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VagueRant posted:I was more shocked that the noted Conservative, racist, sexist, sacrificing-Coventry, Winston Churchill was namedropped by Bernie. He seems like the anti-Bernie. Context? Apparently he was trying to bolster his foreign policy credentials. I look forward to the deposition of the charismatic German leader, an alliance of convenience with Russia, and a coup d'etat in Iran.
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Feb 16, 2016 15:11
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poty posted:Is there a better answer than Churchill? I guess it's kind of weird that pacifist Sanders chose one of the most celebrated wartime leaders ever, but I don't think you can go wrong with the man who risked everything standing up to Hitler and ended up leading the liberation of Western Europe. It's a stinker of a question to answer, but I know what the answer definitely isn't, and it definitely isn't Churchill. The Germans never had the capability to cripple the RAF, or to successfully invade Britain even if they had. As a military strategist Churchill was completely unable to distinguish a good, insightful idea (holding fighters back from France in 1940, delaying Operation Overlord until 1944, or patronising the Landships Committee in 1915) from an ambitious one that needed a great deal more planning and forethought than he was ever prepared to allow (the Dardanelles campaign in 1915), from an utterly ridiculous shitshow that should have been burned immediately to stop anyone's mind being poisoned by it (his brief enthusiasm in early 1915 for dealing with a troublesome German cruiser by literally setting a river on fire, or his support of Operation Catherine in 1940). As Home Secretary he was a non-entity at best; at worst he supported measures like forced sterilisation of the mentally ill (never adopted) and outright oppressive tactics against suffragettes. As Minister of War from 1919 he prolonged support for the White Russians far beyond the point of sanity, and sent the Black and Tans to Ireland. As Chancellor of the Exchequer he launched the economy into a depression a full two years before the USA could get there. In the mid-20s he told Mussolini “If I had been Italian, I am sure I would have been with you from the beginning.” From the backbenches he founded the India Defence League to oppose Gandhi, the Congress Party, and making India a Dominion within the Empire. There was a reason nobody paid attention to him when he started talking in worried tones about what was going on in Germany; by that point he had the credibility of a wet dishrag. Then the war came along, and it just so happened that what national morale really needed in 1940 was a charismatic leader who was good at inspiring people, who had in 1916 voluntarily gone to the Western Front and personally led 36 trench raids in three months. The Government needed a man who could bash heads together and get people pulling on the same rope. Churchill was the right man in the right place at the right time and very little more. Lord Alanbrooke, the head of the army during the war: quote:.....And the wonderful thing is that 3/4 of the population of the world imagine that Churchill is one of the Strategists of History, a second Marlborough, and the other 1/4 have no idea what a public menace he is and has been throughout this war! It is far better that the world should never know, and never suspect the feet of clay of this otherwise superhuman being. Without him England was lost for a certainty, with him England has been on the verge of disaster time and again...... Never have I admired and despised a man simultaneously to the same extent. Never have such opposite extremes been combined in the same human being. The war ends; he's bounced out of office, bleating helplessly about Labour's plan to enforce obedience with its own Gestapo (in those words) to their evil Socialist aims like universal healthcare. He comes back in 1951, initially serving as his own Minister of Defence. In this premiership, Churchill gave aid to the coup that installed the Shah of Iran, he approved mildly brutal tactics in putting down the Malayan Emergency (including the use of defoliants like Agent Orange) and when he sent the Army to the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya, trying to hang on to the crumbling remnants of the Empire, they went all the way to "incredibly brutal" in very short order. This ended in widespread use of concentration camps against civilians, and brutal prison systems for suspected members of the Mau Mau, many of whom were tortured in some of the worst ways possible without such footling concerns as "evidence" or "charges" or "trials". In fact, if the Clinton camp really wanted to turn the screw on this (they may well not, not least because it all smells rather like Guantanamo Bay), they could point out that one of the innocent victims of the Empire during this time was Hussein Onyango Obama, grandfather of the current president. He was repeatedly beaten by British squaddies, had pins pushed under his fingernails and into his skin. At one point they tried to crush his testicles with metal rods. On Winston Churchill's watch. Churchill was a very, very, very, very weird man, and about as far from democratic socialism as it's possible to get. If that answer sticks to Sanders, and then he somehow manages to pull off the upset, then he's going to start off his presidency by kicking himself right in the dick in the one area where he can really get things done and enforce his personality on the issues without Congress tripping him up all the time. Kenya remembers the Mau Mau. Iran remembers the Shah. Just because America thinks Churchill's a cuddly war hero doesn't mean the rest of the world agrees. It's a staggeringly illiterate thing to have said; with luck he'll be able to let it just slide on by and we'll all forget it by Super Tuesday.
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Feb 16, 2016 23:16
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The point I was eventually working round to is that sure, America's not going to care; but what worries me is that if America's not going to care, Sanders might decide that namechecking Churchill is a simple, easy way to bolster his shaky foreign policy credentials over the next year. In Iran they know that the Shah's coup was backed by MI6 and the CIA. It would be utterly depressing if Sanders pulls off the impossible dream and goes into the Oval Office, thinking "Sure, the Hill's going to obstruct the gently caress out of my domestic agenda, but at least I can achieve something with a fast-thawing Iran!", only to find that the Iranians have suddenly become extremely wary of a self-declared maverick and outsider President who's spent the last year saying "I admire Winston Churchill's foreign policy."
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Feb 17, 2016 01:02
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