[Peace-discuss] Our Senator, Mark Kirk, jumps the shark on Iran deal

Fri Apr 3 13:34:13 EDT 2015

Republicans and Democrats have worked hard to eradicate the Ron (not Rand) Paul wing of the party - that calls for bringing the troops home, closing overseas bases, and breaking up the NY banks. But they’re still able to fill a stadium  at UIUC.

Instead we’re given a choice between two candidate who are both neoliberal and neoconservative. How does that happen?

> On Apr 3, 2015, at 11:25 AM, Robert Naiman <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org> wrote:
> 
> Let me know how that Kirk primary challenger thing goes. If you can find a Tea Party person to challenge Kirk who supports diplomacy with Iran, I will send them a campaign donation. 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 10:53 AM, C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com <mailto:carl at newsfromneptune.com>> wrote:
> That’s the sort of false alternative ("pure evil and swings both ways”) that sees Obama’s war policy as a reversal of Bush’s rather than a continuation. 
> 
> Obama has attacked eight countries (while Bush only attacked six) and is conducting the “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times.”
> 
> We should be organizing opposition to him in Congress, rather than support.
> 
> And in fact it’s marginally more likely that Kirk will have a primary challenger - from the anti-war anti-Wall St. wing of the Republican party - than that Duckworth will.
> 
> —CGE
> 
>> On Apr 3, 2015, at 10:34 AM, Robert Naiman <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org <mailto:naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> Tammy D. would not be my first choice, and if anyone wants to make a credible challenge to her for the Dem nomination, I'm ready. So far, looks to be the opposite - every potential credible Dem challenger is standing aside for Tammy D - their choice, not mine. 
>> 
>> In Washington, the difference between pure evil and swings both ways makes a palpable difference all the time. Kirk is pure evil. Tammy D swings both ways. 
>> 
>> So, for example, indicted Menendez just got replaced as the ranking Dem on SFRC by Cardin. Cardin is AIPAC too, but he's not hyper-super-duper AIPAC like Menendez. That change from hyper-AIPAC to just plain AIPAC is likely to have a big impact in the coming Congressional fight on Iran.
>> 
>> http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/menendez-s-foreign-relations-loss-is-white-house-s-gain-20150402 <http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/menendez-s-foreign-relations-loss-is-white-house-s-gain-20150402>
>> http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/bob-corker-iran-bill-116629.html <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/bob-corker-iran-bill-116629.html>
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 10:16 AM, C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com <mailto:carl at newsfromneptune.com>> wrote:
>> Duckworth, a pro-war Democrat engineered into Congress by Rahm Emanuel in 2006 in order to exclude an anti-war Democrat, Christine Cegelis, will prove to be a “more effective evil” (in Glen Ford’s phrase) in support of Obama’s war policies.  There may/should be a Green party candidate for the Senate in Illinois in 2016.
>> 
>> In 2006 “...Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), handpicked Duckworth as the establishment choice. Illinois’s U.S. senators, Democrats Barack Obama and Dick Durbin, as well as Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), aided Duckworth’s campaign…"
>> 
>> —CGE
>> 
>> [BTW, contrary to self-serving American political mythology about “Munich appeasement,"  British PM Chamberlain got a good agreement at Munich in 1938. It was the breaking of that agreement, not its implementation, that led to WWII in Europe. See Nicholson Baker’s important book:
>> 
>> "Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (2008) is a history of World War II that questions the commonly held belief that the Allies wanted to avoid the war at all costs but were forced into action by Hitler's unforgiving crusade. It consists largely of official government transcripts and other documents from the time. In form it is similar to Sven Lindqvist's A History of Bombing (New York: New Press, 2001), which Baker includes in the book's copious list of references. Baker cites documents that suggest that the leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom were provoking Germany into war (showing, for example, that Britain bombed Germany before Germany bombed Britain) and that the leaders of those two nations had ulterior motives for wanting to participate…” and that a truce was possible before the Wannsee Conference.]    
>> 
>> 
>>> On Apr 3, 2015, at 7:54 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> we need to get rid of this guy in 11/16. Tammy Duckworth? I'd take Mickey Mouse. 
>>> 
>>> [...]
>>> And in a telephone interview, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) reiterated that his leaders should give his sanctions bill a vote and blasted the president’s announcement and a top State Department negotiator, Wendy Sherman.
>>> 
>>> “I would say that Neville Chamberlain got a lot more out of Hitler than Wendy Sherman got out of Iran,” Kirk said.
>>> [...]
>>> http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/bob-corker-iran-bill-116629.html <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/bob-corker-iran-bill-116629.html>
>>> 
> 
> 

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