Friday, May 04, 2007

Where are the Anti-War Candidates?

Thoreau gives us pause:
I don’t have the energy to blog [the Republican candidates' debate] play by play, and I guess it doesn’t matter because no pro-war candidate will win next November if US troops are still dying in Iraq.
To which we respond:
We disagree. Taking as read that one of the current candidates (Dem or GOP) must win, and that Ron Paul or Gravel will not be the nominees, then, almost tautologically, a pro-war candidate will win the election.

Who are the anti-war candidates in either party? Ron Paul was the lone Republican against the war last night. So there's no anti-war candidate on the GOP side.

On the Democrat side, Barack Obama wants troops in Congo, Darfur and wants to do to Charles Taylor the bang-up job the U.S. did to Saddam Hussein. Senator Clinton is wants "no option off the table" when it comes to dealing with Iran, a country with no aircraft carriers and no nuclear arms capability. Joe Biden wants more troops in Afghanistan and a no-fly zone over Darfur. Bill Richardson has the same tired speech every Democrat candidate has: our wasteful imperialist adventurism in Iraq has distracted us from the real imperialist adventurism in Iran and North Korea, etc. And John Edwards isn't going to win, so we didn't bother looking him up.

Seriously - where are the anti-war candidates? Where are the candidates who oppose nation-building, "all options on the table" and pre-emptive strikes? Where are the isolationists? Where are the candidates who would declare, as President Clinton declared over a decade ago re: Haiti, that the United States is "not the world's policeman"?

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