When you’re siding with John Bolton on whether to bomb Iran, you’re as insanely hawkish as it gets.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Full Speech at Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024. (C-Span still)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com.au
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.
Celebrity progressive, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night, falsely claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris “is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.”
There is literally no evidentiary basis anywhere for this assertion. She made it up.
Kamala Harris is not “working tirelessly” to do anything at this time besides become the next president. Her own staff are saying she is opposed to an arms embargo on Israel and won’t consider cutting or conditioning military aid, which is the only way the Israeli government can be effectively forced to stop sabotaging a peace deal so that the U.S.-backed genocide can finally end.
Saying you’ll continue pouring military explosives into a regime that is using those military explosives to conduct regular massacres of civilians is the exact opposite of working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire.
“This is false, it’s propaganda, and it’s making people misunderstand the issue,” Current Affairs’ Nathan Robinson said of AOC’s statement. “The Biden administration could have imposed a ceasefire anytime it wanted to. The only reason there isn’t one is that Biden has made sure Israel has no incentive to agree to one.”
This is false, it's propaganda, and it's making people misunderstand the issue. The Biden administration could have imposed a ceasefire anytime it wanted to. The only reason there isn't one is that Biden has made sure Israel has no incentive to agree to one. https://t.co/981uWndCOi
— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) August 20, 2024
Meanwhile, the DNC has approved a 2024 party platform whose section on the Middle East is so surprisingly hawkish that it largely reads like it could have been written by some of Washington’s most war-horny Republicans.
It repeatedly calls its support for Israel and the continuation of arms shipments thereto “ironclad.” It criticizes former President Donald Trump as having been too soft on Iran, for god’s sake.
After boasting about the Biden administration’s bombing campaign against the “Iranian-linked Houthi forces” in Yemen, its “precision airstrikes on key Iranian-linked targets” and its success in neutralizing Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel after Israel assassinated multiple Iranian military officials in Syria, the platform says that this “stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s fecklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression during his presidency.”
Then they literally attack Trump for not going to war with Iran:
“In 2018, when Iranian-backed militias repeatedly attacked the U.S. consulate in Basra, Iraq Trump’s only response was to close our diplomatic facility. In June 2019, when Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance aircraft operating in international airspace above the Straits of Hormuz, Trump responded by tweet and then abruptly called off any actual retaliation, causing confusion and concern among his own national security team.
In September 2019, when Iranian-backed groups threatened global energy markets by attacking Saudi oil infrastructure, Trump failed to respond against Iran or its proxies. In January 2020, when Iran, for the first and only time in its history, directly launched ballistic missiles against U.S. troops in western Iraq, Trump mocked the resulting Traumatic Brain Injuries suffered by dozens of American servicemembers as mere ‘headaches’ — and again, took no action.”
The “national security team” who suffered “confusion and concern” when Trump opted not to wade into a Middle Eastern war of unfathomable horror includes psychopathic war criminal John Bolton, who was reportedly “devastated” when Trump called off a deadly military assault on Iran in retaliation for its shooting down the aforementioned (unmanned) surveillance aircraft.
Bolton speaking at 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
When you’re siding with John Bolton on whether to bomb Iran, you’re as insanely hawkish as it gets.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris believe a strong, secure, and democratic Israel is vital to the interests of the United States,” the platform reads. “Their commitment to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself, and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is ironclad.”
The 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is the agreement by which the United States agrees to continue sending Israel $3.8 billion a year to spend on weapons.
This comes as Kamala Harris’ current and former staff members report that not only will the vice president refuse to cut or condition military support to Israel, she will also refuse to re-enter the Iran deal to ease tensions in the region.
The Times of Israel cites Congressman Brad Schneider saying he was told by the Harris campaign’s Jewish outreach chief that “the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee would oppose a return to the Iran nuclear deal.”
The Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was one of the only decent foreign policy moves made by the Obama administration, and killing it was one of the nastiest things Trump did as president — along with his other recklessly hawkish actions against Iran like implementing starvation sanctions and assassinating General Qasem Soleimani.
But rather than pledging to re-enter the Obama era of de-escalation and detente with Iran, the Democrats are attacking Trump for not fighting a war with Iran while pledging ironclad support for the nation that’s doing everything it can to get that war started.
So yeah, that’s the Democratic Party for you. Vote for them and you get a nicer-looking mask on the blood-spattered face of the U.S. war machine. It’ll kill just as many Middle Eastern kids as the Republicans will, but it will kill them under the presidency of a woman of color with “she/her” in her Twitter bio.
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The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
“To know what is the right thing to do and not do it, is the greatest cowardice. “ Confucius.
As I keep pointing out regarding the now decades old Dem assertion that we should vote for “the lesser of two evils” is an admission they ARE evil. The adage–when someone shows you who they really are believe them–certainly applies here. Any support for “evil” allows it to, well, become eviler and eviler. As the Ds have.
It was bad enough when the neolibs usurped what had been the party of the New Deal and transformed it into a party that supports trickle up corporate economics. Yes, the Biden admin did some good things for Native Americans, working people, and enviro issues. But with a deregulated and destructive econ system, a few decencies here and there won’t matter.
Then add the blatant Cheney neocon acolytes running the Biden Dept. of State. Now a Dem party platform even more hawkish than the Rs?!!
What more evidence do we need that Unistat is uniparty and intends to keep the world unipolar no matter now many wars it takes? “Jesus wept,” the shortest verse in the NT, is an apt reaction to what the U.S. has become. //The Greatest Evil Is War// the 2022 book by Chris Hedges says it all.
She will do and say ANYTHING for the Party she fervently hopes to head as President some day. She has no morals and no principles.
Don’t like the Ds? whaddya gonna do? Vote R?
No matter, you will vote for genocide, nuclear war, kleptocracy, and oligarchy and you will call it democracy.
Maybe Caitlin Johnstone is unfamiliar with American political campaigns. AOC made a great political speech.
One hopes that when Harris becomes President, she will be able to say to her “I was there for you!”
As for Harris, she cannot do more than what she has done.
If you think supporting genocide and war is the right thing for her to do, then yes, I would agree that she has done all that she can do.
AOC is a fraud. The Progressives are a fraud. The far-right ‘centrist’ elite is losing support, and yet in this year, all the Progressives like AOC can do is to chant Four More Years.
When, if they were really competing for power in the party, they could have just defeated the weakest incumbent President in American history who was still stupid enough to think he could get re-elected with below 40% approval ratings and over 50% of Dems telling pollsters they wanted someone, anyone else. And yet, the Progressives stayed out of the race, creating this far-right DNC that is so pro-war, pro-Wall Street and pro-Genocide. Progressives are a fraud, and AOC is one of the biggest.
The comment you replied to has all the depth of a shrinking tidal pool. What he wrote does not even make any sense; his comment is quite similar to Harris’s “speeches.”
You can’t believe what a politician says.
Believe only what they do.
And they try and hide what they do.
Type their names in the search bar on the homepage of this website to find out what they’ve done.
See how it matches up to what they are saying.
Kamala’s entourage going through Pennsylvania rented a restaurant, the local patrons were kicked out at 4 p.m. and vans pulled up full of ‘locals’ and were installed with rapturous expressions for her. The protesters out front yelled, “Look, here are the paid actors!” and that’s all you will see at the convention–Congress is now a bunch of paid actors, and they had better do as they are told or else no paycheck, no job. I am not referring to voters, this show is not for them.
Democrats no longer speak to real people. It is obvious.
Another fake show, awhile back. Supposedly Biden getting the endorsement from the UAW and a crowd of union workers. And yet, the ‘workers’ either ‘worked’ in the UAW HQ getting 6 figure salaries and nice expense accounts, or Dem hacks brought into the room and given union t-shirts to wear. No actual workers allowed into the room which was invitation only.
What is obvious is that neither Biden nor Harris would go to a factory floor to talk to workers, or even to do the formerly traditional Democrat campaign stop of being at the factory gates at 6am to greet the first shift as they come to work.
Of course, the Dems aren’t alone in fakery. The Republicans just packed the hallowed seats of the representatives of the people of the United States with a bunch of ringers to hide the fact that over a hundred representatives had boycotted the speech.
In modern America, it is far better to assume that what you see is fake, because it probably is.
Wars would be far fewer if these politicians had to lead their troops into battle. Some like John Bolton and Dick Cheney are probably so cowardly they wouldn’t have gone into politics, just in case.
I often suspect that chicken-hawks like Bolton and Cheney are driven by some sexual need that, due to impotence, can’t be satisfied by normal sexual activity.
For those old enough to be in the Vietnam generation, one does not need imagination. Only records research.
Dick Cheney got ‘deferments’ to stay out of the draft from 1959 to 1967, when he became old enough that he was no longer eligible for the draft. A total of five different deferments to keep him out of the military. (I hate to link to the NYT, but hxxps://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/us/2004-campaign-military-service-cheney-s-five-draft-deferments-during-vietnam-era.html)
George W. Bush we of course know also got deferments, then a nice place in the Texas Air National Guard with other elites who wanted to be in a military unit with zero chances of being sent to southeast Asia.
John Bolton’s cia-wiki page says he served in the Maryland National Guard and the US Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976. He also of course avoided any fighting in southeast Asia. According to that wikipedia page, “He wrote in his Yale 25th reunion book: “I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost.”
AOC has been co-opted by the Dark Side of the Force
AOC has not been co-opted. She walked straight into the Dark Side with her eyes WIDE OPEN! When I first heard of her, and viewed some videos of her speeches, early in her political career, I felt a strong feeling she would make a great political leader. She said the right things. Though, recently, she’s proven to be just CRAP, like the majority, of not all, of those so-called elected official. I’m glad I no longer live in that horrid evil country run by completely corrupted politicians!
Huh? She’s been this way since she first entered Congress.
Crazy, Bobble-head Biden could have stopped the madness in Gaza last October – instead he has murdered probably close to 200 thousand innocent people. WHAT A SHAM!! If you think Kamala will be any different, you are just as insane as the rest of the shit-for-brains cheering at the vulgar masquerade of a convention.
Genocide Kam is running a fake right now. She has supported these policies all along. I can not think of a single instance where she has disagreed with Biden and the Establishment at any point in her time as Veeper. For three and a half years, she has not spoken out against war. She has not spoken out against Genocide. Not a peep. Now she drops vague hints that she might be different after she’s elected. But very vague hints and even they seem to only say that she might be different.
Loyal corporate Dem party hack. Her career includes supporting the police as DA in SF and AG in CA. Her signature task for Genocide Joe as Veeper was to make sure potential migrants get beaten and stopped in Mexico before they reach the border. Nothing about her says kind, progressive or even human. And yet, she runs this fake where she pretends to be different from what’s happened in the last four years without really saying so. Given that she’s a Dem, I don’t see why even if she said so there’d be any reason to believe her given her lack of any track record in these areas in her career. Top Cop is a good description of her.
It does say a huge amount about the Democratic electorate that replacing an old white man with a younger woman of color suddenly seems to raise the popularity of the same policies. Once they got conned into voting for Identity, they were doomed, as this gets used to get them to vote for policies far to the right of Reagan. After all, Ronnie Raygun was only joking when he said during a mic test that ‘The bombing begins in five minutes’.
Thank you, Caitlin, for pointing out the major DNC hypocrisies.
Like the Repubs they merely lie, to shroud taking bribes from the MIC, AIPAC, and anti-socialists.
Most in the US want only marketing feel-good lies anyway. The truth might cost them something!
Marketing has cost the US all decency and honesty. What we have left is not democracy but corruptocracy.
The Democrats have been based on a Big Lie for nearly 40 years now. Ever since the DLC, led by the Clintons and the Gores, changed the party away from the old FDR farm-labor-middle class coalition into today’s Party of Wall Street.
The Democrats still lie that they care about people. They use the old FDR history to spin a complete myth that they give a dang about anyone who can not afford the minimum deposit for a hedge fund account. In comparison, the Republicans have usually been pretty obvious and honest about who they are and what they want. But every Dem campaign from Clinton to Harris has been a total, big lie as the candidates of Wall Street lie, fake and pretend to want to help ordinary people. This is shown by what Dems have done after winning elections for the same nearly 40 years. As a reference point, the minimum wage has now not gone up under 12 years of Obama/Biden/Harris, and they don’t seem to even want to fake an effort to pretend otherwise anymore. Wall Street would not be amused.
Both parties are rampant serial liars, but the Democrats now base their entire party on a Big Lie.
The entire DNC is full of shameless liars. They’re actually now trying to pawn themselves off as anti-genocide, against the “war between Israel and Hamas”, a nauseating way to describe the Zionist genocide. This after handing the Talmudic psychopaths billions of dollars in ammunition and military hardware and running constant propaganda for the creepy Zionist artificial state.
Makes one wonder, how has the current political scum managed to float to positions of political decision making, albeit farcical any which way, not only in the USA, BUT also everywhere in Europe up to the Russian border, with very few exemptions, political scum everywhere as far as I notice…or is it just a natural way, almost a natural law in human society, scum always floats to the top, again and again and again ad nauseam, under any socioeconomic system??? One may be driven to despair noticing this historical reality?! Maybe it is all all about the power of money, honey?! Who controls it and who distributes it?
Its called corruption.
Money is fairly obvious. There are people who hide the power that they wield. But who has money is rather well known in the world. That of course is the source of power in a capitalist system, and the only source.
We might have a discussion about whether corruption is a sure result of human nature? Was old Ben Franklin right when he said that this Constitution might serve well for a short while, but that eventually America would become so corrupt that it could only be ruled by despotism? But there is little doubt that corruption, the buying of public officials so that they put their own greed above the good of the nation or the people, that is what is rampant across all of ‘the West’.
The funny part is that Lenin’s line about selling the capitalists the rope that is used to hang them turns out to be fairly accurate as well. The US weapons industry is so corrupt that the national treasure spent on armaments now makes the Emperor look quite naked in their new clothes and carrying the very expensive weapons that could only pass approval tests with more corruption and now don’t seem to be worth much of a dang in a real war not fought against the poorest nations on earth. Meanwhile the corrupt leaders fight bigger and bigger wars believing in the magic power of their very expensive weapons.
Turns out the capitalist’s corruption is what is sinking their ship of fools, while the Captains chosen by corruption don’t know what to do since they weren’t really ever competent to do the job.