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Originally Posted by E5I5O
Vietnam was started by a Texan president, who was a Democrat, but had conservative views (LBJ). And the second Iraq war, like the first was started by a Republican, both were named Bush. And, no, the Democrats very much, at least, walk the walk of peace. I'd rather have a Democrat in office than a Republican, because a Republican is always acting like the insecure little kid on the playground, always looking for a fight to prove himself.
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once again, i think you're cherry picking.
i never said republicans aren't pro-war btw. but the democratic congress voted in favor of the iraq war, despite widespread domestic and international protests. it could be that they were just naive enough to believe bush & co.
or it could be that they knew that opposing the war in the midst of a post-9/11 political climate where many americans were whipped into a nationalist frenzy could hurt their own political careers.
or it could be that they knew iraq was a bad idea but gave bush the go ahead anyways in order to give themselves some political leverage in the next elections, after the war went sour.
whatever their reasoning, many democrats still voted for it.
to speak more recently..
obama's foreign policy has been largely criticized by progressive for more or less the entire duration of his presidency. i know this because i have left-leaning sympathies and for a while considered myself a hardcore progressive, watching left-leaning news on the internet such as the young turks or al jazeera, or reading glenn greenwald/noam chomsky/etc. try looking to any of those media sources rather than watching msnbc to see how unfavorably obama's approach to foreign policy has fared with hard-line liberals and progressives.
for one thing his heavy use of drone strikes, in some cases in countries that we aren't even at war with, has been heavily criticized. the main difference between obama and bush in that regard is that obama didn't spend as much time constructing a false narrative to make the american public rally behind these strikes. he just simply tried to keep them as quiet as possible.
obama's libya adventure was another example of a war that ultimately was about exerting american/nato influence abroad and helping to get rid of a long time enemy, while doing it all under the banner of spreading democracy and preventing a dictator from brutally slaughtering his own people. the end result was somewhat similar to iraq... chaos, destabilization, ethnic cleansing and militant/terror groups inadvertently gaining regional power and influence. it was also an adventure undertaken without widespread congressional support, unlike iraq.
obama's one redeeming feature in libya was that he was smart enough not to commit american ground forces in a long term battle and to act only with international support. and to his credit the situation in libya was escalating and rebels on the ground there were asking for assistance. but that doesn't make it a smart move, and it doesn't make it peaceful.
and even with all that, obama is less war-like than our next democratic president, hillary clinton. she has criticized him for being too soft in the past, such as for not doing more to help the syrian rebels early on.
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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drew a foreign policy line between herself and President Obama in an interview this week, saying the President should have assisted Syrian rebels early in the bloody three-year conflict there, and issuing a dig at his Administration’s minimalist doctrine.
The Obama Administration’s wariness about assisting rebels out of fear that aid would fall into the hands of extremists was misguided and ineffectual, Clinton said in an interview with the Atlantic, and allowed for the rise of Islamic extremists who are now threatening to take over wide swaths of Iraq.
“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad — there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle — the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.
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Hillary Clinton: 'Failure' to Aid Syrian Rebels Led to Rise of ISIS
in other words.. in clinton's view, we should have been a more active player in the civil war in syria, which created the environment for the rise of al-nusra, a former ally of isis. to some extent isis has actually benefited directly from the assistance to syrian rebels, iirc.
but her stance is we should've given even more assistance early on, in order to make sure that the 'secular' or 'moderate' camps of the resistance were strong enough and influential enough to undermine the islamic militant camps of the syrian resistance.
hell, she might even be right. but one alarming aspect is that a lot of the al-nusra militants actually started out as moderates. it could be that because al-nsura was a more effective fighting force, people flocked to them out of a desire to take down assad.
but it could also be that the environment created by the civil war.. one of endless terror and bloodshed, mixed with people seeking refuge in religion... makes for a fertile breeding ground for new terrorist recruits.