{"id":7225,"date":"2012-02-24T00:00:54","date_gmt":"2012-02-24T08:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=7225"},"modified":"2012-02-24T00:00:54","modified_gmt":"2012-02-24T08:00:54","slug":"warmongering-the-next-republican-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/24\/warmongering-the-next-republican-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"Warmongering: the Next Republican Focus?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republican warmongering against Iran is nothing new.  Who can forget John McCain singing \u201cBomb, Bomb Iran\u201d during a Senate committee hearing, when he did not know his microphone was open, wan back in 2008.  With their culture wars drawing more and more ire from the general public, Republicans need a new focus to distract voters from improvements in the economy.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"24warmongers\"Here we go again. With the economy showing faint signs of life and their positions on the social issues alienating most moderates, the leading Republican candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, have returned to the elixir of warmongering to once again sway the gullible masses<\/strong>. The race to the bottom has been set by Newt Gingrich, the most desperate of the lot, who on Tuesday charged that \u201cThe president wants to unilaterally weaken the United States,\u201d because his administration has dared question the wisdom of Israel attacking Iran and proposes a slight reduction in the bloated defense budget.  <\/p>\n

Let the good times roll with a beefed-up military budget justified by plans to invade yet another Muslim country\u2026<\/p>\n

…It was an invasion that removed Saddam Hussein, once the U.S. ally in confronting Iran, from power and replaced him with a Shiite leadership long beholden to the ayatollahs of Iran. Of course, as Bush lied, this was not about nation-building aimed at imposing a democracy in our image, but rather, as is the claim now, about preventing radical Muslims from getting their hands on a nuclear weapon. In a Where\u2019s Waldo moment, it turned out that the dreaded nukes were not in Iraq, and the leading Republican presidential candidates are convinced that Iran now has such weapons and they need to be taken out<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Not so, say CIA and Pentagon experts in these matters, who insist that Iran is some distance from developing a nuclear weapon, even if that is its intention<\/strong>. In a CNN interview Sunday, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that Iran had not yet decided whether to build a nuclear weapon. He also said the U.S. had told Israel that any Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would be \u201cdestabilizing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But such facts are not troubling to the GOP contenders<\/strong>, who seem not to have realized that there is one Muslim country already in possession of scores of such weapons. That would be Pakistan, the country Bush didn\u2019t invade despite its avid support for the Taliban sponsors of al-Qaida. Instead, after 9\/11, Bush dropped the sanctions his predecessor, Bill Clinton, had imposed on Pakistan as punishment for its developing a nuclear arsenal<\/strong>. Nor did Bush and his fellow Republican hawks get overly exercised by the revelation that Pakistan was giving nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, Libya and, yes, Iran<\/strong>. It was also the hiding place for Osama bin Laden when Barack Obama made good on Bush\u2019s pledge to run the al-Qaida leader to ground\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Truthdig<\/a>><\/p>\n

As much as the naysayers try to deny this, Obama has consistently attempted to resolve the nuclear issues with Iran short of war and to dissuade Israel from attacking that nation.  Their threats to invade Iran are responsible for much of the destabilization of US relations with Iran.  I have to wonder whether Israel\u2019s preference for Republicans is behind this.<\/font><\/p>\n

The bottom line is this.  Democrats\u2019 terrorism policies resulted in several foiled plots and the death of Osama bin Laden.  Republicans\u2019 terrorism policies resulted in death of over 3,000 Americans on 9\/11.  Republicans have no basis for calling Obama weak.<\/font><\/p>\n

I suggest that Republicans\u2019 real motivation is that nothing transfers wealth from the poor and middle classes to millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals than war.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican warmongering against Iran is nothing new.  Who can forget John McCain singing \u201cBomb, Bomb Iran\u201d during a Senate committee hearing, when he did not know his microphone was open, wan back in 2008.  With their culture wars drawing more and more ire from the general public, Republicans need a new focus to distract voters […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}