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Originally Posted by Pookie
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yesssss. that guy has it 100% right in how/why democrats support sanctions & drones over invasions. but he doesn't mention that non-interventionism isn't in the cards. intervention will happen-- the only question is how. i have no illusions about this and nobody else should.
the basic foreign policy issue of this election is about how to manage the american empire, not whether or not it should be dismantled. this in spite of what right-wing twats are saying-- that obama is some sort of anti-colonialist manchurian candidate (for a good summary on this, please
see here).
why do i mention right-wing twats? because they exist and they exert political pressure sufficient to keep the empire going regardless of what others may say. any attempt to do otherwise will be swiftly marginalized (see for example how ron paul's "isolationist" candidacy never manages to take off among republicans). same thing with mainstream democrats by the way-- wasn't joe lieberman a VP candidate with al gore in 2000? yes he fucking was.
take a page from your own recent history: when argentina wanted to recapture the islands that britain had disputed with them for centuries (let's not look at the real motives of the 1982 argentinian military junta for now)---did the british public say "oh fuck yeah, we've been squatting at the door of the poor argies for nearly 2 centuries, let's give them back their doormat?". nope-- your country went rah rah rah behind pm thatcher and proceeded to raise their flag again over those fucking rocks for the glory of some sort of some shit.
my point being... people everywhere are greedy for power and love it when their state uses their muscle for their profit/convenience/comfort/"honor". nobody gets elected by promising to be meek.
so... the pullback/withdrawal/dismantling of the american empire is going to be a HUGE undertaking that's not going to be solved in one election-- more likely it will collapse and be replaced by a different and perhaps even more malevolent empire (very likely, considering world history). the election in november will simply move the needle of what's "normal" and "acceptable" either in one direction or another--mainly in the domestic arena, because in foreign policy the issue is basically one of choosing drones vs. marines as the way to enforce corporate interests, and ends up being a domestic issue (creating more veterans vs. developing technology).
of course there are 2 schools in this direction-- one wants to slowly move towards some day living sanely (i'm a reformist so that's me), the other is more maoist and would have the system "exacerbate its contradictions" so it can implode and some sort of cockamamie revolution will save everyone. oh, fuck, i've seen maoism at work and it's shit, and revolutions end up in tyranny. so i vote for the democraps because in balance things come out slightly better-- that's all you can do in this macro contex. no candidate is proposing to dismantle the american empire, certainly not tomorrow. it would be nice some day to have a "voluntary recall" of military forces around the world, but like i said with the malvinas/falklands example, the populace of "evolved" democracies loves to rule over others as much as any petty somalian warlord or third world country with nukes. the only question left then is "how".