:
There are certainly problems with all the candidates that the media is willing to cover, including Sanders. This raises more doubts about the media than it does about individual candidates though and it means that they're unwilling to give the public the information they need to participate in the decision making process.
I also found this comment disturbing, and can't help but wonder if the media has successfully indoctrinated the majority of the public to believing their crap.
However even though he has his problems, at this moment, he appears to be the best chance for real reform in the short term, although grassroots efforts will necessary in the long run to pressure who ever gets elected. I'm not convinced that he won't get the nomination, although the establishment will do what they can to rig it if they can get away with it.
I went into this more in the following blog which includes a citation of this post, if your interested:
http://zacherydtaylor.blogspot.com/2015/09/in-democracy-all-officials-are.html
This partially agrees with your comments but I still have some hope for Bernie.
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