[Peace-discuss] [Peace] What last night's debate should have been about

[C. G. Estabrook]

WAR AND THE GREEN PARTY

A Green party president, such as Jill Stein, would stop the vicious war-making over which the current US president presides. Like all American presidents for more than a generation, President Obama is making war around the world. And now his administration is threatening Russia with war in Syria - and beyond. 
	
Since World War II, US presidents have killed more than 20 million people in 37 nations. The US remains during the Obama administration what Martin Luther King called it long ago: “...the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
	
When the new president is inaugurated next January, Barack Obama will have become the first US president - ever - to have been at war throughout two presidential terms. He has attacked eight countries (two more than George Bush), and he is today conducting what has been called “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” - his drone assassinations. He has killed thousands of civilians with drones, including US citizens and hundreds of children. The New York Times says he chooses the targets himself, from lists prepared by the CIA.
	
In addition to conducting wars throughout the Mideast, the Obama administration is acting with belligerence toward China and promoting an ongoing proxy war against Russia in Ukraine; that war has already killed more people than Israel killed (with US permission) in Gaza in 2014. The president is risking war with both Russia and China, even nuclear war. He also commands a 70,000-member private army, the Special Operations Command, active in more than 130 countries. Their activities include kidnapping ("rendition"), murder, and torture. 
	
Not only is the Obama administration risking nuclear war, they’re preparing for it: President Obama has launched a 1o-year trillion dollar program to update nuclear weapons - and make them more usable!
	
The Obama administration is also responsible for the vicious civil war in Syria, which has killed thousands and flooded Europe with refugees. Hillary Clinton - responsible for horrors in Honduras, Libya, Syria and elsewhere - as president would only continue and intensify the warmongering of the Bush and Obama administrations, the blowback from which is now producing terrorist attacks in Europe and America. 
	
The Green party says instead, “Establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, and human rights. End the wars [in the Mideast and elsewhere] and stop the drone attacks; cut military spending by at least 50% and close the more than 700 foreign military bases. [Neither Russia nor China has more than twelve.] Stop US support and arms sales to human rights abusers [notably Israel], and lead on global nuclear disarmament.” 
	
That’s a call for a reversal of the Obama administration’s foreign and military policy. The positions of the Green party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein, on both foreign and domestic policy - to say nothing of climate catastrophe - are far better than those of the major party candidates. And we shouldn’t be dissuaded from voting for Stein by the argument that voting for a third party helps Trump - because even his positions on war and the economy are substantially better than Clinton's.
	
Clinton is the candidate of the ‘defense’ industries and Wall Street because they see accurately that she is both neoconservative (which means more war) and neoliberal (which means more austerity) - and that Trump isn’t. 
	
Not only do the leading neoliberals support Clinton, but also the leading neocons have fled the Republicans to support her. With Clinton as president, we're certain to get more war, in the tradition of the last 25 years. With Trump as president, we might not. 
	
The Australian journalist John Pilger writes, “The CIA has demanded Trump is not elected. Pentagon generals have demanded he is not elected. The pro-war New York Times - taking a breather from its relentless low-rent Putin smears - demands that he is not elected. Something is up. These tribunes of ‘perpetual war’ are terrified that the multi-billion-dollar business of war by which the United States maintains its dominance will be undermined if Trump does a deal with Putin, then with China's Xi Jinping. Their panic at the possibility of the world's great power talking peace - however unlikely - would be the blackest farce were the issues not so dire.”
	
But there is in fact a candidate talking peace - and a reversal of Obama’s war policies - even more than Trump, and that’s Jill Stein of the Green party. Opponents of more American war should consider voting for the Green party’s nominees, Jill Stein for president, Ajamu Baraka for vice-president, and Scott Summers for US Senate.

—CGE


> On Oct 12, 2016, at 2:18 AM, Gregg Gordon <ggregg79 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> OMG -- must we?
> 
> Left or right is hardly the point when it comes to Donald Trump anymore.  The point is the mental stability of a man who seeks control of thousands of nuclear weapons.  You want to talk about war?  Yeah, let's talk about it.  
> 
> To take this discussion to the lowest level possible -- why waste time, after all -- I trust the corrupt and evil Hillary Clinton to not want to incinerate the fortune she has worked so hard to acquire.  Trump has just gone "nuclear" with his campaign, and I have no reason to think he wouldn't do so with the real thing -- and all of our lives --given the opportunity.
> 
> 16 years of "party building" has taken the Greens from Ralph Nader's 3% to Jill Stein's 1% and has resulted in the election of not a single US Congressperson -- not even close -- so someone in that camp has not done a very good job, certainly not enough to inspire confidence in me that that is a promising alternative.  But hey -- you never know.  The polls could be wrong.  This might be the time.  Success is just around the corner.  Democracy's on the march.  So if you want to vote Green, vote Green.  In my opinion, that makes you 99.44% pure, and .56% relevant , which frankly, is exactly where I want you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com>
> To: Karen Aram <karenaram at hotmail.com> 
> Cc: John W. <jbw292002 at gmail.com>; peace <peace at lists.chambana.net>; Peace-discuss List <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>; Gregg Gordon <ggregg79 at yahoo.com>; Occupy CU <occupy.cu at gmail.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2016 8:32 AM
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] What last night's debate should have been about
> 
> I think the correct course is to continue to point out that Stein-Baraka are far superior to either ‘major’ party on the issues, especially war.  
> 
> We still need to answer the objection that a vote for a third party is a vote for Trump, by pointing out that Trump has accurately criticized Clinton’s neocon warmongering.
> 
> As Glen Ford and others point out, Trump is substantially to the left of Clinton on foreign policy (and perhaps economic policy - the trade pacts - as well).
> 
> That’s why the Democrats want to focus on the ‘personal’ - and we should talk about war.
>