The current political debate includes attacks upon both President Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. These attacks come from Republican sources that are sometimes repeated by Sanders protagonists many of whom are actually agents of disinformation paid for by the billionaire class such as the Koch Brothers. I have copied and pasted some of this disinformation. The Republican Party has embraced sophistry and falsehood. This has resulted in the run away candidacy of Donald Trump aka Drumpf. Drumpf has attracted all the angry voters of the Republican Party who have been mislead by Fox News and other Conservative propagandists for the entire length of the Obama presidency.
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Here is the piece:
"More facts for Obama legacy - His misguided policies in Middle East enabled ISIS. Obama caused the refugee and civil war tragedy. He set off a nuclear arms race in the region, Idly watching as Iran and North Korea develop ICBM capability....Obama is a total disaster for the people and the world."
ISIS has a complicated history that began with the Ronald Reagan presidency. At the time Afghanistan had been invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union. A policy was chosen using the patriarchal concept that the enemy of my enemy is my friend to arm Afghani rebels to fight the Soviets. The system of patriarchy has as its underlying rule that violence settles all conflict. The best fighters are usually the ones with a culture of violence, especially patriarchal religion. The religion of the Afghani fighters is and was a version of Islam that has its roots in Saudi Wahabbism. It is misogynistic and views women as baby making machines. This religion also views the political and sexual freedom of women in the Western world as one of the greatest dangers that they face.
One of the leaders of the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan was Osama bin Laden. His shrewdness was to take money and weapons and fight the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan as an American proxy. His interests were only in alignment with American interests until the Soviets left Afghanistan. From that moment on America replaced the Soviets as the enemy of his religious movement, which is not limited to one country but desired to recreate a Caliphate. The very same Caliphate that ISIS is attempting to create.
Next we must remember the history of another Republican President George W. Bush. The invasion of Afghanistan to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden who was behind the worst terrorist attack on American soil in history was valid and based upon reality and the true interests of the American people. Sadly that invasion was unsuccessful and Osama bin Laden was allowed to escape to Pakistan. The reason for that failure was the diversion of military resources from Afghanistan to prepare for the upcoming invasion of Iraq.
Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorist attack on September eleventh 2001. The brutal dictator of Iraq Saddam Hussein regularly killed terrorists of the ilk of Osama bin Laden. While these religious extremists did not have the ability to overthrow Saddam Hussein, they benefited beyond their wildest dreams after America removed Saddam Hussein from power.
It is very clear how many soldiers are required to occupy a country that has been defeated in war. It is a huge number and was last successfully done by the United States during world war two. This task can only be accomplished by a society that is completely organized for war. A draft of all young men of fighting age is required.
The major unintended consequence of sending almost all men of fighting age off to fight in a foreign war was to bring women into the work force to make the weapons of war. Women refused to leave the work force after WWII. The majority of American women embraced the right to work outside the home. That we now take the right of women to work and be self sufficient for granted is the greatest success of American feminism.
During the Vietnam War the limits of overwhelming military power to obtain a political result was definitively shown. The free press showed daily footage of the horrors of war, free fire zones creating war crimes, and the continuous return of American flag draped coffins combined to create an anti-war movement that ended the presidency of LBJ and made Richard Nixon president.
This was not lost upon warmongers. Men who benefit from the military industrial complex vowed to not make the same mistake again.
The historical lesson lead to the abolishment of the draft and the creation of the volunteer armed forces. Volunteers who choose to fight for their country are actually much more in keeping with early American tradition. It was only the requirements of the industrialization of war that started with the American Civil War and continued through World Wars One and Two that made a draft necessary to wage war.
While patriarchy started with the domestication of the horse and the invention of bronze weapons it is the technologic advancement of weaponry that is one of the true hallmarks of patriarchy.
It was this modern weaponry that mislead the Neoconservative architects of the Iraq War namely Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to believe that they could invade, overthrow and occupy Iraq on the cheap, meaning with only volunteer soldiers. They got two out of three right and the disaster that is the current Middle East is the tragic consequence of their war.
Let us be very clear. Historical analysis shows that Osama bin Laden, the terrorism of September Eleventh and first the Al Queda resistance to the American occupation of Iraq which then morphed into ISIS is the direct result of repeated Republican Foreign Policy Failures. They are also the failures of the thought disorder of patriarchy.
To blame President Barack Obama for enabling ISIS is historically false and part of the false narrative that Republicans have been building against him since he took office in January 2009.
While terrorism and beheadings make us very upset, along with the destruction of humanity's archeologic treasures, they are not an existential threat to America. ISIS as our implaccable foe is much less dangerous than the Soviet Union as an implacable foe. The replacement of the Soviet Union with Russia means that we have no enemies threatening to kill tens of millions of Americans in a nuclear holocaust as there was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
While the Iraq War was based upon a lie, the aftermath of the Iraq War did hold an existential threat to America's most important ally in the Middle East, Israel. That threat was Iran's attempt to create a nuclear weapon. The false set of circumstances that was used to justify a war in Iraq, now actually existed in Iran. War was the first choice of Republican conservative policy makers. Luckily eight years of George W. Bush's disastrous policy had removed them from power.
The achievement of having a foe give up nuclear weapons without a war but through diplomacy and while still remaining an enemy is the major foreign policy accomplishment of President Obama, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary John Kerry. They really do deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
The unifying thread in this blog is patriarchy and white male privilege. The only way to circumcise the hearts and lips of the patriarchal thought disorder is to follow the historic election of an African American president with the equally historic election of our First Wise Woman President, Hillary Rodham Clinton, E Pluribus Unum.