Bernie Sanders Again Insists That Saudi Arabia
Should Kill More People
By David Swanson
Senator Bernie
Sanders taped a PBS show at the University of Virginia on
Monday. I had corresponded with the host Doug Blackmon beforehand, and offered
him ideas for questions on military spending and war, questions like these:
1. People want
to tax the rich and cut military spending, which is 54% of federal
discretionary spending according to National Priorities Project, but you only
ever mention taxing the rich. Why not do both? What -- give or take $100
billion -- is an appropriate level of military spending?
2. Do you agree
with Eisenhower that military spending creates wars?
3. Can you
possibly be serious about wanting to keep the wars going but have Saudi Arabia
play a bigger role? Do you approve of Saudi Arabia dropping U.S. cluster bombs
on Yemen?
4. Would you
approve of John Kerry promising Israel $45 billion of free weapons over the
next decade?
5. Jeremy Corbyn
was just elected leader of the Labour Party. He wants to pull out of NATO. Do
you? He wants to unilaterally disarm of nuclear weapons? Do you? He wants to
end drone murders and wars. Do you? Are you both socialists?
Blackmon at the
very end asked Sanders to say something about foreign policy. Sanders replied
with the 2002 Iraq vote. Then Blackmon mentioned Saudi Arabia, including its
slaughter in Yemen, but rambled on until it became an unrelated softball.
Sanders nonetheless brought it back to Saudi Arabia and insisted that Saudi
Arabia should "get their hands dirty" and take a much bigger role in
a war against ISIS and generally lead the wars with U.S. support.
Who has dirtier
hands than Saudi Arabia? Is this some kind of a sick joke?
After the taping
of the show, a member of the audience asked "But how will you pay for
it?" What the "it" was went unstated, but presumably it wasn't
the military which is considered cost-free in such discussions. Sanders
answered with progressive taxation. No mention of the military.
Later in the
audience Q&A, Sanders brought up Eisenhower without mentioning the
military.
Here are tips
for future interviewers of Bernie Sanders:
As you know,
Bernie Sanders focuses on money issues, taxing the rich, spending on the poor,
but has thus far been permitted to engage in the general practice of speaking
only about the 46% of federal discretionary spending that it not military.
Nobody has asked
him about the 54% that by the calculation of National Priorities Project is
military. Nobody has asked him if Eisenhower was right that military spending
produces wars. Here are 25,000 people who want to know whether and how
much Sanders would want to cut military spending.
He's silent on
the public support for two, not one, great sources of revenue: taxing the rich
(which he's all over) and cutting the military (which he avoids).
When he is asked
about wars and says Saudi Arabia should pay for and lead them, nobody has
followed up by asking whether the wars are themselves good or not or how the
theocratic murderous regime in Saudi Arabia which openly seeks to overthrow
other governments and is dropping US cluster bombs on Yemen will transform the
wars into forces for good. Since when is THAT "socialism"?
If you go to
Bernie's website and click on ISSUES and search for foreign policy it's just
not there. He recently added the Iran agreement, after the fact, in which
statement he says that war should "always be on the table" even
though the U.N. Charter ban on threatening war makes no exception for candidate
websites.
If Senator
Sanders were to add anything about war in general to his website, judging by
his standard response when asked, it would be this:
The military
wastes money and its contractors routinely engage in fraud. The Department of
Defense should be audited. Some weapons that I won't name should be eliminated.
Some cuts that I won't even vaguely estimate should be made. All the wars in
the Middle East should continue, but Saudi Arabia should lead the way with the
U.S. assisting, because Saudi Arabia has plenty of weapons -- and if Saudi
Arabia has murdered lots of its own citizens and countless little babies in
Yemen and has the goal of overthrowing a number of governments and slaughtering
people of the wrong sect and dominating the area for the ideology of its
fanatical dictatorial regime, who cares, better that than the U.S. funding all
the wars, and the idea of actually ending any wars should be effectively
brushed aside by changing the subject to how unfair it is for Saudi Arabia not
to carry more of the militarized man's burden. Oh, and veterans, U.S. veterans,
are owed the deepest gratitu de imaginable for the generous and beneficial service
they have performed by killing so many people in the wars I've voted against
and the ones I've voted for alike.
He's silent on
how much he'd cut the military, even within a range of $100 billion. He's
silent on alternatives to war. He's usually silent on U.S. subservience to
Israel. (Does he favor $45 billion in more free weapons for Israel paid for by
the U.S. public whom he usually wants to spare lesser expenses than that?)
Jeremy Corbyn
just won leadership of the Labour Party in England by promoting socialism at
home and actively opposing wars and seeking peace. What is Bernie afraid of?
--
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is
director of WorldBeyondWar.org and
campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's
books include War Is A Lie. He blogs
at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He
is a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.
Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook.
Donations
can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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