Thread by @caitoz

Every Presidential Election Since The Iraq War Has Featured Candidates Who Supported It

"And this says so much about the state of the US political system today."
medium.com/@caityjohnston…

The most powerful government on earth has still yet to have a single presidential election that doesn’t feature a prominent candidate who supported one of the most evil things that government has ever done.

Yet there have been no consequences for it. No real changes of any kind were made to American military, governmental, political or media institutions to ensure that a similar atrocity never happens again,

The fact that every election for commander in chief of the most powerful military in the history of civilization has featured at least one candidate who supported one of the most evil things ever done in the blood-soaked history of their nation is too insane to put into words.

The current Democratic presidential nominee is a particularly egregious example of this fact, having not just supported the Iraq invasion but played a leading role in pushing it through. Current Affairs explains:

Before @JoeBiden it was @HillaryClinton, who as a US senator not only voted in support of the Iraq war but emphatically promoted it on the Senate floor and then more than a year after the invasion said she had no regrets about doing so.

Their opponent Donald Trump was in no position to actively facilitate the Iraq invasion since he wasn’t in politics at the time, but in 2002 he was asked point-blank by Howard Stern “Are you for invading Iraq?” and he answered in the affirmative.

If Trump was unable to see Iraq clearly from the political sidelines at the time, there’s no reason to believe he’d have done any better than Biden and Clinton had he been a sitting US senator in 2002 with the immense pressures to conform from the Bush administration in 2002.

Before them it was Republican nominee @MittRomney in 2012, who had previously said in a 2008 Republican primary debate that “It was the right decision to go into Iraq. I supported it at the time; I support it now.”

Before that it was John McCain in 2008, who during his miserable psychopathic excuse for a life supported invading not just Iraq but damn near everyone else as well.
motherjones.com/politics/2013/…

And in 2004 it was John Kerry running against the butcher himself George W Bush, who had just voted in support of Bush’s war in 2002.
pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fro…

The more you think about it, the more outrageous it becomes. The most powerful elected official in the most powerful government on earth with the most powerful military force the world has ever seen should not be prone to making horrifically evil decisions.

The way leftists and anti-imperialists are shamed as privileged and petty whenever they point out the record of a candidate on this crucial matter is disgusting. This is not some kind of pedantic quibble, it’s the bare minimum requirement for such an immensely powerful position.

The argument that the Iraq invasion was supported by most prominent politicians at the time is not a defense of those politicians, it’s an indictment of mainstream American politics.

Nobody who supported the Iraq invasion should be working in politics at all. They shouldn’t be able to find employment anywhere more prominent or influential than a cash register.

It’s entirely legitimate for any voter to reject anyone who supported the unforgivable invasion of Iraq, and indeed to reject the entire political system that gave rise to them.