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8 with the senate, 5 without. I think Biden will surprise a lot of people with his openness and desire for progress. For most of his career he has been one of many senators, and then vice president (which while it's very close to the top of the executive, is 100% in the shadow of the actual top). But I see signs from things like his attitude to apartheid in the 80s, and expressions of his attitude to trans rights, that he probably has a forward-looking streak that has yet to find its full flourishing.
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Nov 9, 2020 02:35
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Some Guy TT posted:Have you ever considered the possibility there might be a connection between the fact that Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumseld are not listed as war criminals in American texbooks and the equally true fact that the guy who was their point man in the Senate became the standard bearer for the opposition party some twenty years later? No. They designed the war from scratch, prosecuted it and hosed it up. Joe Biden was one of many, many people who supported giving the Bush administration the power to wage that war (alongside tens to hundreds of millions of Americans, probably including some of the same people who now take delight in calling Biden a "war criminal", and no I didn't support the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, I knew they were a terrible idea from the beginning). He didn't create it. It would have happened with or without him, because the Republicans and the American people were full of fire and fury and the Democrats in general were nowhere near having the will or the political capital to stop them. There were war criminals in that war, and most of them worked in the White House and the Pentagon. Joe Biden wasn't more of a war criminal than most of the Senate at that time, which, if you want them to be prosecuted, then fine, but you're just not going to get that. We are talking about a time when on this very forum there were discussion about whether all Muslim nations should be overthrown or only some of them.
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Nov 9, 2020 04:46
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Joe biden was not just another senator but chair of the foreign relations committee and ensured that the AUMF sailed right on through committee without any opposition Edit - Ok I see there was also one separately for Iraq. But that war was happening. There were 28 other Democratic senators voting for it along with Biden. Do you really think he made the difference between it happening and not happening? Or that he was vastly out of line with (tragically) the opinion of Americans at that time? The Artificial Kid fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Nov 9, 2020 |
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Nov 9, 2020 04:59
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sexpig by night posted:nah man you don't get to just overtly rewrite history. He was a major figure in the party and on the loving foreign relations committee, his words had power and making him the big cheerleader for the war was a key factor in getting dem support, this is just objective fact, the bush white house openly talked about how biden was a big figure to focus on woo'ing and thanks to him the AUMF skated through with hand picked experts who all came to the same conclusion of 'aw yea if we don't do this now Saddam's totally gonna nuke us. Unfortunately this was the world they were operating in at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_States_on_the_invasion_of_Iraq#May_2003
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Nov 9, 2020 05:07
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sexpig by night posted:you, uh, you remember what year the AUMF passed, right? Read higher. America (wrongly) wanted the war. I'm not saying it makes voting for it right, but it stops it being something that evil puppetmaster of war Joe Biden foisted on everyone.
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Nov 9, 2020 05:12
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sexpig by night posted:No, they didn't You don't like that Gallup poll, what was the actual level of support and opposition for the war in America at the time? My memory might be clouded by the tremendous amount of support for the war that I used to encounter as an opponent of it at the time.
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Nov 9, 2020 05:18
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Some Guy TT posted:The most generous possible interpretation of Biden's actions you can come up with is that he was a political weathervane going along with the bloodthirstiness of the American public because he was scared of the polls. And this is supposed to comfort us that he's not going to commit war crimes in the future...why? Did you miss that this last election was a squeaker because it turned out that way more people were willing to vote for a warmongering candidate than anyone realized?
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Nov 9, 2020 05:25
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sexpig by night posted:So just to be clear your optimistic take is that Joe Biden was too stupid to do even the most token level opposition to a plan entirely cooked up by the white house only?
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Nov 9, 2020 05:38
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Some Guy TT posted:You have defined the circumstances for which we can hold a politician to account for a pro war record so narrowly that the only people who could possibly ever be said to have started a war of "their own free will" are presidents. And strictly speaking George W Bush is literally the only president who actually meets this standard because you're choosing to hinge everything on post 9/11 comparable nationalism and a deliberate sustained nationalist effort. Which Joe Biden willfully participated in, however much you'd rather pretend he was just a tiny cog in the war machine rather than a big one.
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Nov 9, 2020 05:40
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Some Guy TT posted:Even if you're choosing to compare Biden to Trump he still falls short. Trump has actually had the power for the last four years to at least attempt to manufacture nationalistic fervor for a war. On two occasions, with Syria and Soleimani, he even had the mainstream media urging him to do it. Both times he decided to back off instead, even though he likely would have reaped huge political dividends for doing so. What makes you think Biden would back off in either of these cases when, again by your own extremely charitable interpretation, Biden cares more about opinion polls than he does in doing the right thing? Edit - look, this is a thread for people to say how excited or not excited they are about the Biden administration. I'm (potentially) excited, you're not. I don't think we're on the verge of convincing each other, so maybe we should let it rest there for now.
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Nov 9, 2020 05:59
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OwlFancier posted:The question of how you hold him accountable other than by not voting for him arises. This “it’s always the most perilous election ever, we are always told we have to just vote for the democrat” narrative got a lot of play here during this campaign, but I don’t think it’s true. I don’t remember it being that way with McCain or Romney. It wasn’t even that way with Dubya’s first term, only after 9/11 and his response was he truly demonised. Before that he was treated more as a sign of America’s stupidity than America’s evil. I’m sure the next republican candidates will benefit to a frightening degree from a sense of normality and decorum relative to Trump, and people may get their wish that Biden or Harris not be elected because they’re “just another Democrat” and “both sides are the same”. The Artificial Kid fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Nov 10, 2020 |
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Nov 10, 2020 03:34
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Dumper Humper posted:Voting for candidates who are further and further right because the other guy is worse is accelerationism No, voting for the least worst viable candidate (In a first past the post, non-preferential electoral system) is the rational response to the situation you’re in on Election Day, with the understanding that you need to work from there to try to be in a better situation on the next Election Day. Accelerationism is voting for the other guy because you don’t expect to ever be in a better situation on Election Day and you want to get the infinite series over with and start the revolution. It’s a bet on the ultimate failure of non-revolutionary efforts at improvement.
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Nov 10, 2020 03:43
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