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One of the most disappointing things in American politics in the last ten to fifteen years has been watching the left abandon their antiwar fervor.

wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
The Korean War began and was fought under a Democrat. It was ended by a Republican. The Vietnam War began under one Democrat, escalated and spread beyond Vietnam under his Democratic successor, and then under a Republican. It was ended by another Republican. The Persian Gulf War was entirely a Republican affair. The Bosnian war and the bombing of Serbia were overseen by a Democrat. The "war on terror" was started by a Republican who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and continued for nearly 8 more years under a Democrat.
- dekhn 3y ago
  you're confusion "the left" with "democrats". democrats are centrist relative to the left.
  - RajT88 3y ago
    Indeed "Leftists" mostly vote Democratic for lack of a more viable alternative, but many do not consider themselves Democrats. Even really smart and educated people I know are surprised to discover most voters in the US do not have a party affiliation.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      There aren't really political parties in the US. In other countries, people pay membership dues to their political parties and get membership cards. Here, we just declare our allegiance to these private organizations on twitter.
      - RajT88 3y ago
        That's not true. We poll the hell out of our populace and ask, "What do you identify as?" That's how we know how people identify. > In other countries, people pay membership dues to their political parties and get membership cards. Here, we just declare our allegiance to these private organizations on twitter. Some states in the US have state-level party organizations which you join and receive a card. Not all.
        the_only_law 3y ago
        How does these polls work? What’s the selection process? I’ve never been asked what I politically identify as, and I imagine anyone who asks would be disappointed that I would refuse place myself as something fitting whatever binary/trinary categories they have in mind.
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        Many states allow you to pick a party affiliation when you register to vote, and some require a declared affiliation before you can take part in primaries.
        shigawire 3y ago
        Generally polling organizations poll a random sample of Americans via phone calls or online polls. There is a lot of process to try to guarantee a representative sample. I don't think a pollster would be disappointed that you don't have a party affiliation. In fact some of biggest emphasis in election season is on independents or undecided voters.
        RajT88 3y ago
        > In fact some of biggest emphasis in election season is on independents or undecided voters. Exactly. You can look it up on 538 or wherever you like, but all the polls say roughly the same thing: There's more unaffiliated voters than there is voters for either party. Something like 40-45% unaffiliated, with ~25% identifying as Republican and ~30% identifying as Democrat.
  - graublau 3y ago
    The left in america votes blue no matter because idpol and maybe climate, the only nationally palitable Left ideas since Marxism any class are anathema to USA, particularly since fall of USSR.
    - bdamm 3y ago
      Nah; the 2016 election saw many "leftists" that were dedicated to Sanders go on to vote for Trump.
      - wk_end 3y ago
        I know establishment Dems liked to whine about that, but is there any evidence that this actually happened in meaningful numbers?
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        [flagged]
        WhatWorkingOn 3y ago
        I and many other people I know did. I saw Sanders get snubbed and schemed against by the DNC, to the point where Hillary got the questions ahead of time. So many gaffes in this campaign between two "equal" Democratic candidates that we just don't talk about anymore. No, I refuse to play that game and I'd rather burn the place to the ground and suffer together than walk willingly to my own execution.
        dekhn 3y ago
        [flagged]
        singleshot_ 3y ago
        “I think I should have more of my richer neighbors’ money and if I don’t get it I’ll vote for trump ahaha” isn’t the own that you probably think it is, but this is very illustrative nevertheless.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    Will this "true" left you're talking about criticize democratic party leaders for their wars with the same fervor that they criticize republican party leaders? When Trump was campaigning for his first presidency everybody was saying he would start a bunch of wars and nuke the whole world. When none of that happened he had to be a traitor since he didn't start any beautiful patriotic wars. Reality is of no consideration to the uneducated and educated masses. War is peace, peace is war. I will not be mutilated by mortar in a ditch or send my children to die in a trench, no matter who is president. War is a racket, I feel truly sorry for those who suffer and will suffer for following their "leaders".
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      >When none of that happened he had to be a traitor since he didn't start any beautiful patriotic wars Find me a quote of someone on the left saying Trump was bad for not starting a war
      - TeMPOraL 3y ago
        I bet you if Trump somehow served an extra 1.5 years, you'd have plenty of such people - the ones that today love to use the term "acquiesce" to criticize careful handling of a conflict that could easily spiral into end of the world with one press of a button.
      - carlosjobim 3y ago
        You are misunderstanding. When Trump turned out to not be a crazed war monger, the narrative changed to that he was a traitor taking orders from Russia. If you can't find quotes for that, you are offline. I am fully aware that most leftist (which means most of HN) think that Trump is an insane war monger, even though he served four years as president without starting any wars. Like I wrote, reality does not matter at all anymore to anyone.
        FrustratedMonky 3y ago
        Well, there was an exchange of Missiles with Iran. That almost went full war, until Iran shot back and they were like 'Wuuuut, they can do that?'. And missiles shot at Syrian air base, where Russian/Syrian planes were luckily moved just in time, very conveniently, almost like it was a good PR stunt.
  - wk_end 3y ago
    …which is particularly egregious in the context of wars like Vietnam - or even the war in Iraq - which the left was famously outspoken against compared to most Democrats.
  - hackernoteng 3y ago
    JFK would be considered a right-wing extremist by todays democrat party (the political powerful left wing, not the average voter)
    - reducesuffering 3y ago
      Well he did try to invade Cuba
      - dekhn 3y ago
        He also put nuclear missles in turkey which were then used as part of the negotiation to get USSR to dismantle their Cuban bases so we wouldn't invade.
        asdff 3y ago
        Other way around. He put missiles in Turkey and Italy, USSR responded by putting missiles in Cuba, then both parties agreed to deescalate and withdraw. Then of course a few years later none of this matters because ICBMs become a thing and the soviets and americans can just launch over the north pole.
        dekhn 3y ago
        (for the record, I did not mean to imply the temporal ordering you suggest I did)
      - nonethewiser 3y ago
        And he was critical of the CIA and FBI.
  - wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
    I think everyone is confused of what is the left / right. Traditionally the left has been associated with social policies (stemming from socialism/communism vs capitalism) And there always was a part of the left which was anti-war, and always was a more "totalitarian" version of the left that felt it was morally justified. But in every society the meaning of left and right has been fluid.
  - bboygravity 3y ago
    You're missing the point that left/right/democrat/republican religions are a divide and conquer strategy to distract from the realization that there is no democracy.
    - dekhn 3y ago
      Uh, no? Left and right are generalized terms used to describe political philosophies. Democrat and republican are terms used to describe political parties- those parties don't fully overlap with left and right, and in fact the parties have completely changed their overlap over time. We (Americans) live in a representative democracy (for choosing public officials) and that democracy gives a great deal of influence and power to capitalists/industrialists (the "racket"), which has been absolutely successful in establishing and maintaining the existence and wealth of the country. If you want to argue there is no democracy, find another person to argue with; my premise begins with the US being a representative democracy.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
        It is a representative Democracy. I vote directly for all of my representatives. Anyone arguing it's not is moving goalposts or arguing No True Scotsman.
        mistermann 3y ago
        For semantic clarity: are you saying that it ticks the boxes for being a "representative democracy", but not extending the meaning of the word representative to encompass representative of the will of the constituents? > Anyone arguing it's not is moving goalposts or arguing No True Scotsman. With this be considered rhetoric?
        2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
        I have a government that I choose through voting. It's not complicated.
  - jasmer 3y ago
    The missing artifact from the comment is that Republicans and Democrat Left/Rightism as we understand it is a modern thing established (edit: I should say 'consolidated' - because the shift started earlier) under Reagan. The 'Democrats' were very popular in the South in the 1950's among people who would now refer to themselves as 'conservative'. (Edit: look at the electoral maps for mid century US - Democrats/Republicans were not Left/Right) Not that Left/Dem are different things today, they are effectively the same, it's just that policy is constrained by the other side, which has a dampening effect on legislation.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    This isn't true under the current terminology, where Democrats have assigned themselves the title of "the left" with the enthusiastic agreement of Republicans. And while that's a new situation, we're also currently experiencing a vast majority of people who identify as "left" falling under two categories: Obama socialists, who were enthusiastic supporters of candidate Obama and were disappointed in the absolutely traditional run of his presidency, esp. its second term; and Clinton socialists, who went along with the catastrophe of the 2016 Democratic primary because they let themselves be convinced that while they mostly agreed with Sanders, H. Clinton was the only one who could defeat Trump (and they resent the party for this.) These aren't intellectual positions at all, they're just soap opera stuff. If they've picked up anything about political economy, it was because they were in left-wing spaces during the rise of the Sanders campaign. As far as I can tell, all they took away from it is the slur "tankie," which they think has something to do with Tienanmen Square and should be screamed at anyone anyone to the left of Bill Kristol.
    - Aloha 3y ago
      Tankies are the people who I'd loosely call neostalinists, they're seemingly for a Soviet style violent revolution of the proletariat - they're also the people who are often reflexively anti-american, and pro-russia, because america is the force of imperialism. There are many socialists who are fine with achieving socialism via electoral means those people are not tankies - tankies are generally not okay with waiting for that.
  - telotortium 3y ago
    I don't think so. Yes, Democrats (and American progressives in general) don't emphasize socialism as much as the traditional left or some European parties. However, they're generally still sympathetic. Moreover, while American progressives don't worry so much about economic egalitarianism, they very strongly believe that minorities earning less than whites, female earning less than male, etc. is wrong, and are willing to enact things like reparations, affirmative action,and the like to counterbalance that. In the ideal progressive utopia, CEOs would still be paid hundreds of times more than the average worker, but representation of minority race, female, non-straight and trans people among CEOs and other prestigious positions would occur at least as much as their representation in the population, regardless of their ability, and if cis straight white males are represented less than their proportion of the population, that's just gravy, and maybe justified revenge for their dominant position in the past. In fact, wokism is even more egalitarian than Marxism - the latter says from each according to ability, to each according to need, but it was generally expected that the jobs requiring higher ability would be staffed by people of higher ability. In general, it's obvious that identity politics forms the core of the political class of today's Democratic Party (especially the young), and equally obvious that America is the innovator that other progressive parties follow in this respect. America also has thrown itself into gender politics with particular enthusiasm - gender transitions, even of minors, are a cornerstone of American progressivism today, even as progressive European countries have rolled that back to an extent. I will concede that Europe leads in the other main aspect of current-day progressivism, the Green movement, although American progressives are avid followers.
- sesuximo 3y ago
  I think it’s fair to say American politics are violent, and it’s not really a partisan thing
  - all2 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - watwut 3y ago
      Majority of violence is done by right wing. It is beyond cynical to lie so much and try to pin it on the left. The right is the ones who are the biggest and actual threat to both freedom and democracy - and actual perpetrators of murders and terrorist attacks. And no, j6 were no tourist not peaceful. They were literal violent attempt to prevent votes count.
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      It sounds like the left is much more powerful than the right then given that they can overpower them with no repercussion. I think it would probably be best to give into their demands so the right are not further victimized if this is the case.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        Ain't it amazing how powerful the left is and yet we can't even raise the debt ceiling?
    - rad88 3y ago
      Blowing up buildings, murdering jews, plotting assassinations etc. is substantially damaging. It is "extremist".
      - all2 3y ago
        I'm unfamiliar with these. Sources?
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Sometimes Democrats get backed into a corner. Like with Korea, Vietnam. No matter what they do, Republicans call the Democrats communists/evil/Satan. So when there is a communist country in the mix, then they better damn well go to war, or it proves they are stooges of those same communist countries. Because Democrats can't appear weak on communists, they might fight them harder than a Republican would, (see recent history where Republicans are backing Russia, which is like bizzaro world).
  - colpabar 3y ago
    So they don’t actually have any principles?
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      Why the down votes? Republicans love war, sometimes Democrats go along with it. It's called compromise. You mean, why do Democrats sometimes bend their principles in the face of gun toting Republican's calling for a coup? I don't know, to thread the needle to keep the peace. When half the country is ready to re-enact the Civil War, what is to be done? It isn't like Lincoln didn't compromise when needed.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    What real-world circumstance does this theory explain?
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      Korea, Vietnam. If Communist China wasn't involved, we probably wouldn't be either. It was a policy of containment. And yes, Democrats went along with it. What could they do, say "no we're siding with China"? They would be voted out.
  - Kamq 3y ago
    That's really more of a post 60s-ish thing. You can't really extend it back to Korea or before. From ~FDR-LBJ, the democratic party was pretty pro-war (so was the average american, really, so I guess that's fair for a party called democratic), but that really starts to flip in the late 60s/early 70s.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > The "war on terror" was started by a Republican who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and continued for nearly 8 more years under a Democrat. And ended by a Republican
  - mcculley 3y ago
    The Republicans keep saying that Biden improperly withdrew from Afghanistan.
    - mc32 3y ago
      One committed the country to the withdrawal the other executed the withdrawal.
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      And Democrats keep pinning it on Trump. Regardless, who is there when they withdrew is not the same as who made the plan and started the withdrawal. The Doha Agreement was drafted and signed under Trump. Biden didnt renege on the agreement and executed it. We have no idea if he would have drafted such an agreement but his track record in that regard isnt good. Obama and Biden increased troops as another commenter noted.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        The reality is that there was no path to a good exit from Afganistan, and we should condemn Bush for starting it, condemn Obama for doubling down, condemn Trump for not pulling out earlier, and same for Biden.
  - mullingitover 3y ago
    Afghanistan is a wash, nobody gets to take credit for ending that. Trump entered into the surrender agreement, but delayed the execution of the agreement past the end of his term, so if he doesn't take the blame for the fallout he doesn't get credit for ending it either. Meanwhile Obama surged troops while he was in office, sure, but then tried to steeply draw down and was blocked by republicans[1]. They also blocked his effort to close the human rights embarrassment at Guantanamo[2]. This is basically an 'everyone sucks here' situation, at best. [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/286787-gop-questions-obamas-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal/ https://thehill.com/homenews/286787-gop-questions-obamas-afg... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-guantanamo/house-votes-to-block-obama-plan-to-close-guantanamo-idUSBRE95D12F20130614 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-guantanamo/ho...
- sillywalk 3y ago
  I gotta nitpick :) Ignoring the whole background of Korea, it's occupation by Japan, and split at the end of WW2, the Korean War began when the North invaded the South. For Vietnam, the war ended when the North Vietnam 'won' and the South collapsed.
- reso 3y ago
  Hard agree. Democrats pay lip service to anti-war voices when they are out of power, then often rule as hawks. It's not necessarily meaningful to call one party more or less hawkish than the other. It often comes down to the leader, era, and coalition behind them. Bush/Cheney were definitely more aggressive than Gore would have been, but HRC was positioning herself to be much more hawkish than Trump ended up ruling as. That's why in the post-2016 era many infamous hawks like Bill Kristol and David Frum have been Democrat-aligned.
- greedo 3y ago
  US involvement in the Vietnam war started with Eisenhower, who last I checked was a Republican...
  - sillywalk 3y ago
    Pedantic: depending on what "involvement" means. Eisenhower continued and increased support for the French till 1954. Then backed Diem, blocked the 1956 elections, and sent in more "advisers", however .. :) An OSS Dear Team provided training, medical and logistical assistance to Hồ Chí Minh and the Việt Minh in 1945. An OSS doctor is reported to have treated Ho Chi Minh for malaria and dysentery. [0] Then Truman provided troop transport, money and materiel for France to re-conqueror Indochina (Democrat). Archimedes Patti, from the OSS wrote a book [1] about the experience. War is multi-party, forget tech stocks, I gotta invest in Lockheed Martin. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSS_Deer_Team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSS_Deer_Team [1] "Why Vietnam?: Prelude to America's Albatross
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  Also WW's Sr. and Junior, if you care to extend the pattern back, though those both began and ended under Democratic administrations. In the case of the latter, the Republican general leading the war effort became the next US President --- which suggests that there's some haziness to the attributions being made. That same administration participated in violent campaigns in Iran (overthrowing democratically-elected Mossedegh) and Guatemala, as well as planning the Bay of Pigs operation (which occurred as Kennedy's administration opened). Antiwar sentiments existed for many of these, though it's notable that considerable anti-war sentiment in the US against entry into WWII had a distinctly hard-right flavour to it. Not all anti-war sentiment, as there can be many possible motiviations, but in this specific case, domestic groups sympathetic with (and often orchestrated by) rightest European belligerents had an outsized role. The anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s became associated with Democrats as that party swung leftward and shed its own long-standing Southern affiliations, and grew our of anti-nuclear and civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, all of which saw Vietnam specifically as an unjustified and unjust war, with considerable merits to that viewpoint. Painting pro- or anti-war sentiments as distinctly left or right, or aligned with either of the two present major parties is not historically accurate and misses considerable nuance.
sangnoir 3y ago
> One of the most disappointing things in American politics in the last ten to fifteen years has been watching the left abandon their antiwar fervor You might be mixing up anti-imperialism with antiwar sentiment. In the past, the 2 were typically hand-in-hand due to the geopolitics of the day, but it is not a given - depending on the circumstances[0]. It's interesting how the American right is also taking up an anti-war stance, while maintaining pro-imperialist attitudes[1] 0. Cf. The left's attitude towards the Vietnam war vs. the Apartheid government in South Africa. 1. With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the "peace with North Korea at all costs" under Trump
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Its about not wanting to fight other people’s wars. Republicans are a lot more interested in the militarization of the pacific and southern border.
KerrAvon 3y ago
Like a lot of things, it went off like a light switch when Obama was elected. It was crushing. I thought it was genuine anti-Iraq-war sentiment, not merely well-deserved hate for Bush. But a lot of it turned out to be a cudgel to beat the other guys. COVID is similar; Trump fucked it up because everything he touches turns to shit, not a surprise. Biden continues to fuck it up to this day and... crickets from Democrats. Thankfully, Biden is doing the right thing, very skillfully, with Ukraine. I wish he could get it together on domestic policy. Making his bumblefuck COVID czar his chief of staff was a incredibly bad decision, though.
- chasd00 3y ago
  > Biden continues to fuck it up to this day what is there left to do on COVID? The healthcare system is not collapsing and lockdowns have ended. Remember, the lockdowns where there only to prevent the healthcare system from collapsing. We even have vaccines and a host of other treatments widely available. If you're expecting total eradication of an airborne respiratory virus I don't think you're being realistic.
- pstuart 3y ago
  Obama doubled down on Afghanistan from the get-go -- I consider that fiasco as much his as his predecessors. As an "anti-war leftist", I find myself cheering on the assistance to Ukraine, as that is the first war in my memory that seemed worth fighting. Still no love for the Military Industrial Complex though...
  - graublau 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - digging 3y ago
      I'm a different anti-war leftist, but IMO it's a lose-lose. This is more about mitigation than doing what's good. The MIC wins whether or not we support Ukraine - if Russia conquered Kyiv, you think the MIC wouldn't be ramping everything up in preparation for further invasions of NATO allies? It's not like Ukraine is some socialist utopia I want preserved at all costs. But it's a free nation that's less fascist than Russia, and it deserves to exist, and more importantly the Ukrainian people deserve to exist. If Russia wins, we'll be looking at genocide on a huge scale (because we're actually currently dealing with genocide on a "small" scale). So, I'm more anti-genocide than I am anti-MIC, and I think it's a good thing we're helping Ukraine fight back against Russia.
vlovich123 3y ago
How do you mean? Seems like the left is still pretty antiwar. Also, not all war is equal. Otherwise you're in the paradox of tolerance. It should be a last resort but it necessarily must remain an option. Unprovoked wars of aggression (US Iraq) are different from provoked wars (e.g. Germany in WWII). The other problem is when there's provoked aggression but the response is disproportionate (9/11 Afghanistan considering Afghanistan offered to remand Bin Laden into US custody). There's a lot more nuance in the real world too (e.g. how should Israel respond to inbound rocket attacks which are provoked but failure to respond with outsized force tends to cause attackers to get more emboldened).
- psychphysic 3y ago
  The paradox of tolerance can not be used here. It requires fiat control of the situation. That control of sovereign entities can only be attained by threat or actualised violence. Putting it another way. That you even consider yourself entitled to tolerate a sovereign nation requires that you believe you are entitled a degree of control it. Anti-war thinking requires not just that you consider war a last resort. But you consider that you have no option at all. War is not another just lever. If it is then you do not have anti-war beliefs you just are more adverse to it than some hawks.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    > That control of sovereign entities can only be attained by threat or actualised violence. Treaties are signed regularly having nothing to do with any kind of threat of violence. Breaking of treaties often even has legal redress mechanisms within international courts of law, all without military threats. Instead economic sanctions are often the recourse. Re "paradox of tolerance" it's a pretty close analogy so I'm really not sure what you're going on about. An absolute anti-war position puts you in the position of tolerating wars. Thus any group that wants can engage in violence to acquire more resources. At the limit it can even overpower you although that's not so important because your tolerance of the war has a net result in having caused more war and violence. In military circles it would be called appeasement* but it's the same basic philosophy. * Interesting side note is that there are some historians that suggest that Chamberlain's appeasement strategy wasn't because he thought it would work to pacify Hitler but because he was desperately trying hard to avoid Britain getting sucked into a conflict until they were properly staffed up (Stalin did the same btw). Additionally the appeasement strategy arguably was helpful in also pulling America into the European theater because domestic supporters of Germany couldn't claim that Hitler's expansion was somehow legitimate given that every grievance raised by Germany had a legitimate attempt to redress.
BrotherBisquick 3y ago
[flagged]
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Hell, plenty on the right want Trump as king, with his son as next in line. I don't think that is broadly popular Republican policy though, despite their official policy being "Do whatever Trump wants"
- 3192029941 3y ago
  > ...or rallying to the defense of the Duchess of Sussex, a literal princess married to a family of billionaires FWIW, nobody I know (either left-leaning or right-learning) cares about her at all. I'm curious where you're hearing this from. > while kicking poor white workers in the teeth How? > the latter are suspicious that a man belongs in a woman's locker room. Well, I'm glad that we can all agree that trans men are okay, then!
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    I'm actually not sure anymore which side of the aisle, if any, anyone in this conversation joins, but in the US, both the Democrats and Republicans have spent the last 70 years selling the average worker down river, whether by trade agreements that made it profitable to do all manufacturing in China or decades of successful anti-union and anti-"socialism" propaganda or banking deregulation, or letting coal mines poison you while also letting them write the textbooks that tell you you should be thankful for being poisoned, to embroiling us in middle east nonsense, to the war on drugs, to stabbing important unionized transportation workers in the back directly (Both parties have an explicit case of this!!!) The republicans switched to ideological and religious stuff mid century, and the democrats seemingly responded by just.... walking away from the common man? It's weird. If you want to vote for workers empowerment in the US, you don't have an option.
  - howinteresting 3y ago
    The person you are replying to is a monster (flagged comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36061333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36061333
deleted 3y ago
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CalChris 3y ago
One of the most disappointing things in American politics in the last ten to fifteen years has been watching the right cozy up to Putin.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Im familiar with the argument in favor of this within the past couple years. But what case is there that they started 15 years ago?
  - CalChris 3y ago
    “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy,” Bush said. “I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
  - int_19h 3y ago
    I dunno about 15 years, but it was already a thing in 2015. My local gun store owner - the kind of guy who watches Fox religiously, has "thin blue line" stickers on his truck etc - straight up told me that he'd prefer Putin to Obama because the former is a "true leader", a "real Christian", and "protects family values".
jscipione 3y ago
[flagged]
mnky9800n 3y ago
What about when the entire left voted for going to Iraq twenty years ago? (Except Bernie Sanders I believe)
- runarberg 3y ago
  > The dramatic, much-debated vote on Joint Resolution 114 was taken on Oct. 11, 2002. It passed the Senate by a vote of 77 to 23, and the House of Representatives by a vote of 296 to 133. In the end, 156 members of Congress from 36 states had enough information and personal insight and wisdom to make the correct decision for our nation and the world community. > Six House Republicans and one Independent joined 126 Democratic members of the House of Representatives in voting NAY. In the Senate, 21 Democrats, one Republic, and one Independent courageously voted their consciences in 2002 against the War in Iraq. https://www.thoughtco.com/2002-iraq-war-vote-3325446 https://www.thoughtco.com/2002-iraq-war-vote-3325446 Worth mentioning among the NAY votes is Barbara Lee representative of California’s 12th congressional district (9th during the vote) who has announced she’ll be running to take Dianne Feinstein’s (who voted YAY) seat in the 2024 senate race, and is a favorite among many progressives (i.e. left wing Democrats).
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  I still don’t understand why people think it was the wrong decision.
  - runarberg 3y ago
    I’m sorry for the snark, but Major General Smedley Butler offers a generic explanation for wars in general in his 1935 essay War is a Racket. But for the Iraq war specifically (a part from the racketeering) why many people think it was the wrong decision is in large part based on the lies and deceptions that were used to justify the invasion. At the time many people believed those lies and thought they were justifiable reasons for the invasion. When it later turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction, that ties of the Ba'ath party to terrorist organizations were none, that the USA imposed government was corrupt and offered little benefits to regular people over Saddam’s dictatorship, etc. etc. When this all became common knowledge, on top of all the war crimes, the torture scandals, the massacres, after Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange went to prison for revealing some of those war crimes, many of these people who previously believed the war was justified, changed their opinion of it.
jasmer 3y ago
Where is the 'war fervor' of the Left? What does helping Ukraine defend themselves have to do with 'war fervor'? Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 and Obama/Trump reaction was to ignore it - which directly resulted in a much bigger war. The US Military Industrial Complex is why there are no wars against rich allied states. If Ukraine were part of the system and had a well managed, functional military - Putin could not have invaded, in fact he never would have tried.
- all2 3y ago
  This is incomplete. Ukraine was supposed to be a buffer between NATO and Russia. As soon as Western folks started talking about getting cozy with Ukraine, Putin saw the eventuality where US/joint bases would be on his border and he didn't want that. He would rather start a war with Ukraine than go toe-to-toe with the US and NATO.
  - epgui 3y ago
    Other people making friends is not really a good reason to start killing them, either way. I know it’s not what you’re saying exactly, but it’s what Putin’s actions boil down to.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - watwut 3y ago
    Russia has borders with NATO and had them for years. The buffer theory makes zero sense, considering Ukraine was not even trying to get to NATO and there is pretty long border between Russia and NATO anyway. NATO basis were next to Russia for decades. Plus, one does not need to commit genocide to achieve safety. Anand Putin just happen to be committing genocide.
  - jnwatson 3y ago
    NATO was already on his border.
paulddraper 3y ago
Politicians in the American Left have never been antiwar. Truman, Johnson, Clinton, Obama, etc. The only difference between now and the 70s is that the politicians have more control over the left.
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  The progressives (bernie, AOC, etc.) had very very disappointing responses to Ukraine that showed they are not ready to rule. I was particularly devastated by AOC's response.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago
  >> Truman, Johnson, Clinton, Obama, etc. The Carter presidency is in the running for the most peaceful modern presidency. He did start arming the rebels in Afghanistan, and ordered what I guess amounts to a brief invasion of Iran, but overall, pretty peaceful. It's either him or Trump.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    Agreed.
goodpoint 3y ago
More like the left abandoned American politics. At least compared to the rest of the world the US have 2 right-wing parties.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  American politics abandoned the left, not the other way around. We decided to make McCarthyism a national sport. Being against Vietnam was unpatriotic and wrong. Being against Afghanistan was unpatriotic and wrong. Being against unregulated capitalism was unamerican and wrong.
tptacek 3y ago
Predictably, this comment started a partisan political argument that took over the thread like kudzu.
hayst4ck 3y ago
> watching the left abandon their antiwar fervor. As left people gain political maturity, they understand that those in power will not give up their power willingly, so force is required. As a liberal person I am suspicious of any liberal who does not believe in gun rights, and I am even more suspicious of a liberal person who does not believe in unions, which is the 2nd amendment of labor rights. Neither the 2nd amendment nor unions can be used for their purpose within the bounds of the law. Believing in human rights means believing in defending human rights with force, otherwise what is to stop someone from violating human rights? If a powerful person uses their power against you, your choices are submit or fight. Leftists are slowly understanding: 1. There are powerful people 2. They will arbitrarily use your power against you 3. Those people use their power to influence law so the law will not protect you 4. You can't solve this problem within the bounds of the law It's not hard to look at Ukraine and see that justice cannot be achieved without war and that you don't get to decide when you are at war.
- sushisource 3y ago
  The problem with this whole thought process is it's hilariously abstract. The people in power have F-35s. What is your collection of (admittedly, unnecessarily powerful) guns going to do against that? It also assumes that such disagreements require force to be resolved, and that's just demonstrably not always true. Even if it sometimes is.
  - sparselogic 3y ago
    > The people in power have F-35s. What is your collection of (admittedly, unnecessarily powerful) guns going to do against that? Military inventory, while powerful, isn't the end-all. Just ask Afghans about their experiences with two superpowers' machinery.
  - fnovd 3y ago
    F-35s aren't particularly useful for collecting taxes, for maintaining a state. You can't use them to intimidate an individual, it's a huge waste of resources for the owner of the F-35. What's more dangerous than an F-35 is a group of guys with guns driving around in a pickup truck. Guns and trucks are just so much cheaper than fighter jets, so much more deployable... not to mention the entire logistical and manpower apparatus that goes into getting an F-35 in the air. If you want to win a war of attrition you use cheap, effective tools, not the flashy stuff. Flashy weapons are great for blowing up some other country's infrastructure, it's not very useful if the enemy is your own people. If you blow up all your own people and infrastructure, what do you have power over? If you and everyone in a 10-mile radius of where you're sitting right now decided to ignore some federal law, like maybe the one against cannabis, what the heck is an F-35 going to do about it? Blow up a building, is that supposed to help? No, you get some guys with guns and trucks and then you can start going door to door, threatening people, looking around, collecting stuff, whatever. You can set up checkpoints and block off bridges, the whole shebang, because you're trying to establish control, not just blow things up. Blowing things up has its uses but if you want to intimidate someone to the point where you have power over them, you need to be a little more intimate. You can't just be a fleck in the sky and you can't just show up do to the big stuff. You need to be in their face as a persistent, immediate threat. That's what influences human behavior and that's how power is established. That's exactly why small guns are such a sticking point in the USA, they're a very effective counter to this intimate threat.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
labster 3y ago
We on the left realized that John Brown got it right. Sometimes you have to march to the sea to get basic human rights.
archagon 3y ago
My impression is that the left is more anti-imperialist-war than anti-war. Vietnam and Iraq were hard to justify morally.

wouldbecouldbe 3y ago

The Korean War began and was fought under a Democrat. It was ended by a Republican. The Vietnam War began under one Democrat, escalated and spread beyond Vietnam under his Democratic successor, and then under a Republican. It was ended by another Republican. The Persian Gulf War was entirely a Republican affair. The Bosnian war and the bombing of Serbia were overseen by a Democrat. The "war on terror" was started by a Republican who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and continued for nearly 8 more years under a Democrat.

dekhn 3y ago
you're confusion "the left" with "democrats". democrats are centrist relative to the left.
- RajT88 3y ago
  Indeed "Leftists" mostly vote Democratic for lack of a more viable alternative, but many do not consider themselves Democrats. Even really smart and educated people I know are surprised to discover most voters in the US do not have a party affiliation.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    There aren't really political parties in the US. In other countries, people pay membership dues to their political parties and get membership cards. Here, we just declare our allegiance to these private organizations on twitter.
    - RajT88 3y ago
      That's not true. We poll the hell out of our populace and ask, "What do you identify as?" That's how we know how people identify. > In other countries, people pay membership dues to their political parties and get membership cards. Here, we just declare our allegiance to these private organizations on twitter. Some states in the US have state-level party organizations which you join and receive a card. Not all.
      - the_only_law 3y ago
        How does these polls work? What’s the selection process? I’ve never been asked what I politically identify as, and I imagine anyone who asks would be disappointed that I would refuse place myself as something fitting whatever binary/trinary categories they have in mind.
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        Many states allow you to pick a party affiliation when you register to vote, and some require a declared affiliation before you can take part in primaries.
        shigawire 3y ago
        Generally polling organizations poll a random sample of Americans via phone calls or online polls. There is a lot of process to try to guarantee a representative sample. I don't think a pollster would be disappointed that you don't have a party affiliation. In fact some of biggest emphasis in election season is on independents or undecided voters.
        RajT88 3y ago
        > In fact some of biggest emphasis in election season is on independents or undecided voters. Exactly. You can look it up on 538 or wherever you like, but all the polls say roughly the same thing: There's more unaffiliated voters than there is voters for either party. Something like 40-45% unaffiliated, with ~25% identifying as Republican and ~30% identifying as Democrat.
- graublau 3y ago
  The left in america votes blue no matter because idpol and maybe climate, the only nationally palitable Left ideas since Marxism any class are anathema to USA, particularly since fall of USSR.
  - bdamm 3y ago
    Nah; the 2016 election saw many "leftists" that were dedicated to Sanders go on to vote for Trump.
    - wk_end 3y ago
      I know establishment Dems liked to whine about that, but is there any evidence that this actually happened in meaningful numbers?
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - WhatWorkingOn 3y ago
        I and many other people I know did. I saw Sanders get snubbed and schemed against by the DNC, to the point where Hillary got the questions ahead of time. So many gaffes in this campaign between two "equal" Democratic candidates that we just don't talk about anymore. No, I refuse to play that game and I'd rather burn the place to the ground and suffer together than walk willingly to my own execution.
        dekhn 3y ago
        [flagged]
        singleshot_ 3y ago
        “I think I should have more of my richer neighbors’ money and if I don’t get it I’ll vote for trump ahaha” isn’t the own that you probably think it is, but this is very illustrative nevertheless.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  Will this "true" left you're talking about criticize democratic party leaders for their wars with the same fervor that they criticize republican party leaders? When Trump was campaigning for his first presidency everybody was saying he would start a bunch of wars and nuke the whole world. When none of that happened he had to be a traitor since he didn't start any beautiful patriotic wars. Reality is of no consideration to the uneducated and educated masses. War is peace, peace is war. I will not be mutilated by mortar in a ditch or send my children to die in a trench, no matter who is president. War is a racket, I feel truly sorry for those who suffer and will suffer for following their "leaders".
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    >When none of that happened he had to be a traitor since he didn't start any beautiful patriotic wars Find me a quote of someone on the left saying Trump was bad for not starting a war
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      I bet you if Trump somehow served an extra 1.5 years, you'd have plenty of such people - the ones that today love to use the term "acquiesce" to criticize careful handling of a conflict that could easily spiral into end of the world with one press of a button.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      You are misunderstanding. When Trump turned out to not be a crazed war monger, the narrative changed to that he was a traitor taking orders from Russia. If you can't find quotes for that, you are offline. I am fully aware that most leftist (which means most of HN) think that Trump is an insane war monger, even though he served four years as president without starting any wars. Like I wrote, reality does not matter at all anymore to anyone.
      - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
        Well, there was an exchange of Missiles with Iran. That almost went full war, until Iran shot back and they were like 'Wuuuut, they can do that?'. And missiles shot at Syrian air base, where Russian/Syrian planes were luckily moved just in time, very conveniently, almost like it was a good PR stunt.
- wk_end 3y ago
  …which is particularly egregious in the context of wars like Vietnam - or even the war in Iraq - which the left was famously outspoken against compared to most Democrats.
- hackernoteng 3y ago
  JFK would be considered a right-wing extremist by todays democrat party (the political powerful left wing, not the average voter)
  - reducesuffering 3y ago
    Well he did try to invade Cuba
    - dekhn 3y ago
      He also put nuclear missles in turkey which were then used as part of the negotiation to get USSR to dismantle their Cuban bases so we wouldn't invade.
      - asdff 3y ago
        Other way around. He put missiles in Turkey and Italy, USSR responded by putting missiles in Cuba, then both parties agreed to deescalate and withdraw. Then of course a few years later none of this matters because ICBMs become a thing and the soviets and americans can just launch over the north pole.
        dekhn 3y ago
        (for the record, I did not mean to imply the temporal ordering you suggest I did)
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      And he was critical of the CIA and FBI.
- wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
  I think everyone is confused of what is the left / right. Traditionally the left has been associated with social policies (stemming from socialism/communism vs capitalism) And there always was a part of the left which was anti-war, and always was a more "totalitarian" version of the left that felt it was morally justified. But in every society the meaning of left and right has been fluid.
- bboygravity 3y ago
  You're missing the point that left/right/democrat/republican religions are a divide and conquer strategy to distract from the realization that there is no democracy.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    Uh, no? Left and right are generalized terms used to describe political philosophies. Democrat and republican are terms used to describe political parties- those parties don't fully overlap with left and right, and in fact the parties have completely changed their overlap over time. We (Americans) live in a representative democracy (for choosing public officials) and that democracy gives a great deal of influence and power to capitalists/industrialists (the "racket"), which has been absolutely successful in establishing and maintaining the existence and wealth of the country. If you want to argue there is no democracy, find another person to argue with; my premise begins with the US being a representative democracy.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
      It is a representative Democracy. I vote directly for all of my representatives. Anyone arguing it's not is moving goalposts or arguing No True Scotsman.
      - mistermann 3y ago
        For semantic clarity: are you saying that it ticks the boxes for being a "representative democracy", but not extending the meaning of the word representative to encompass representative of the will of the constituents? > Anyone arguing it's not is moving goalposts or arguing No True Scotsman. With this be considered rhetoric?
        2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
        I have a government that I choose through voting. It's not complicated.
- jasmer 3y ago
  The missing artifact from the comment is that Republicans and Democrat Left/Rightism as we understand it is a modern thing established (edit: I should say 'consolidated' - because the shift started earlier) under Reagan. The 'Democrats' were very popular in the South in the 1950's among people who would now refer to themselves as 'conservative'. (Edit: look at the electoral maps for mid century US - Democrats/Republicans were not Left/Right) Not that Left/Dem are different things today, they are effectively the same, it's just that policy is constrained by the other side, which has a dampening effect on legislation.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  This isn't true under the current terminology, where Democrats have assigned themselves the title of "the left" with the enthusiastic agreement of Republicans. And while that's a new situation, we're also currently experiencing a vast majority of people who identify as "left" falling under two categories: Obama socialists, who were enthusiastic supporters of candidate Obama and were disappointed in the absolutely traditional run of his presidency, esp. its second term; and Clinton socialists, who went along with the catastrophe of the 2016 Democratic primary because they let themselves be convinced that while they mostly agreed with Sanders, H. Clinton was the only one who could defeat Trump (and they resent the party for this.) These aren't intellectual positions at all, they're just soap opera stuff. If they've picked up anything about political economy, it was because they were in left-wing spaces during the rise of the Sanders campaign. As far as I can tell, all they took away from it is the slur "tankie," which they think has something to do with Tienanmen Square and should be screamed at anyone anyone to the left of Bill Kristol.
  - Aloha 3y ago
    Tankies are the people who I'd loosely call neostalinists, they're seemingly for a Soviet style violent revolution of the proletariat - they're also the people who are often reflexively anti-american, and pro-russia, because america is the force of imperialism. There are many socialists who are fine with achieving socialism via electoral means those people are not tankies - tankies are generally not okay with waiting for that.
- telotortium 3y ago
  I don't think so. Yes, Democrats (and American progressives in general) don't emphasize socialism as much as the traditional left or some European parties. However, they're generally still sympathetic. Moreover, while American progressives don't worry so much about economic egalitarianism, they very strongly believe that minorities earning less than whites, female earning less than male, etc. is wrong, and are willing to enact things like reparations, affirmative action,and the like to counterbalance that. In the ideal progressive utopia, CEOs would still be paid hundreds of times more than the average worker, but representation of minority race, female, non-straight and trans people among CEOs and other prestigious positions would occur at least as much as their representation in the population, regardless of their ability, and if cis straight white males are represented less than their proportion of the population, that's just gravy, and maybe justified revenge for their dominant position in the past. In fact, wokism is even more egalitarian than Marxism - the latter says from each according to ability, to each according to need, but it was generally expected that the jobs requiring higher ability would be staffed by people of higher ability. In general, it's obvious that identity politics forms the core of the political class of today's Democratic Party (especially the young), and equally obvious that America is the innovator that other progressive parties follow in this respect. America also has thrown itself into gender politics with particular enthusiasm - gender transitions, even of minors, are a cornerstone of American progressivism today, even as progressive European countries have rolled that back to an extent. I will concede that Europe leads in the other main aspect of current-day progressivism, the Green movement, although American progressives are avid followers.
sesuximo 3y ago
I think it’s fair to say American politics are violent, and it’s not really a partisan thing
- all2 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - watwut 3y ago
    Majority of violence is done by right wing. It is beyond cynical to lie so much and try to pin it on the left. The right is the ones who are the biggest and actual threat to both freedom and democracy - and actual perpetrators of murders and terrorist attacks. And no, j6 were no tourist not peaceful. They were literal violent attempt to prevent votes count.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    It sounds like the left is much more powerful than the right then given that they can overpower them with no repercussion. I think it would probably be best to give into their demands so the right are not further victimized if this is the case.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Ain't it amazing how powerful the left is and yet we can't even raise the debt ceiling?
  - rad88 3y ago
    Blowing up buildings, murdering jews, plotting assassinations etc. is substantially damaging. It is "extremist".
    - all2 3y ago
      I'm unfamiliar with these. Sources?
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Sometimes Democrats get backed into a corner. Like with Korea, Vietnam. No matter what they do, Republicans call the Democrats communists/evil/Satan. So when there is a communist country in the mix, then they better damn well go to war, or it proves they are stooges of those same communist countries. Because Democrats can't appear weak on communists, they might fight them harder than a Republican would, (see recent history where Republicans are backing Russia, which is like bizzaro world).
- colpabar 3y ago
  So they don’t actually have any principles?
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Why the down votes? Republicans love war, sometimes Democrats go along with it. It's called compromise. You mean, why do Democrats sometimes bend their principles in the face of gun toting Republican's calling for a coup? I don't know, to thread the needle to keep the peace. When half the country is ready to re-enact the Civil War, what is to be done? It isn't like Lincoln didn't compromise when needed.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  What real-world circumstance does this theory explain?
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Korea, Vietnam. If Communist China wasn't involved, we probably wouldn't be either. It was a policy of containment. And yes, Democrats went along with it. What could they do, say "no we're siding with China"? They would be voted out.
- Kamq 3y ago
  That's really more of a post 60s-ish thing. You can't really extend it back to Korea or before. From ~FDR-LBJ, the democratic party was pretty pro-war (so was the average american, really, so I guess that's fair for a party called democratic), but that really starts to flip in the late 60s/early 70s.
nonethewiser 3y ago
> The "war on terror" was started by a Republican who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and continued for nearly 8 more years under a Democrat. And ended by a Republican
- mcculley 3y ago
  The Republicans keep saying that Biden improperly withdrew from Afghanistan.
  - mc32 3y ago
    One committed the country to the withdrawal the other executed the withdrawal.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    And Democrats keep pinning it on Trump. Regardless, who is there when they withdrew is not the same as who made the plan and started the withdrawal. The Doha Agreement was drafted and signed under Trump. Biden didnt renege on the agreement and executed it. We have no idea if he would have drafted such an agreement but his track record in that regard isnt good. Obama and Biden increased troops as another commenter noted.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      The reality is that there was no path to a good exit from Afganistan, and we should condemn Bush for starting it, condemn Obama for doubling down, condemn Trump for not pulling out earlier, and same for Biden.
- mullingitover 3y ago
  Afghanistan is a wash, nobody gets to take credit for ending that. Trump entered into the surrender agreement, but delayed the execution of the agreement past the end of his term, so if he doesn't take the blame for the fallout he doesn't get credit for ending it either. Meanwhile Obama surged troops while he was in office, sure, but then tried to steeply draw down and was blocked by republicans[1]. They also blocked his effort to close the human rights embarrassment at Guantanamo[2]. This is basically an 'everyone sucks here' situation, at best. [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/286787-gop-questions-obamas-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal/ https://thehill.com/homenews/286787-gop-questions-obamas-afg... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-guantanamo/house-votes-to-block-obama-plan-to-close-guantanamo-idUSBRE95D12F20130614 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-guantanamo/ho...
sillywalk 3y ago
I gotta nitpick :) Ignoring the whole background of Korea, it's occupation by Japan, and split at the end of WW2, the Korean War began when the North invaded the South. For Vietnam, the war ended when the North Vietnam 'won' and the South collapsed.
reso 3y ago
Hard agree. Democrats pay lip service to anti-war voices when they are out of power, then often rule as hawks. It's not necessarily meaningful to call one party more or less hawkish than the other. It often comes down to the leader, era, and coalition behind them. Bush/Cheney were definitely more aggressive than Gore would have been, but HRC was positioning herself to be much more hawkish than Trump ended up ruling as. That's why in the post-2016 era many infamous hawks like Bill Kristol and David Frum have been Democrat-aligned.
greedo 3y ago
US involvement in the Vietnam war started with Eisenhower, who last I checked was a Republican...
- sillywalk 3y ago
  Pedantic: depending on what "involvement" means. Eisenhower continued and increased support for the French till 1954. Then backed Diem, blocked the 1956 elections, and sent in more "advisers", however .. :) An OSS Dear Team provided training, medical and logistical assistance to Hồ Chí Minh and the Việt Minh in 1945. An OSS doctor is reported to have treated Ho Chi Minh for malaria and dysentery. [0] Then Truman provided troop transport, money and materiel for France to re-conqueror Indochina (Democrat). Archimedes Patti, from the OSS wrote a book [1] about the experience. War is multi-party, forget tech stocks, I gotta invest in Lockheed Martin. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSS_Deer_Team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSS_Deer_Team [1] "Why Vietnam?: Prelude to America's Albatross
dredmorbius 3y ago
Also WW's Sr. and Junior, if you care to extend the pattern back, though those both began and ended under Democratic administrations. In the case of the latter, the Republican general leading the war effort became the next US President --- which suggests that there's some haziness to the attributions being made. That same administration participated in violent campaigns in Iran (overthrowing democratically-elected Mossedegh) and Guatemala, as well as planning the Bay of Pigs operation (which occurred as Kennedy's administration opened). Antiwar sentiments existed for many of these, though it's notable that considerable anti-war sentiment in the US against entry into WWII had a distinctly hard-right flavour to it. Not all anti-war sentiment, as there can be many possible motiviations, but in this specific case, domestic groups sympathetic with (and often orchestrated by) rightest European belligerents had an outsized role. The anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s became associated with Democrats as that party swung leftward and shed its own long-standing Southern affiliations, and grew our of anti-nuclear and civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, all of which saw Vietnam specifically as an unjustified and unjust war, with considerable merits to that viewpoint. Painting pro- or anti-war sentiments as distinctly left or right, or aligned with either of the two present major parties is not historically accurate and misses considerable nuance.

sangnoir 3y ago

> One of the most disappointing things in American politics in the last ten to fifteen years has been watching the left abandon their antiwar fervor You might be mixing up anti-imperialism with antiwar sentiment. In the past, the 2 were typically hand-in-hand due to the geopolitics of the day, but it is not a given - depending on the circumstances[0]. It's interesting how the American right is also taking up an anti-war stance, while maintaining pro-imperialist attitudes[1] 0. Cf. The left's attitude towards the Vietnam war vs. the Apartheid government in South Africa. 1. With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the "peace with North Korea at all costs" under Trump

nonethewiser 3y ago
Its about not wanting to fight other people’s wars. Republicans are a lot more interested in the militarization of the pacific and southern border.

KerrAvon 3y ago

Like a lot of things, it went off like a light switch when Obama was elected. It was crushing. I thought it was genuine anti-Iraq-war sentiment, not merely well-deserved hate for Bush. But a lot of it turned out to be a cudgel to beat the other guys. COVID is similar; Trump fucked it up because everything he touches turns to shit, not a surprise. Biden continues to fuck it up to this day and... crickets from Democrats. Thankfully, Biden is doing the right thing, very skillfully, with Ukraine. I wish he could get it together on domestic policy. Making his bumblefuck COVID czar his chief of staff was a incredibly bad decision, though.

chasd00 3y ago
> Biden continues to fuck it up to this day what is there left to do on COVID? The healthcare system is not collapsing and lockdowns have ended. Remember, the lockdowns where there only to prevent the healthcare system from collapsing. We even have vaccines and a host of other treatments widely available. If you're expecting total eradication of an airborne respiratory virus I don't think you're being realistic.
pstuart 3y ago
Obama doubled down on Afghanistan from the get-go -- I consider that fiasco as much his as his predecessors. As an "anti-war leftist", I find myself cheering on the assistance to Ukraine, as that is the first war in my memory that seemed worth fighting. Still no love for the Military Industrial Complex though...
- graublau 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - digging 3y ago
    I'm a different anti-war leftist, but IMO it's a lose-lose. This is more about mitigation than doing what's good. The MIC wins whether or not we support Ukraine - if Russia conquered Kyiv, you think the MIC wouldn't be ramping everything up in preparation for further invasions of NATO allies? It's not like Ukraine is some socialist utopia I want preserved at all costs. But it's a free nation that's less fascist than Russia, and it deserves to exist, and more importantly the Ukrainian people deserve to exist. If Russia wins, we'll be looking at genocide on a huge scale (because we're actually currently dealing with genocide on a "small" scale). So, I'm more anti-genocide than I am anti-MIC, and I think it's a good thing we're helping Ukraine fight back against Russia.

vlovich123 3y ago

How do you mean? Seems like the left is still pretty antiwar. Also, not all war is equal. Otherwise you're in the paradox of tolerance. It should be a last resort but it necessarily must remain an option. Unprovoked wars of aggression (US Iraq) are different from provoked wars (e.g. Germany in WWII). The other problem is when there's provoked aggression but the response is disproportionate (9/11 Afghanistan considering Afghanistan offered to remand Bin Laden into US custody). There's a lot more nuance in the real world too (e.g. how should Israel respond to inbound rocket attacks which are provoked but failure to respond with outsized force tends to cause attackers to get more emboldened).

psychphysic 3y ago
The paradox of tolerance can not be used here. It requires fiat control of the situation. That control of sovereign entities can only be attained by threat or actualised violence. Putting it another way. That you even consider yourself entitled to tolerate a sovereign nation requires that you believe you are entitled a degree of control it. Anti-war thinking requires not just that you consider war a last resort. But you consider that you have no option at all. War is not another just lever. If it is then you do not have anti-war beliefs you just are more adverse to it than some hawks.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  > That control of sovereign entities can only be attained by threat or actualised violence. Treaties are signed regularly having nothing to do with any kind of threat of violence. Breaking of treaties often even has legal redress mechanisms within international courts of law, all without military threats. Instead economic sanctions are often the recourse. Re "paradox of tolerance" it's a pretty close analogy so I'm really not sure what you're going on about. An absolute anti-war position puts you in the position of tolerating wars. Thus any group that wants can engage in violence to acquire more resources. At the limit it can even overpower you although that's not so important because your tolerance of the war has a net result in having caused more war and violence. In military circles it would be called appeasement* but it's the same basic philosophy. * Interesting side note is that there are some historians that suggest that Chamberlain's appeasement strategy wasn't because he thought it would work to pacify Hitler but because he was desperately trying hard to avoid Britain getting sucked into a conflict until they were properly staffed up (Stalin did the same btw). Additionally the appeasement strategy arguably was helpful in also pulling America into the European theater because domestic supporters of Germany couldn't claim that Hitler's expansion was somehow legitimate given that every grievance raised by Germany had a legitimate attempt to redress.

BrotherBisquick 3y ago

[flagged]

mrguyorama 3y ago
Hell, plenty on the right want Trump as king, with his son as next in line. I don't think that is broadly popular Republican policy though, despite their official policy being "Do whatever Trump wants"
3192029941 3y ago
> ...or rallying to the defense of the Duchess of Sussex, a literal princess married to a family of billionaires FWIW, nobody I know (either left-leaning or right-learning) cares about her at all. I'm curious where you're hearing this from. > while kicking poor white workers in the teeth How? > the latter are suspicious that a man belongs in a woman's locker room. Well, I'm glad that we can all agree that trans men are okay, then!
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  I'm actually not sure anymore which side of the aisle, if any, anyone in this conversation joins, but in the US, both the Democrats and Republicans have spent the last 70 years selling the average worker down river, whether by trade agreements that made it profitable to do all manufacturing in China or decades of successful anti-union and anti-"socialism" propaganda or banking deregulation, or letting coal mines poison you while also letting them write the textbooks that tell you you should be thankful for being poisoned, to embroiling us in middle east nonsense, to the war on drugs, to stabbing important unionized transportation workers in the back directly (Both parties have an explicit case of this!!!) The republicans switched to ideological and religious stuff mid century, and the democrats seemingly responded by just.... walking away from the common man? It's weird. If you want to vote for workers empowerment in the US, you don't have an option.
- howinteresting 3y ago
  The person you are replying to is a monster (flagged comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36061333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36061333

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

CalChris 3y ago

One of the most disappointing things in American politics in the last ten to fifteen years has been watching the right cozy up to Putin.

nonethewiser 3y ago
Im familiar with the argument in favor of this within the past couple years. But what case is there that they started 15 years ago?
- CalChris 3y ago
  “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy,” Bush said. “I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
- int_19h 3y ago
  I dunno about 15 years, but it was already a thing in 2015. My local gun store owner - the kind of guy who watches Fox religiously, has "thin blue line" stickers on his truck etc - straight up told me that he'd prefer Putin to Obama because the former is a "true leader", a "real Christian", and "protects family values".

jscipione 3y ago

[flagged]

mnky9800n 3y ago

What about when the entire left voted for going to Iraq twenty years ago? (Except Bernie Sanders I believe)

runarberg 3y ago
> The dramatic, much-debated vote on Joint Resolution 114 was taken on Oct. 11, 2002. It passed the Senate by a vote of 77 to 23, and the House of Representatives by a vote of 296 to 133. In the end, 156 members of Congress from 36 states had enough information and personal insight and wisdom to make the correct decision for our nation and the world community. > Six House Republicans and one Independent joined 126 Democratic members of the House of Representatives in voting NAY. In the Senate, 21 Democrats, one Republic, and one Independent courageously voted their consciences in 2002 against the War in Iraq. https://www.thoughtco.com/2002-iraq-war-vote-3325446 https://www.thoughtco.com/2002-iraq-war-vote-3325446 Worth mentioning among the NAY votes is Barbara Lee representative of California’s 12th congressional district (9th during the vote) who has announced she’ll be running to take Dianne Feinstein’s (who voted YAY) seat in the 2024 senate race, and is a favorite among many progressives (i.e. left wing Democrats).
nonethewiser 3y ago
I still don’t understand why people think it was the wrong decision.
- runarberg 3y ago
  I’m sorry for the snark, but Major General Smedley Butler offers a generic explanation for wars in general in his 1935 essay War is a Racket. But for the Iraq war specifically (a part from the racketeering) why many people think it was the wrong decision is in large part based on the lies and deceptions that were used to justify the invasion. At the time many people believed those lies and thought they were justifiable reasons for the invasion. When it later turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction, that ties of the Ba'ath party to terrorist organizations were none, that the USA imposed government was corrupt and offered little benefits to regular people over Saddam’s dictatorship, etc. etc. When this all became common knowledge, on top of all the war crimes, the torture scandals, the massacres, after Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange went to prison for revealing some of those war crimes, many of these people who previously believed the war was justified, changed their opinion of it.

jasmer 3y ago

Where is the 'war fervor' of the Left? What does helping Ukraine defend themselves have to do with 'war fervor'? Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 and Obama/Trump reaction was to ignore it - which directly resulted in a much bigger war. The US Military Industrial Complex is why there are no wars against rich allied states. If Ukraine were part of the system and had a well managed, functional military - Putin could not have invaded, in fact he never would have tried.

all2 3y ago
This is incomplete. Ukraine was supposed to be a buffer between NATO and Russia. As soon as Western folks started talking about getting cozy with Ukraine, Putin saw the eventuality where US/joint bases would be on his border and he didn't want that. He would rather start a war with Ukraine than go toe-to-toe with the US and NATO.
- epgui 3y ago
  Other people making friends is not really a good reason to start killing them, either way. I know it’s not what you’re saying exactly, but it’s what Putin’s actions boil down to.
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- watwut 3y ago
  Russia has borders with NATO and had them for years. The buffer theory makes zero sense, considering Ukraine was not even trying to get to NATO and there is pretty long border between Russia and NATO anyway. NATO basis were next to Russia for decades. Plus, one does not need to commit genocide to achieve safety. Anand Putin just happen to be committing genocide.
- jnwatson 3y ago
  NATO was already on his border.

paulddraper 3y ago

Politicians in the American Left have never been antiwar. Truman, Johnson, Clinton, Obama, etc. The only difference between now and the 70s is that the politicians have more control over the left.

hayst4ck 3y ago
The progressives (bernie, AOC, etc.) had very very disappointing responses to Ukraine that showed they are not ready to rule. I was particularly devastated by AOC's response.
rufus_foreman 3y ago
>> Truman, Johnson, Clinton, Obama, etc. The Carter presidency is in the running for the most peaceful modern presidency. He did start arming the rebels in Afghanistan, and ordered what I guess amounts to a brief invasion of Iran, but overall, pretty peaceful. It's either him or Trump.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Agreed.

goodpoint 3y ago

More like the left abandoned American politics. At least compared to the rest of the world the US have 2 right-wing parties.

mrguyorama 3y ago
American politics abandoned the left, not the other way around. We decided to make McCarthyism a national sport. Being against Vietnam was unpatriotic and wrong. Being against Afghanistan was unpatriotic and wrong. Being against unregulated capitalism was unamerican and wrong.

tptacek 3y ago

Predictably, this comment started a partisan political argument that took over the thread like kudzu.

hayst4ck 3y ago

> watching the left abandon their antiwar fervor. As left people gain political maturity, they understand that those in power will not give up their power willingly, so force is required. As a liberal person I am suspicious of any liberal who does not believe in gun rights, and I am even more suspicious of a liberal person who does not believe in unions, which is the 2nd amendment of labor rights. Neither the 2nd amendment nor unions can be used for their purpose within the bounds of the law. Believing in human rights means believing in defending human rights with force, otherwise what is to stop someone from violating human rights? If a powerful person uses their power against you, your choices are submit or fight. Leftists are slowly understanding: 1. There are powerful people 2. They will arbitrarily use your power against you 3. Those people use their power to influence law so the law will not protect you 4. You can't solve this problem within the bounds of the law It's not hard to look at Ukraine and see that justice cannot be achieved without war and that you don't get to decide when you are at war.

sushisource 3y ago
The problem with this whole thought process is it's hilariously abstract. The people in power have F-35s. What is your collection of (admittedly, unnecessarily powerful) guns going to do against that? It also assumes that such disagreements require force to be resolved, and that's just demonstrably not always true. Even if it sometimes is.
- sparselogic 3y ago
  > The people in power have F-35s. What is your collection of (admittedly, unnecessarily powerful) guns going to do against that? Military inventory, while powerful, isn't the end-all. Just ask Afghans about their experiences with two superpowers' machinery.
- fnovd 3y ago
  F-35s aren't particularly useful for collecting taxes, for maintaining a state. You can't use them to intimidate an individual, it's a huge waste of resources for the owner of the F-35. What's more dangerous than an F-35 is a group of guys with guns driving around in a pickup truck. Guns and trucks are just so much cheaper than fighter jets, so much more deployable... not to mention the entire logistical and manpower apparatus that goes into getting an F-35 in the air. If you want to win a war of attrition you use cheap, effective tools, not the flashy stuff. Flashy weapons are great for blowing up some other country's infrastructure, it's not very useful if the enemy is your own people. If you blow up all your own people and infrastructure, what do you have power over? If you and everyone in a 10-mile radius of where you're sitting right now decided to ignore some federal law, like maybe the one against cannabis, what the heck is an F-35 going to do about it? Blow up a building, is that supposed to help? No, you get some guys with guns and trucks and then you can start going door to door, threatening people, looking around, collecting stuff, whatever. You can set up checkpoints and block off bridges, the whole shebang, because you're trying to establish control, not just blow things up. Blowing things up has its uses but if you want to intimidate someone to the point where you have power over them, you need to be a little more intimate. You can't just be a fleck in the sky and you can't just show up do to the big stuff. You need to be in their face as a persistent, immediate threat. That's what influences human behavior and that's how power is established. That's exactly why small guns are such a sticking point in the USA, they're a very effective counter to this intimate threat.

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labster 3y ago

We on the left realized that John Brown got it right. Sometimes you have to march to the sea to get basic human rights.

archagon 3y ago

My impression is that the left is more anti-imperialist-war than anti-war. Vietnam and Iraq were hard to justify morally.